Hamilton

Perhaps you've heard of Hamilton, the Broadway smash hit that has quite deftly made even the most hard hearted toward the Great White Way take notice? Embrace, even.  A very lively musical based on Ron Chernow's biography of statesman, politician, banker, and senior officer of the U.S. Army, Alexander Hamilton.  In his fifty years, the proud Founding Father set into motion the U.S. Coast Guard, financial systems, and even the New York Post.  He became the first Secretary of the Treasury and created the first U.S. central banks.   And there was even a sexual scandal, almost part and parcel to any politician's public life (and all the better for a juicy recount).

Since 2015, Hamilton, with its dynamic music encompassing everything from traditional show tunes to hip hop, has been an unequivocal success.  The songs use contemporary slang ("Wait For It") and arrangements.  The show was impossible to get tickets for, and when you could, only for a pretty penny.  Teens bought up the soundtrack and flooded social media with its praises.  The play is a retelling of an often problematic history with a twenty-first century sensibility.   They even cast African-American actors as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! The irony, of course, is that these guys were in fact slave owners.  For that reason, not everyone is on board.

To wit, many of the reviews on Letterboxd for HAMILTON, a filmization of the musical that was intended for theatrical release next year but due to the pandemic was launched exclusively on Disney + last week, express disgust at the very idea of this musical, despite the casting.  Despite some (brief) denigrations of the very notion of slavery.  Revisionist, yes.  While much of what unfolds is based on fact, no one should ever take their history from a work of fiction.  No one should believe every event depicted here any more than they did for Oliver Stone's JFK movie.  But people do.  I hope this flashy, high powered musical inspires people to read.  To seek out reputable sources and learn why current events are an affront to the very concepts this country was founded upon.

Ahem.  But what about the movie itself? An event if there ever was one.  Undeniably dazzling and at times emotionally charged.  Director Thomas Kail captured three shows at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in NYC in 2016.  You may notice some Steadicam and crane shots.  Reverse stage and overhead, too.   It is impressively filmed (some of it recorded later without an audience). The actors stand on a rotating stage, lazy Susaned around while they demonstrate superior choreography.

HAMILTON plays much like/is reminiscent of the best Home Box Office Broadway special ever.  This is high praise, as even in the '80s HBO had very high standards for programming of this sort.  There is always the treading of the line of what is theatrical and what is cinematic.  This is a movie, after all.  A documentary of a live event, though no one is calling it that.  Kail really grabs the experience of being in the theater, that magic. The spit flying from the actors' lips (including those of Jonathan Groff, who is fabulous as King George III).  It comes just short of really being there.  I imagine that must have been overwhelming.

Hopefully someday soon those of us not fortunate enough to have previously seen this live will get to find out.  Even before, I will feel the need to speak every sentence aloud in rhyme, yo.