For an average Indian sitting in a theatre far from the American shore, The Greatest Showman will be reminiscent of a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. It’s brimming with high-pitched singing and dancing, and has all the razzle-dazzle of costumes, and stagey pitches. But if you’re a little informed, or know a little about the man whose life has inspired the musical, aversion is bound to follow.
The film is based on the life of Phineas Taylor Barnum, one of the most remarkable figures of 19th century who became famous around the world for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus that specialized in ingenious hoaxes.
He was also a contentious figure who exploited the ‘freaks’ in his company to make a fortune. He was also a man who campaigned heavily for abolitionism. That makes quite a figure.
But Michael Gracey’s debut feature is a germ-free attempt to understand Barnum, and it turns the opportunity of a brilliant biopic into a generic, very generic rags-to-riches story.
The film also travels like a hurried traveller, hardly interested in pausing to breathe and soak in the moment. Before we realise it, we meet Barnum as a poor kid in love with a rich man’s daughter, losing his father, struggling to survive, growing up, managing a job and marrying his childhood sweetheart. All in the span of a few minutes. Phew.
From a desk job, his idea of magic leads him to hoodwink a bank to lend him money so that he could start his circus. His motivation is as good as you and me, hardly tangible. While the film is filled with empowering anthems that soar with operatic vehemence, it displays zero care for its characters.
The circus of freaks -- a bearded lady (Keala Settle), a dog-faced boy (a poor man’s Chewbacca), a tattooed man, General Tom Thumb, the giant and so on was a team that made Barnum’s legacy mythical. But Gracey’s direction, and the script by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon skirts the golden prospect to explore the ethical quandary of exploitation and acceptance.
Those individuals were surely shunned by society, but was Barnum really a saviour? The idea of otherness, and the moral weight of confronting society’s treatment of disability is thrown away in favour of colourful ‘Let it go’ like chorales, put together by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo behind La La Land’s exquisite soundtrack.
Even in hero-worshipping Barnum, the film fails to bring emotional dynamism to his personal life. If Michelle Williams is criminally wasted in the role of a loyal wife, Rebecca Ferguson despite radiating enchantment, as the Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind finds little space to make home. Neither history nor a hero, what gives?
However, The Greatest Showman is not without merit. In its cardboard rendition of characters, and cleansed depiction of history, the film curates a fizzy concoction of song and dance where choreography and CGI march together to make a somewhat splendid show.
Hugh Jackman shows the innate charm of a star, swaying to dance numbers with immense fervour, almost an attempt to make up for his underwritten role. But the scene stealing sequence belongs to Zac Efron and Zendaya, swinging on ropes, flying in the air, swooping up and down to embrace, part, and embrace again in a display of astonishing choreography. A few smiles are bound to follow.
Michael Gracey’s Baz Luhrmann facsimile serves as an aide-mémoire, why a pre-code horror film should block your viewing time. Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks was a hat tip to the ‘oddities’ which unlike The Greatest Showman’s vacant chant of ‘This is me’ offers real psychological insight as to what makes them come alive. They didn’t need a white saviour to assert their sovereignty. They still don't.
(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder)
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