| re: Bill Condon on his "Spider Woman" film. | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 06:12 pm EST 01/27/25 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 05:57 pm EST 01/27/25 | |
| In reply to: re: Bill Condon on his "Spider Woman" film. - Chromolume 03:48 pm EST 01/27/25 | |
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| I'm sorry I just don't see it, and I don't think most people watching it see it that way. Singing to yourself is not a justified reason for a character to break into a fully written and structured song. Teaching children about music does not mean you believably in normal non-musical reality have a full song burst out of you even if it starts with teaching "do re mi". "My Favorite Things" is not diegetic in the movie... real people don't sing to beat the storm, and they certainly don't sing a song that didn't previously exist and have it come out as a full properly written and constructed and rhyming song. In fact, the screenplay *could* have borrowed the context for the song in the stageplay that made it somewhat diegetic, and had Maria tell the children that when she was a kid her mother would sing this song to her and then start singing it, or even that she (as a kid) made up a song that helps when she's scared... but no, she tells them it helps to think of nice things, they ask for examples, and she starts naming nice things and the song starts in the middle of it. Like in a musical. They don't even try to make it diegetic-ish even though the source material had done it, so clearly the filmmakers were not worried about playing into a soft-con of the audience that this wasn't like a "musical musical". I understand the logic you're using, and I do think it helps how the movie plays, I just don't think it factors in nearly to the extent that you do. Not coming out of nowhere is very much not the same as being justified for an entire song or musical number to happen in the reality of the movie. This is a musical. People accept it as that, in large part because it uses singing to establish itself right away (and not the nuns singing hymns, but Maria on the mountain, out of nowhere). It starts with a big song, and then continues to have characters singing to express thoughts, feelings, or conversations, alone and to other people, all over the movie. Yes it has to do with the love of and expression of and teaching of and utilization of music, so i understand what you mean about it in general being more organic and diegetic-adjacent in its nature, but I really don't think people watch this and think "oh, it makes sense she's singing this song because she's alone on a mountain, or walking alone to a new job, or explaining how songs work, or trying to not be scared by a storm." And as you come to point out, the movie teaches us early on, TWICE, in two key and big songs, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" the second song in the movie, and "Sixteen Going on Seventeen", the 4th song and the first one not about or by Maria herself, that this is a musical movie wherein people sing to talk or think or feel. But again the 3rd song is "I Have Confidence", which is not your average movie trope of having a character break into a monologue song while they're alone and/or traveling... because that isn't a trope, it never happens in anything but a musical. So we have been taught by this movie that people sing when alone on a mountain overwhelmed by the beauty and experience and relationship to nature, they sing when they are discussing their problem with the main character while she's away, they sing to themselves when they are out in public traveling amongst other people who can't hear them but could if it weren't a musical using musical-reality-rules, they sing when they are conversing with the person they're flirting with even when they're not the main character and the scene has nothing to do with her, and even the enlisted soldier boy who probably hates music sings, and they sing when there's a storm and they want to calm the scared children. This sounds undeniably like a film teaching an audience to be ok with people singing non-diegetic songs, in various circumstances and for various reasons. |
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