rollernerd
Joined Jul 2020
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Welcome back to another edition of Adam Reviews!!
**queue in into music**
Today's movie review is Cabaret (1972) directed by music maestro Bob Fosse who gives us a sultry plunge into the decadence and decay of 1931 Berlin, a city teetering on the edge of political catastrophe and cultural revolution. At the heart of this chaos is Liza Minelli's electrifying performance as Sally Bowles, a cabaret singer at the Kit Kat Club who loves green nail polish, has a taste for Prairie Oysters and a reckless passion for life. Minelli inhabits Sally with eccentric charm, superficial sensuality and emotional rawness, which draws you to this character. Whether she is belting out "Maybe This Time" or "Life is Cabaret" with haunting vulnerability or showcasing her jazz hands and acrobatic skills through the iconic char and hat dance in "Mein Herr", it's a masterclass as Minelli's performance captures both the glitter and grit of a woman who is simultaneously performance for an audience and hiding from herself.
The Kit Kat Club, where Sally performs, is not just a seedy nightclub; it is a distorted mirror of the crumbling German Weimar Republic. Fosse's use of the club's performances as commentary on the outside world is brilliantly executed. Numbers like "Money Makes the World Go Around" and "Wilkommen" are provocative, stylised and laced with cynicism and satire commentary with what is happening around the characters. The emcee, played by Joel Grey (Dirty Dancing Baby's father), presides over the cabaret like a mischievous puppet master where his exaggerated facial expressions and eerie songs like "If You Could See Her" reflects the moral erosion surrounding the characters. The chilling moment when the young soldier boy at a country outdoor event sings "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is a sobering reminder of what is coming, a jarring tonal shift that rips through the movie's playful exterior.
Beyond the glamour, the movie occasionally struggles with narrative cohesion, for example the subplot around Fritz pretending to be Jewish in order to woo wealthy heiress Natalia. Another subplot is how Brian, the reserved English tutor studying philosophy, finds himself entangled with both Sally and the Baron Max and to me this feels undercooked. The love triangle and sexual tension though progressive for its time, lack the emotional depth and clarity needed to fully resonate nor did the emotional stake of the triangle never fully land. The love triangle in tone clashes with the rest of the film, while cabaret scenes are vivid, vulgar and politically charged, the romantic subplot often feels like it belongs to a different movie due to its light and conventional tone. Another narrative subplot was Sally's father, an off-screen ghost in the film feels forced and emotionally unresolved. Sally mentions her father multiple times in the movie, "My father is an ambassador, darling!" and tried to meet up with him however suddenly shows up and says the meeting was a disaster. This arc feels it should have been explored more in order to hint at a deeper sadness and sense of rejection in Sally's life i.e. Abandonment issues or longing for a parental approval - but it never gets unpacked. The film builds Sally as someone who performs happiness to mask emotional instability and this subplot could have offered meaningful insight into this character's vulnerability. Instead we get a forced love triangle and perhaps the filmmakers intended Sally's father to be more of a representation of the emotional void or dysfunction Sally tries to drown through her lifestyle of partying and performing. However, I still believe this father story could have developed a deeper understanding of Sally's emotional state.
The abortion scene was super raw from Minelli, where we see that Sally is not losing a baby, of course, since a fetus is not a baby, she's foreclosing the possibility of a future family with a man who she could never have had a real relationship with, despite her intense attraction to him (due to daddy issues) they were never compatible.
Still, the flick's power lies in its collision of personal freedom and political doom where we see the creeping rise of Nazism, glimpsed in background posters and violent outbursts - casts a shadow over the Cabaret. With Minelli's powerhouse presence at the centre, Cabaret endures as a dazzling yet deeply unsettling portrait of a world dancing on the edge of collapse. Overall 7/10.
**queue in into music**
Today's movie review is Cabaret (1972) directed by music maestro Bob Fosse who gives us a sultry plunge into the decadence and decay of 1931 Berlin, a city teetering on the edge of political catastrophe and cultural revolution. At the heart of this chaos is Liza Minelli's electrifying performance as Sally Bowles, a cabaret singer at the Kit Kat Club who loves green nail polish, has a taste for Prairie Oysters and a reckless passion for life. Minelli inhabits Sally with eccentric charm, superficial sensuality and emotional rawness, which draws you to this character. Whether she is belting out "Maybe This Time" or "Life is Cabaret" with haunting vulnerability or showcasing her jazz hands and acrobatic skills through the iconic char and hat dance in "Mein Herr", it's a masterclass as Minelli's performance captures both the glitter and grit of a woman who is simultaneously performance for an audience and hiding from herself.
The Kit Kat Club, where Sally performs, is not just a seedy nightclub; it is a distorted mirror of the crumbling German Weimar Republic. Fosse's use of the club's performances as commentary on the outside world is brilliantly executed. Numbers like "Money Makes the World Go Around" and "Wilkommen" are provocative, stylised and laced with cynicism and satire commentary with what is happening around the characters. The emcee, played by Joel Grey (Dirty Dancing Baby's father), presides over the cabaret like a mischievous puppet master where his exaggerated facial expressions and eerie songs like "If You Could See Her" reflects the moral erosion surrounding the characters. The chilling moment when the young soldier boy at a country outdoor event sings "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is a sobering reminder of what is coming, a jarring tonal shift that rips through the movie's playful exterior.
Beyond the glamour, the movie occasionally struggles with narrative cohesion, for example the subplot around Fritz pretending to be Jewish in order to woo wealthy heiress Natalia. Another subplot is how Brian, the reserved English tutor studying philosophy, finds himself entangled with both Sally and the Baron Max and to me this feels undercooked. The love triangle and sexual tension though progressive for its time, lack the emotional depth and clarity needed to fully resonate nor did the emotional stake of the triangle never fully land. The love triangle in tone clashes with the rest of the film, while cabaret scenes are vivid, vulgar and politically charged, the romantic subplot often feels like it belongs to a different movie due to its light and conventional tone. Another narrative subplot was Sally's father, an off-screen ghost in the film feels forced and emotionally unresolved. Sally mentions her father multiple times in the movie, "My father is an ambassador, darling!" and tried to meet up with him however suddenly shows up and says the meeting was a disaster. This arc feels it should have been explored more in order to hint at a deeper sadness and sense of rejection in Sally's life i.e. Abandonment issues or longing for a parental approval - but it never gets unpacked. The film builds Sally as someone who performs happiness to mask emotional instability and this subplot could have offered meaningful insight into this character's vulnerability. Instead we get a forced love triangle and perhaps the filmmakers intended Sally's father to be more of a representation of the emotional void or dysfunction Sally tries to drown through her lifestyle of partying and performing. However, I still believe this father story could have developed a deeper understanding of Sally's emotional state.
The abortion scene was super raw from Minelli, where we see that Sally is not losing a baby, of course, since a fetus is not a baby, she's foreclosing the possibility of a future family with a man who she could never have had a real relationship with, despite her intense attraction to him (due to daddy issues) they were never compatible.
Still, the flick's power lies in its collision of personal freedom and political doom where we see the creeping rise of Nazism, glimpsed in background posters and violent outbursts - casts a shadow over the Cabaret. With Minelli's powerhouse presence at the centre, Cabaret endures as a dazzling yet deeply unsettling portrait of a world dancing on the edge of collapse. Overall 7/10.
