The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

Chicago as Colombo - grating maybe, but yes?
There is that wistful though somewhat bitter thought that 'they don't make movies like they used to.'' I used to believe in that. But then I saw Chicago, the 6 Academy Award winning Miramax musical. Keeping to the tradition of taking good movies off the screens, the exhibitor of the movie had already dunked Chicago in favour of something far less combustible.

The English movie going culture itself had of course already changed in Sri Lanka, and in Colombo in particular. There was a time when there were intelligent movie reviews, and it used to be said that journalists such as Mervyn de Silva were consummate in the art of the film review. Then television brought the Box Office home, and the only reviews that were done were by the family dog when it either walked out or stayed put on the rug.

Under these circumstances, writing about Chicago may be almost as quaint as going back to a different planet in a different time -- Chicago in the prohibition era, in which the movie is set. But it could have been Sri Lanka in 2003 at least in some ways. There is a sensationalising press and a grandstanding lawyer, and as if that was not enough, the movie depicts a public that feeds on the transient glamour of the compelling moment.

One reviewer wrote that Catherine Zeta Jones as homicidal showgirl Velma is ''almost flammable'' in the opening number All that Jazz. True, and this is why you have to say they do make movies like they used to. The synopsis of the movie says "Set in the roaring 20's, this is the story of Chicago chorus girl Roxie Hart (Rene Zellweger), who shoots her unfaithful lover (West). Landing in jail, she meets Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), another chorus girl and murderess, currently enjoying media attention and legal manipulation, care of her attorney, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), king of the old "Razzle Dazzle."

Apart from the flammability of Catherine Zeta Jones, and the fact that the choreography and the direction is nothing but dynamite, Chicago has story value. It has, according to some arguments I have heard, '”less that likeable characters.'' Both Roxie Hart (Zellweger) as the ingénue and the lead in the movie, and Velma (Zeta Jones) are homicidal - they either killed their husbands or their lovers. Interestingly, the film is based on an original play written in the 20s by a playwright who found similar characters in her daily beat as a courts reporter for a Chicago daily.

The setting can be anywhere, but the characters and the story are not improbable even today. There is a shifty lawyer (Gere) and you may be able to find one that's more contemptible -- even though less theatrical - in Colombo.
Some writers at the time of the movies' release likened Chicago to the O. J. Simpson trial in the US, and one said the movie was bad because it is 'depraved' due to the fact that characters who betray at the drop of a hat are being glamorised… (.. or at least something to that effect.)

"Depraved? I think its dynamite'' said Rolling Stone, in the review. The theme may be 'depraved'' but it tells a story of how life can be, sometimes, particularly in a rapacious city, and in a setting in which hustle is the name of the game. But, Monica Ruwanpathirana would have written a story on the same lines and then it would have hardly been called depraved - even by a relatively puritanical Colombo standards.

The villains are not only among the showgirls, who are desperately trying to make good in the rather insensitive and inhospitable surroundings of one big bad city - - but the villains are also in the social institutions such as the courts and the press. This is why the story will ring as true today as it did in the time of prohibitionist Chicago - - a time and a place so far removed from us that it may even sound comical that we are even trying to relate to it.

But when talking of the underbelly of our society -- the 'pathala'' --- people still use the expression, particularly in the Sinhala papers: 'meka then Chicago wage.''( This is like Chicago.) At least to that extent, Chicago is not so remote from the consciousness of our urban flotsam and jetsam.

And talk about corrupt institutions which are part of a vast charade -- a social trick or a scripted pantomime that's foisted on the people. As the shifty lawyer who appears for homicidal women and has '' never lost a case'' Richard Gere as Billy Flynn portrays the archetypal society skunk -- if not white collar villain. He is smooth and garrulous at the same time (" If Jesus Christ was to live in Chicago, and if he was to find me, things would have turned out differently'') and he tap dances his way to what is probably his most memorable and endearing performance in motion pictures.

For those who argue that the movie somehow imparts a set of 'depraved values'', it is pertinent that a book, say by Nobel prize winning author V. S. Naipaul may have the same number of betrayals and the same number of less-than-likeable characters that the movie Chicago has. Does that make Naipaul depraved?

The problem is that a movie , especially a high-voltage showstopper like Chicago may be seen as glamorising in some way the social fault lines -- the betraying characters, and the failing corrupt institutions and even the shifty lawyers. In the whirl of the razzle and dazzle, the poignancy of betrayal may be lost, and some might say that sadly, somehow amorality may not look such a bad thing after all.

But yet, it portrays the way of the world. Definitely, unless the viewer is complete dense, he can laugh at the irony of it all (the star lawyer Flynn who forgets for a moment that it is not all scripted and that it is a courtroom, hence imploring his client in court to address 'the audience'') and through this irony, he will know it was a story well told -- and that, after all, this can sometimes be life. In Chicago or Colombo.

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