Zhou Liming
On July 3, the musical "Hamilton" was launched on Disney's streaming platform. Soon, it appeared on the domestic network platform unabashedly, satisfying the desire of musical theatre fans in time.
The fate of this version of "Hamilton" was misguided by the new crown epidemic situation. Originally, Disney planned to do theater release first, and it was pushed as a key project. It is absolutely impossible for the world's largest film company to buy it for $75 million just to replenish it. Although the money is not enough to make a Marvel movie, it is more than enough to shoot a medium-sized feature film.
Yes, "Hamilton" is not a pure feature film, but a record of stage performances. We happen to have a precise label in China called "Stage Art Movies".
Without calculating the cost of stage productions, just looking at the marginal cost of filming, Disney pays a figure that is sky-high. In other words, Disney has high expectations for "Hamilton". Today's switch to streaming media platforms is both a last resort, and it also shows that the network is thinning out relative to the theater line. At the critical moment when the epidemic inspires contradictions between the old and new platforms, it can be regarded as a move to bet on the new forces.
Playing hip-hop can connect the drama tradition
Break through skin color beyond political fashion
The video version of "Hamilton" was able to win bids from major Hollywood filmmakers and was bought at a high price by the boss Disney. That was entirely due to the amazing performance of the original play on Broadway. It was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards in 2016, and the final award was 11, which did not break the record of 12 Tony Awards for "Gold Producer".
But the award is just an intuitive and quantifiable indicator. The appearance of "Hamilton" has a shocking effect, which has exclaimed those in the theater industry who have already seen the strange: the musical can still do this!
Ordinary people's cognition of Broadway musicals often stays at its conventional level, such as singing and dancing scenes (especially neat kick dance movements), lyrical and even sensational melody, and the theme of male and female love. In fact, Broadway has been breaking through itself. The industry’s first truly recognized Broadway musical, the 1927 "Painting House" (also translated as "The Show Boat" or "Water Stage") subverted by racial contradictions. The romantic comedy routine that popularized that era. The appearance of "Oklahoma" in 1943 marked that American musicals reached a high degree of unity in drama and music, content and form, and ideology and entertainment. Whenever innovative works appear since then, the critics will use "Oklahoma" as a reference. The conclusions often drawn are: indeed revolutionary, but still unable to match "Oklahoma" (such as "New York" "Times" evaluation of "Sing and Dance Online" in 1975).
"Hamilton" has amazed many insiders and outsiders: finally a work comparable to the status of "Oklahoma" in the history of musical theatre has appeared.
"Hamilton"'s breakthrough in the musical tradition is all-round. The most obvious thing is naturally the music style and the randomness of the actors' matching of the skin color of the characters. Hip-hop is used on Broadway musicals, "Hamilton" is not the first; if hip-hop is used as a style of pop music, then Broadway musicals that use pop music are even more sweaty, including "Mamma Mia" and "Jersey Boy" 》Wait for jukebox musicals, that is, adapting ready-made popular songs. The extraordinary meaning of "Hamilton" is that it uses a hip-hop-based fashion genre, but does a meticulous internal undertaking with Broadway's heavy drama performance. The songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda (Chinese nickname is Lin Manwei or Lin Juju) not only has the musical taste of young people, but is also immersed in Broadway’s music tradition, that is, music is used to tell stories or describe characters, and Not just lyrical. His lyrics are obviously influenced by the musical god Sandheim, and the amount of information greatly exceeds the popular lyrics of lyrical nature. As far as the opening song is concerned, it is actually a highly condensed plot of the whole drama, which can also be used as a character biography of Hamilton. This kind of technique has been perfected in Sandheim's 1971 "The Rich Show", that is, a song is used to describe the character's life, and there are many vivid details and wonderful words.
Hip-hop can attract young audiences, but using hip-hop to tell the story of a character is not as simple as putting together twenty or thirty beautiful songs. It can be said that Lin Manwei not only enriched the expression of musicals, but also expanded the territory of hip-hop.
As for the race and color breakthrough in the casting, "Hamilton" also stood on the shoulders of the predecessors, but also made a qualitative leap. Previously, African or Latino actors such as Odra McDonald (nicknamed Aunt McDonald in China) and Raul Esparza, with their outstanding talents, appeared in roles that were originally white. The entire show's collective change of skin color only appeared in "The New Wizard of Oz" or the black version of "I Love Matchmaker" (Hello, Dolly). The difficulty is that "Hamilton" is not intended to transform historical dramas into fictional comedies. It attempts to strengthen and weaken the correlation of skin color at the same time without changing history. If this trick seems to be a politically correct sensation on paper, then the actual effect of the stage greatly surpasses the one-time political fashion. To make an analogy that may not be appropriate, it seems that the Cantonese or Sichuanese version of "Tea House" did not move the story to the Pearl River Delta or Chengdu, but it did not give a sense of violation.
It is true that the assumption of the stage has always been highly recognized by the audience. In the realm-oriented film field, whether this approach is widely accepted remains to be tested by the market. As a purely market-oriented behavior, Broadway musicals must have extraordinary box office results outside of word of mouth in order to have an impact on latecomers. "Oklahoma" has scored 2212 games since the performance. If you exclude the impact of the new crown, "Hamilton" is likely to exceed this number. In fact, "Hamilton" started playing on Broadway in 2015. As a newborn, it still needs more than 20 years of hard work to catch up with the record of 10,000 consecutive performances created by "The Phantom of the Theater". The high ticket price has broken another Broadway business record-a one-week box office score, with a total of 3.3 million US dollars at the box office eight times a week (this figure refers only to Broadway in New York, excluding performances and touring editions in other cities).
The road to music video is not smooth
The stage is worried that "have been offended"
Broadway musicals are very developed, but the road to imaging is not smooth. The most fundamental reason is that the theater experience cannot be copied. No matter how many cameras you use to shoot, with clear pictures and close-up shots, you can only capture the exposed part of the iceberg at most. We might as well use the ball game to draw an analogy. We can see it clearly at home, but if we want to experience it all, we still have to spend a lot of money on the court.
There is also a secret reason why I worry that the video version will impact the box office of the theater performance. Broadway musicals are usually heavily invested and require two or three years of continuous performance to make a profit; if you can see it at home or at the price of a movie ticket, why go to New York? As a compromise, starting with "Oklahoma", Broadway musicals will release songs of the entire series, using the songs as a means of publicity. The image data is much more conservative. "Cat", which premiered in 1981, did not release stage art films until 1998, and was distributed as a TV show or DVD. However, "The Phantom of the Theater" and "Miserable World" have no official photos of official performances, and only release a variety of commemorative concerts and special concert-oriented special concerts. Compared to the more niche classical operas, there are very few official photos on stage of musicals; many of the works with official photos are not classics, but were filmed for some reason and spread.
The trouble is that we are in an era when it is extremely convenient for sneak shots. Almost all musicals have audiences' sneak shot videos circulating on the Internet. Objectively speaking, they play a role in promoting the theater version, but also cause harm to artists and copyright owners. From a historical perspective, some classic works were not officially filmed at that time, but now it is a huge regret. For example, in 1971, the original card version of "The Rich Show" has become a legend. In recent years, people are collecting various fragments including stolen shots, trying to synthesize a full picture through a half-claw.
In various attempts to visualize musicals, the authentic film adaptation has been repeatedly proven to be beneficial to the stage version. The adaptation of "Chicago" is probably the most successful. The narrative technique and the lens language completely got rid of the traces of the stage. After it was released in 2002, it seemed to promote the stage version that was being re-enacted at that time. The rehearsal that was launched in 1996 finally achieved a proud performance of more than 9,000 consecutive performances, setting a record for the highest performance of rehearsal musicals. So, if the movie version hits the pot, will it adversely affect the stage version? Maybe not. The "Phantom of the Theater" in 2004 failed to capture the charm of the original play, and the "Cat" in 2019 was reduced to a mouse crossing the street, but the two movies did not shake the status of the stage version at all.
Between the record-based stage art film and the pure film trying to make a circle, some people tried to organically graft stage art and video art, so a live TV version was produced. Some American TV networks have made certain musicals into "event" special programs like we created the Spring Festival Gala. Specifically, it is performed on the stage-true singing, real-time, no error correction mechanism, and even some audiences on the scene; the film and television technique is used for shooting, and the lens language is more flexible than the pure movie version of the same work (such as "The Hot Prodigal Son", literal translation of "grease"). The first shot of this attempt was "The Sound of Music" in 2013, which achieved impressive ratings.
In addition, pure music movies such as "The City of Philharmonic" are not adapted from the stage version. Although they are no longer the mainstream of the film, they have not yet died. There are a lot of music fans in the American drama industry, so some long-lived episodes will be filmed and will suddenly pop up and sing and dance musical albums. It is said that "Buffy the Vampire Hunter" is the initiator of this.
"Video version" movies are ordinary
"Record" and "Enlightenment" are indispensable
British and American musicals haven't been in the Chinese audience's horizon for a long time. In addition to the "Voice of Music" type of family music, ordinary musical fans seem to prefer works with strong romantic colors, such as "Phantom of the Theater", "Transformed into a Strange Doctor", and "Miserable World". Of course, more professional circles are studying and appreciating various old and new classics, but they are concentrated in a smaller scope.
"Hamilton" is an exception. Although there are not many Chinese viewers who have seen Broadway and the tour versions around the scene, the original card records and various pirated video are readily available, and some are attached with Chinese and English subtitles, which has cultivated a large number of Chinese fans. I have seen a performance in a middle school in Beijing, and I can learn one of the fragments brilliantly. I believe that there will not be too many people who are really interested in American history among the fans. Most of the excitement is at the music level. Even if he discards the complicated history and treats it as a purely fictional story, its magic power is not reduced. Among them, Lin Manwei's music vocabulary that draws on the drama tradition and is full of fashion elements is the biggest highlight.
Prior to "Hamilton", excellent works with realistic themes such as "Yoshiya Rental" and rock flavors have always been quite popular among our musical fans, and have spawned various Chinese versions of performances. When you think about it, our experience of British and American musicals often starts with the style of music. Rock and hip-hop are known and loved by pop music, and they will be especially felt when they appear in musicals.
The cultural and economic misalignment in the early years is probably the reason why we are not familiar with and like the old school classics. Since the golden age of American musicals coincides with the big band era, a large number of classic works are more or less of that style, plus the so-called "theatre song" (typically the most narrative and dramatic) Musical Songs) are quite different from the familiar lyric songs on the orchestration, weakening the melodies that are easy to sing, the high and the low. If you don't believe it, you can check out the comments of the movie "Magic Black Forest". It was Sandheim’s most popular musical, with a strong cast (leaded by Streep), first-class singing, and luxurious orchestral equipment, but the lay audience called out "dead to death" and could not understand the dark reaction in the play. Turn senior.
Fortunately, we live in an era of globalization, and we can see by watching Douban's message that there are more and more Chinese students and tourists who can watch Broadway or West End performances in the first time (Unfortunately, Broadway will not reopen as early as next year) The groups that have mastered musical drama knowledge through schools and other means are also growing. In this process, the image resources represented by the film played a valuable role in enlightenment. Indeed, it cannot replicate the live experience of the theater, but as a record and reproduction, it can serve as a rough substitute.
The film of "Hamilton" (currently Douban score is 9.7) is nothing special in terms of shooting technique. It doesn't even have the stunning performance of "Oklahoma" starring Hugh Jackman in 1998. This "Hamilton" was filmed before the original card was withdrawn from Broadway in 2016. You can no longer carve a sword in the river of time. In the future, the play will have a new production-a completely different stage presentation, and even the orchestration has been changed. But through this film, we can feel how a new work has made a whirlwind debut and set a milestone. From this, one can imagine how we should understand breaking and standing, inheritance and development, tradition and innovation, music and drama, etc. if we want to create in the form of a musical. This is what the "Hamilton" brings us.