'Liyana' Review: Children are Fantastic Storytellers

In an orphanage in the southern part of the African country of Swaziland, students are brought together and given an extraordinary project.

They are going to forge the story of Liyana, a fictional heroine born from their collective experiences and imaginations. The film of the same title, Liyana, is both a telling of this original story, as well as the non-fiction story of its young creators who made it up.

Early on it’s established that, while the story of Liyana is fictional, it is born from a combination of every orphan’s experiences. In a traditional documentary, we’d be given backstory on each of our protagonists and how they ended up in the orphanage. Instead, through Liyana’s story, a few universal themes tell us all we need to know: parental neglect, HIV/AIDS, robberies, and abuse all play contributing roles. But the fictional story of Liyana is also unfiltered by adulthood and is a joyful odyssey of adventure and fable. It should come as no surprise that children are fantastic storytellers.

The documentary side of the film uses a mix of individual interviews and sequences with the orphanage. For Liyana’s story, beautiful, one-of-a-kind animation matched with the voices of various interweaved students tells her hero’s journey. It’s a true children’s story of overcoming obstacles and going on an adventure. Being a fable, the story is able to incorporate exciting adventures for Liyana unrestrained by non-fiction (rich with animals, monsters, and other fantastical elements), but that clearly parallels the emotional journey each of these children has been on. The fact that Liyana is a universal tale so richly realized by children based equally on their unrestrained imagination and own experiences creates something truly special and compelling to watch given the context of its creation. This film is a testament to the power of story.

'Liyana' is a testament to the power of story.

A hero of the non-fiction story is the story advisor Gcina Mhlophe, described as a Swazi rockstar by the filmmakers. Mhlophe uses the power of ‘creative therapy’ to bring this story to life. A few great moments show her in action, discussing ideas for what should happen to Liyana next, not restricting any of the kids and their imaginations. One of the most powerful scenes is when the kids discuss how Liyana will start their journey, and without any backstory needed we understand this inciting incident is born from their own memories and past, resulting in a great launching point for the journey to come.

I love the power of storytelling and I find that films which address it can enhance our understanding of its capability. At the LA Film Festival this year, both this film and Monkey Business address this topic with emotional resonance enhanced by the multi-medium elements documentaries are capable of. Stories (including movies) have frequently been a great means to understand cultures and experiences far from our own. Toward the end of Liyana, one of the storytelling students says, “When people remember Liyana I want them to remember us, our words.” Hearing this story alone will not end poverty or empower the underprivileged, but is a necessary and powerful step toward continued worldwide empathy. Liyana, which is executive produced by Emmy-award winner Thandie Newton, is a beautifully realized documentary from director duo Aaron Kopp and Amanda Kopp, and exactly the type of gem that represents the great stories the LA Film Festival offers year after year.

This review originally ran on June 19, 2017, during the LA Film Festival

'Liyana' is not rated. 77 minutes. Opening this Friday at the Laemmle NoHo.


Restoration Theatre: 'Lisztomania' @ American Cinematheque

A couple of years ago, I excitedly mentioned to an editor I was working with that I was going to see McCabe and Mrs. Miller at the Aero (and I reviewed it here).

Being a lifelong cinephile himself, he was happy for me, but also scoffed at how LA art-house screenings, in his eyes, didn’t get it right. How, I asked? In Paris, where he was from, a film restoration would play for at least a week, giving the film time to gain word of mouth and traction, often driven by critic recommendations. At the time I wrote this off and since have enjoyed many movies at the Aero, the Egyptian, and other restoration venues. After my most recent visit to the Cinematheque in late September to see Lisztomania (more on the movie in a second), I had an idea: why not review the films seen here anyway? So that maybe those who read about it can still find it for themselves, or catch it the next time it makes its way into town?

It’s no secret at Cinemacy that many of the films we covered are hard to come by, especially for those outside of LA. This is made even more difficult by the ever-changing landscape of independent film, where it’s no longer an axiom that films will end up getting a DVD release. Sharing a love of cinema is not only about staying current or catching rising talent, but also examining the films that have stood the test of time long enough to still get a theatrical run somewhere, even for one night only. And LA is the city for that. In the last 2 years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing El Topo, Freaks, Barry Lyndon, Rhino!, and Blow Out in these types of venues. All would be worth a written discussion.

So I’d like to kick off a new initiative, somewhat sporadic for the time being, of covering movies seen at restoration theaters. After all, most of the films are available online somewhere (if not for purchase) or will make their way to LA theaters again sometime. And the inaugural film is one that must not be forgotten: Ken Russell’s multigenre musical Lisztomania.

Released only a few months after the much more well-known Tommy and reuniting director Russell with the star Roger Daltrey (of The Who), Lisztomania takes us all the way back to mid-1800s Europe, where Franz Liszt, the greatest piano performer of his time (of all time?), is touring the continent giving piano recitals. But we’re seeing this story through the lens of the 1970s and rock opera. Liszt was considered the first rock star, in the sense that when he toured the world he was a sensation everywhere he performed. So this film juxtaposes the modern definition of a rock star with this old-fashioned world, and the result is spectacular. In an extended opening concert, Daltrey as Liszt plays to a crowd of screaming girls (think Beatles fans level excitement)… except they’re all dressed in 19th-century garb. Its mixture of old and new and jumping between time periods, while entirely feeling like a hallucinogenic trip, is a blast to behold. Some could call it incoherent, I found it quickly engrossed and so radically spectacular that I stopped worrying about where exactly the story was going quickly. If you’re expecting a biography of Franz Liszt, forget it, you’re in the wrong movie. Lisztomania begins with a surreal sex-driven sword fight (enhanced by the music of course) and only goes further astray from there. And that comes with a shining recommendation.

However, in today’s landscape where so much emphasis is on authenticity and capturing realism on film unless we visit movies like this, it’s easy to forget how wild and crazy movies can potentially be. 

One of the biggest distinctions is that it takes it back to a much different era of filmmaking where soundstages were the primary filming locations as opposed to real places. By building from scratch, it makes the world of the film so much more immersive, and the set pieces are both stunning and cheeky in their humorous, outlandish choices. Expect plenty of phallic imagery. It’s a reminder of how much more theatrical this era of filmmaking was, with bigger budgets towards these set pieces that created something singular for that film only, nothing you’d expect to see in any real setting. The result of this imagination-driven creativity speaks for themselves.

I’ve since read complaints that the film’s obscure references to classical music history through in-jokes make it an alienating experience. However, in today’s landscape where so much emphasis is on authenticity and capturing realism on film unless we visit movies like this, it’s easy to forget how wild and crazy movies can potentially be. I would also argue that the film’s implementation of both the rock opera music, and more importantly, the classical music of Liszt, is so innovative and masterful that no matter what level of knowledge you have on the history, it’s impossible not to be in awe. Throughout the trippy sequences in different fictionalized time periods, classical music remains a throughline. Undoubtedly, no matter how much fun Daltrey, Russell, and Co. were having, these are people that have an unmatched love for great music. And their artful, often impossible to verbalize take on Liszt, shows how well they care for the musical masters.

Lisztomania was released in 1975, the same year as both Barry Lyndon and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this film a love child between the two. And I am so down. Immediately after seeing the movie I couldn’t wait to experience it again next time it’s in town and confidently can add it to my favorite movies list.


'Free Solo' Review: Unrivaled Piece of Athletic Entertainment

One may vaguely recall the headlines of a death-defying feat accomplished last year.

Climber Alex Honnold scaled El Capitan in Yosemite without any ropes or harnesses (free soloing, as it’s known), a staggering 3000 feet of sheer granite. What failed to be mentioned in the headlines was that filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin were there to document the entire event, as well as the subsequent story behind Honnold, the man who accomplished this journey. What kind of person would do such a thing? Are they an adrenaline junkie, or impervious to fear? Were they dropped on their head as a child? How eccentric must they be?

These are the questions Free Solo sets out to answer. We are given a remarkably intimate look at Alex and his routine that is all building toward this lifelong goal that most would deem a suicide mission. He would retort, what is the purpose of living if not pushing yourself to your greatest potential? Throughout the film, we are shown an up-close look at the climber’s experience, which is far more premeditated than one may imagine. I appreciate any film that clues in its viewers to an expert’s methodology instead of leaving them out in the cold. We’re given plenty of intel to keep up with Alex on his insane preparation.

The primary selling point of the film, of course, is the climbing action, and frankly, there has never been a better documentation of climbing. Director Jimmy Chin took us to the top of Meru with his last film, a remarkable feat in itself. And yet something about free soloing, and the massive stakes that are associated with it (as well as perhaps some refined filmmaking work in his team’s second bout) makes this viewing exponentially more visceral. In a packed audience, you can feel every single person holding their breath during tense moments, and catching sighs of relief any chance they get. If you like this type of experience (hint: I do), don’t wait to catch this ride.

In a packed audience, you can feel every single person holding their breath during tense moments, and catching sighs of relief any chance they get. If you like this type of experience (hint: I do), don’t wait to catch this ride.

To film such feats properly, one must be a climber and get close to the action. Traditional documentary form tends to hide the crew and make the filmmaking process seamless and invisible. In most cases, this is the preferred, elegant method. But to pull off filming such a crazy event requires intense logistics and climbing skills in their own right, all on top of filmmaking. The film smartly breaks the fourth wall to give us a window behind the scenes and the cameramen involved in telling this story. Like many of the other elements, it pays off perfectly. Getting to watch Alex climb is like watching Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, or any other athlete at peak prowess strut their stuff: it’s electric.

The other apt comparison to make is Philippe Petit, the French trapeze artist who walked the high wire between the World Trade Center Towers in the 1970s. In this sense, Alex’s climb may arguably be a work of art, mixed with athletic prowess, much like Petit. The 2008 documentary Man on Wire was made long after the fact and yet still brought us to the scene and created a heist-like movie experience in ways few non-fiction films had before. Now imagine that cameras had been rolling for that experience, and you get an idea of how satisfying Free Solo is to watch.

There’s a non-climbing side handled deftly well to match the action. Alex’s relationship with his girlfriend allows us a window into his soul and his brutally fearless temperament that explains why he’s the one to go for this mad climb. Earlier this year, another phenomenal documentary was released on the subject, titled Mountain. That film is more of a transcendental ode to why we love the mountains, whereas Free Solo is the palm-sweating action movie. The two complement each other well and combined, are some of the best new movies of 2018, a double feature waiting to be billed.

In an era where many of the great human accomplishments have already been checked off, and every mountain has seemingly been climbed as well as mapped on Google, this is a testament there are still human physical achievements yet to be completed and spectacular feats to behold. Free Solo is a visceral cinematic experience, perfect for a movie theater, and a perfectly captured milestone by Chin, Vasarhelyi, and their crew of filmmakers. Few will go out and attempt such feats for themselves, but there are lessons and metaphors to be gleaned from this human accomplishment, and if nothing else, an unrivaled piece of athletic entertainment that demands to be seen.

'Free Solo' is rated PG-13 for brief strong language. 100 minutes. Now playing at Arclight Theaters.


'The Advocates' Review: Impossible to Ignore

Part of any successful film festival includes a local angle, shedding light on stories directly affecting the crowd attending screenings.

The LA Film Festival has found room for this, and given the vast number of compelling and important stories in Los Angeles (fiction and non-fiction), this will continue to be vital.

Amidst the lineup, The Advocates stands out given it is a topic that is impossible to ignore as an LA resident: the homeless population. It’s a nationwide problem with unmatched peaks in LA. As one subject Mel Tillekeratne says in the film, one wrong turn on your way home and you can stumble across a neighborhood-sized encampment of homeless people. The same story happened to me earlier this year and is commonplace for LA residents.

With the title in mind, the film focuses on the point of view of a few standout social workers on the ground level trying to help individuals get on their feet and make a difference wherever they can. One of them, Rudy Salinas, is constantly running around town, helping people who are suffering from mental illness from self-sabotaging themselves. His care for the individuals has a clear difference, and the film works best when we see him taking such an active role in bettering various people’s lives. We also see the very real burnout. When up against systems that do no favors to the marginalized, it takes an exceptional being to keep at it without losing patience. Advocate Claudia Perez provides a sense of heart, having overcome so much herself and translating that toward returning the favor. Their two stories and the heart and soul of the film.

...perhaps seeing this film can simply remind us all to be more compassionate to our neighbors who do not share the privilege of housing security...

Occasionally the film departs from the vérité approach and discusses the problem from a macro point of view. This is essential, as more education on the subject allows for the individual stories to carry significance. Discussion of various measures on ballots, specifically “HHH” and “H” from two previous elections, ring a bell to LA residents as they’re mentioned. At the time, these seemed like nothing more than a letter on a checklist. Seeing this gives significant understanding to their existence.

Despite the positive message and important topic of the film, there are some technical hiccups that are hard to ignore and unfortunately, detract from its message. Clumsy transitions throughout the entire runtime take away from a sense of unity and make the film feel rough around the edges. The subject of LA homelessness is such a massive problem that the film occasionally suffers from the push-pull of trying to capture it all while still remaining intimate and grounded.

There isn’t a clear takeaway solution, because ultimately a 90-minute documentary can’t whisk away LA’s homeless, and there is so much to be done. What the film does leave viewers with is a sense of renewed appreciation for its namesake: the advocates who are working day in and day out to keep fighting for the individuals against all odds. Their tenacity is courageous and worthy of being championed. Most film festival attendees will not be directly suffering from homelessness: perhaps seeing this film can simply remind us all to be more compassionate to our neighbors who do not share the privilege of housing security, and take extra steps toward supporting our community.

To learn more about how to get involved as a volunteer or supporter of nonprofits featured in this film, visit this website: http://cinemalibrestudio.com/the-advocates/featured-organizations.html

'The Advocates' is not rated. 87 minutes.


'The Workers Cup' Review: Soccer Brings Hope in this Ultimate Underdog Story

This review originally ran on January 21, 2017 during the Sundance Film Festival

In the documentary world, we often get one of two types of stories: the broad-stroked tale of massive issues, or intimate slices of life of ultra-specific characters.

Occasionally, we get a film that manages to merge the two, which ends up telling a much richer story. We have one of these cinematic hybrids with The Workers Cup, opening at the Laemmle Monica Film Center tomorrow.

Doha, Qatar, is scheduled to be the home of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Since receiving their controversial bid, there’s been a general awareness that the working conditions, while building this massive infrastructure, borders on modern slavery. The stadium workers are immigrants, coming from poor countries in all directions. Their rights as workers are nonexistent, and notably missing two vital freedoms: the freedom to quit and the freedom to change jobs freely- freedoms we don’t even recognize as such in the U.S.

The Workers Cup profiles one of the workers at the Gulf Contracting Company (GCC), a group that is working on the building’s construction. In order to boost morale amongst the abysmal working conditions, the GCC and other Qatar construction companies have formed a soccer (football) league for friendly competition between employees. The documentary follows the GCC team in their hopes of achieving tournament success, the silver lining to their already grim situation.

Among the teammates, we get a vibrant and eclectic group of characters coming from Kenya, Ghana, Nepal, and India. Despite their cultural differences, the team is united in its pursuit of victory. In their working situation, where emotion can only be expressed in a few ways, bringing victory to their team is a great outlet for them.

Coupled with the fact that this micro-story represents a massive global epidemic of failed economies and big business destroying the lives of its workers, you can bet there is a lot of great subtext in these soccer games.

When we watch professional athletes, there is sometimes a neutralization of emotions, as every one of these figures is at the peak of their game. But when we watch a team of construction workers-turned-athletes, competing for a prize that truly has the potential to be life-altering, suddenly I began to feel the enthusiasm and emotion that I would if I were to watch my favorite team play. This is the brilliance of the story portrayed: it introduces us to a team of people we easily care for and then takes us on their journey toward a major goal. It’s the ultimate underdog story, and therefore a gripping adventure towards a dream. Coupled with the fact that this micro-story represents a massive global epidemic of failed economies and big business destroying the lives of its workers, you can bet there is a lot of great subtext in these soccer games.

Director Adam Sobel’s access to the intimate lives of these figures is on clear display - the intentionality of his shooting shows that he has culled the absolute best material to tell his story. Symbolic images from the kitchen preparing unimaginable amounts of food effectively show us the massive number of people we’re dealing with here. (Interesting facts: 60% of Qatar’s population are immigrant workers, over 1 million out of a 2 million person country. Additionally, the ratio of men: women in Qatar is 6:1).

These details are all a long-winded way to say that The Workers Cup is a standout in nonfiction filmmaking. There are numerous other details that make this film memorable but I’d rather allow you to experience the expertly told, emotionally charged journey filled with triumph and anguish, and an early Cinemacy favorite.

The Workers Cup is not rated. 92 minutes. Opening this Friday at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.


'Sweet Country' Review: Fresh Perspective on America’s Most Archetypal Genre

In Sweet Country, the Australian Western from director Warwick Thornton, an ensemble cast in the 1930s Outback grapples with an unresolved and hostile race dynamic between white frontiersmen and the indigenous Aboriginal people.

While the relationship between native peoples and white settlers is a staple in the Western genre, it feels compelling and fresh in the Australian setting.

After a murder is committed, a posse of white men chases after Sam (Hamilton Morris), an Aboriginal man, and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorie Furber). Some familiar Aussie faces (Sam Neill and Bryan Brown) are matched with a cast of mostly unknown Australians. The ensemble tells a gripping story of the aftermath of a murder, with a plot that builds similar remnants of To Kill a Mockingbird in its discussions of race within the context of crime.

Shot on film in the gorgeous and sometimes bleak Aussie landscape, the film arrives as a fresh international perspective on America’s most archetypal genre.

Shot on film in the gorgeous and sometimes bleak Aussie landscape, the film arrives as a fresh international perspective on America’s most archetypal genre. The most innovative element of the filmmaking style is the editing: throughout the film, numerous shots are shown in advance of when they happen, giving us a foreshadowing of what will happen, but not in the way we expect it to. The sense of inevitable doom this gives makes it all the more riveting as we wait for the flash-forward to catch up to the action, and the sound design gives these moments a memory-like quality. These elements, along with a well-utilized ensemble cast, allow Sweet Country to stand out as a highlight in the crowded international environment of the AFI Film Festival.

In one of AFI’s better Q/A sessions, Thornton revealed that the script was written by his longtime sound editor David Tranter. An Aboriginal man himself, Tranter took a story from his grandfather and adapted it into what this film is, and the character named Philomac, an 11-year-old boy, is based on his grandfather. Knowing this nugget of detail gives even more lasting power to a film that can serve as an allegory for greater topics such as racism and corruption in today’s divided landscape.

Sweet Country will receive a U.S. theatrical release in early 2018. My hope is that the action and Western genre can draw cinephile viewers in, and the nuanced depiction of race in a foreign country can lead to lasting conversation. While the film is extremely specific in its geography, the events are virtually universal to all parts of the world affected by colonialism (read: all parts of the world). Beyond that, I look forward to seeing what’s next for director Warwick Thornton, who seamlessly brought to life a story that feels both classic and topical and a memorable film in all ways.

This review originally ran on November 28, 2017, during the AFI Film Festival

'Sweet Country' is rated R for violence, bloody images and for language throughout. 110 minutes. Now playing at The Landmark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYKBG1znk4A


The Oscars Actor Web

There has never been a year with more actors overlapping in the same movies nominated for awards.

I created a visual infographic, and this accompanying video, to showcase the numerous actors who appear in multiple of this year's movies. Happy Oscar week!

Full list of actors: Bob Odenkirk, Alison Brie, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Nick Searcy, Lucas Hedges, Kathryn Newton, Tracy Letts, Jesse Plemons, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg

 

Full infographic:


'The Greatest Showman' Revises the Dark History of P.T. Barnum

Upon learning that a P.T. Barnum movie was coming out around Christmas, I originally intended to ignore the film in the midst of the busy awards movie season, as I do with most family films that have mediocre reviews.

Except for one difference: I was fully aware that P.T. Barnum was not some inspirational American hero as presented. He is responsible for the exploitation of human beings, and in equal measure, torture of animals. I knew this, but no matter, what harm could a movie do, right? It would pass.

Then I saw more Facebook statuses celebrating the ‘inspiration’ that was The Greatest Showman and an outpour of joy from my community online. Perhaps some twisted algorithm thought I would like the premise of this movie. My attempts to ignore it could no longer go on: this was a bubble that had to be popped. In the wake of exposing numerous men in Hollywood as abusers, pedophiles, and toxic misogynists, the embrace of this film and its protagonist is unbearably hypocritical. In an attempt to fully indict Mr. Barnum, I researched and found a rabbit hole of atrocity deeper than I ever realized. The true legacy of P. T. Barnum is a man who proudly enslaved humans, tortured animals, exploited his entertainers, manipulated the media in a Trumpian fashion, and much more. Here’s a look at Barnum and how the film The Greatest Showman grossly misportrays him.


Part 1: Joice Heth, “Freaks,” Slaves and Barnum’s Human Rights Legacy

I did exactly the thing I’m now telling you not to do: I paid money to see this film. I had to know everything that was on the table. Most of Barnum’s story is completely overlooked in favor of a simple, rags-to-riches, “be yourself” tale. Liberties are always taken with true stories, but I am surprised at the extent history is rewritten here. Let’s start with a small misreading the film has: Barnum portrayed himself as being a pauper that was a self-made American Dream success story. In his self-published biographies, he referred to himself as the son of a tailor, and his father did die when he was underage. What Barnum failed to mention is that his grandfather outlived his dad and was one of the richest citizens of Bethel, NY. While this is misleading and morally questionable, it’s the least of his vices.

A hallmark of The Greatest Showman is that Barnum is portrayed as welcoming to those with deformities and physical abnormalities, what would be known as “freaks” at the time. It’s meant to be a message of diversity and inclusion perfect for today’s audiences. The truth is uglier:

It was an era when the exotic sold, and Barnum embraced the bizarre as a means for profit to the curious eyes of 19th century public. Freak shows were by no means an opportunity to champion diversity. The scientific community, run entirely by white men, was looking for ways to affirm the superior traits of their own race. Barnum helped commercialize scientific interest in racial anomaly by using ‘freaks’ of all kinds, proposing they were the “missing links” in a Darwinian evolutionary chain extending upward from monkey, to black man, to white man. His shows were affirment in the now-dated scientific belief of racial hierarchy.

The film would have you believe that Barnum’s ‘humble’ beginnings of show business kicked off with his American Museum. In fact, this was not his first entertainment venture. In 1834 at age 25, Barnum came across Joice Heth, an elderly black woman who had gained local attention for two reasons: first, she was allegedly 161 years old. More intriguingly, she was allegedly the nurse who had raised George Washington. Barnum recognized a hit in the making and arranged to purchase Heth for the sum of $1000. Here’s how little the value of a black human life was to Barnum: in the same era he purchased an elephant for $10,000. Despite being from New York, where slavery was illegal, no one batted an eye at the transfer of Heth to a Northerner. In her entire run as a profitable tall tale for Barnum, Joice Heth was never paid.

It’s generally agreed that Barnum knew his act was a hoax but saw the opportunity to mislead audiences and pique their curiosity. George Washington’s historical exoneration was underway, and Joice Heth could tap into his popularity. Benjamin Reiss wrote an entire book on this venture that kickstarted Barnum’s career, aptly titled The Showman and the Slave. Barnum’s showmanship included the following:

  • Since she looked “too vigorous” to be 161 years old, Barnum put Heth on a diet of strictly eggs and whiskey until she was brought down to “mere muscle and bone.”
  • It was hard to imagine a woman that old would have any teeth left, so Barnum decided to remove them. According to Barnum’s own autobiography, Heth then lashed out in a tirade of swearing to keep her teeth. Barnum sedated her by getting her plaster drunk on whiskey, at which point she agreed to the procedure while intoxicated. A few days later, Barnum had all her teeth removed under the guise of “consent.”
  • Barnum made $1500 a week off of Heth’s performances. The show was so successful that he enlisted a rigorous schedule for Heth: on a typical day, she would be publicly performing for 14 hours a day while Barnum reaped all the benefits. Eventually, the fatigue was so great on her he was forced to reduce the hours.

As Heth’s health began to visibly decline beyond the point of no return, Barnum, who was responsible for this increased aging, didn’t skip a beat: he announced her final tour as a premature Death Announcement and raised prices.

When Joice Heth did die, Barnum candidly describes his reaction in his own 1855 autobiography: “I shed tears upon her humble grave - not of sorrow for her decease, but of regret on account of having lost a valuable and profitable curiosity.” He made one last squeeze of profit out of the now-dead slave woman: a public autopsy which sold 1500 tickets for 50¢ apiece (an equivalent price to opera tickets). At the time autopsies were illegal due to the human right of resting in peace. However, black bodies were ‘property’ and frequent props for white scientists studying human biology. Barnum was able to get away with such a public autopsy was because she may be 161 years old, they viewed it as a scientific necessity to see why she had lived so long. Of course, this was made up. It will come under no surprise that it was revealed in a graphic public autopsy that Ms. Joice Heth was no older than 80 years old. Barnum’s fabricated story had successfully hoodwinked the entire American public: so began his career as a showman.

Back to The Greatest Showman for a moment, which can’t be directly compared here since it chose to entirely omit the beginning of Barnum’s story. Zac Efron’s character, a fictional Phillip Carlyle, is persuaded to work for Barnum, but in order to do so, he needs to get paid a percentage of the profit. After a song about it, the wealthy white character is given 10% of the circus box office to be in the show. In contrast, the troupe of ‘freaks’ in the film are presented as just happy to get an opportunity on the stage. They are recruited in a montage without any finances discussed. This is a common issue with movies: solving inequality is more complicated than ‘getting a shot.’ It’s also being properly valued monetarily. Freak performers of all races were in no position to negotiate an agreed upon rate in this time, and Barnum exploited this.

Efron’s character takes some roots from Barnum’s second venture after Joice Heth. Barnum found an Italian born “plate dancer” and was so won over by his talent he took him on tour under the stage name Signor Vivalla. Since he was a white performer, Vivalla was in a position to negotiate wages and earned $12 a week. Like Zac Efron, the only performer in Barnum’s early career to earn a profit was a white male.

Oddly enough, The Greatest Showman movie does introduce some conflict with this. In one compelling moment, Barnum refuses to let the “freaks” enter the party with all the rich aristocrats. They’re rightfully bummed out, so burst into song about how nothing should stop them (the song is nominated for an Oscar too). In a purely fictional film, it would be a nice character change for Barnum to finally realize at the end of the movie he was mistreating his friends, and then let them take center stage with aristocrats. But the movie knows Barnum never did such a thing, so, like an unfinished sentence, it simply avoids any follow-up. The next time we see Barnum with the troupe, they’re able to have a drink together and gleefully say the show must go on. Instead of addressing a legitimate historical conflict head-on, the movie has an Uncle Tom effect: it makes the circus performers look like all they ever want to do is serve Barnum.

Barnum had a few more ventures before his famous circus. He was instrumental in the birth of the minstrel show, a popular pastime among Northern whites that perpetuated the worst black stereotypes and long outlasted slavery, and managed many blackface acts prior to his circus. Despite their omissions from the film, Barnum’s show business ventures began with Joice Heth, Vivalla, a slew of minstrel shows, and a mermaid scam, all before the beginning of his American Museum, where The Greatest Showman chooses to begin the story.

Even once his beloved circus was underway, there is no sign that this man preached a message of diversity and inclusion. One of the freakshows included in his circus that The Greatest Showman fails to mention was called “What is it?” I’ll let Reiss’s passage on the subject explain what exactly it was:

Source: The Showman and the Slave
Source: The Showman and the Slave

Time and time again Barnum preached to the ill-informed audiences that black people are a less advanced version of people on the Darwinian scale, and therefore their natural state is to be controlled by a more superior race.

As if these morally outrageous shows weren’t enough to spell out white supremacist, Barnum himself did dabble in the slave market and bragged about it to The New York Atlas. Here’s Reiss’s look at what this story included:

Source: The Showman and the Slave

Barnum returned to New York City triumphant, in having been a savvy businessman and displaying his dominance over the enslaved race. Despite the law, this was not questioned as unethical in his time. There is no mention of these career moments in The Greatest Showman.


Part 2: Media Manipulation

The Greatest Showman does address Barnum’s reputation of being a self-proclaimed scoundrel. He directly says in the film there’s no such thing as bad publicity, reminiscent of the current U.S. President. Throughout the film, Barnum’s show has protestors: a villainous lot of creepy-looking drunk men carrying pitchforks and torches like extras from Oliver Twist. An antagonist theater critic, James Gordon Bennett (played by Paul Sparks) writes scathingly negative reviews of the circus. He is dismissed by Barnum as being arrogant and narrow-minded. All critique of Barnum is dismissed as people who don’t believe in magic and are out of touch. Despite proclaiming there is no such thing as bad publicity, the film refuses to acknowledge any dark sides of Barnum’s legacy.

Barnum lived when newspapers were taking shape: it was the beginning of paid advertising and selling to the working class. In the wake of Joice Heth’s autopsy and the reveal that Barnum had duped countless customers, you would think his career as a confidence man would be over. But Barnum only gained more from this deceit. Joice Heth was a blockbuster and the print media saw her as instrumental in selling papers, so ran countless stories on both sides of the debate, resulting in record sales. Barnum knew the quantity of press was what mattered most, and fanned the flames of uncertainty. Sometimes, Barnum would portray himself as being unaware of the truth and that she had tricked him too. Other times, he used it as proof that he was a great businessman: he had been able to take a worthless old slave and spin her into profit. Generating wealth was extremely appealing, and he reinforced his folk hero mythos as a master capitalist with an autobiography he re-published annually, occasionally updating his own life story to what best suited the times. It seems to me that The Greatest Showman has taken his self-published autobiography at face value.

One quick oddity of the film transparently shows its own disconnect from the truth. I have never seen more drinking in a PG-rated film. One song between Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman has them downing shots to the beat of the song. One song has all of Barnum’s troupe at a bar drinking with him. There’s nothing overtly wrong with this, except that Barnum was known for his stance in favor of prohibition and was widely known for speaking about temperance (or sobriety as we’d call it today). It frankly seems baffling to include this as a part of his story.


Part 3: Barnum’s Animal Rights Legacy: Elephants and more

Early in The Greatest Showman, young Barnum gets slapped for making a joke in front of an aristocratic character. The full audience I saw the film with gasped in horror. I can only imagine how they’d feel seeing how Barnum and Co. treated his elephants and other animal performers.

P.T. Barnum was not the first American to import elephants to the United States for the purpose of entertainment, but in 1850 launched an expedition in modern-day Sri Lanka and stole 10 elephants straight from the wild. In 1882, his biggest spectacle was Jumbo, an African elephant, who became the circus mascot. Jumbo was killed in a train accident - most elephants in captivity meet premature deaths.

Capturing elephants from the wild for the purpose of entertainment is horrifying in its own right even if it wouldn’t be considered so then. Their near-extinction today is entirely due to numerous forms of human greed. However, the capturing is nothing compared to the conditions they were given once in the circus. From Barnum’s era until now, circus trainers aim for total control over their elephants. The breaking process involves removal of infants from their family units, followed by “body immobilization, beating, and starvation or other deprivation until the elephant accepts the trainer as his or her ‘master.’

  • The tool of choice of circus trainers handling elephants is something called an “ankus.” Quoting G.A. Bradshaw, “it is a wooden pole with a curved metal hook at one end used to inflict pain on sensitive points, including the genitals, mouth, and anus of an elephant being broken.”

Bradshaw’s book later describes how with every generation of training elephants, the demands of speed increase and less care is put into any sort of humane treatment.

The most well-known entertainment Barnum brought to the world was his use of exotic animals in his shows. It’s clear that in a biography film about P.T. Barnum, this would need to be included. Yet for most of the movie, there are no animals. The circus is portrayed with every performance as a stage full of human dancers. The Greatest Showman has learned from the cautionary tales of Sea World and A Dog’s Purpose: animal rights violations don’t sell tickets. So they largely ignore this key element. At the end of the movie when the circus is at its peak, there are approximately 5 shots with CGI elephants and tigers doing tricks you’d expect to see them doing in a circus. The CGI here looks intentionally bad, probably so that PETA could clearly see no animals were used in the film, a polite way to avoid controversy through more revisionist history.

In this brief end montage, supporting character Tom Thumb is seen riding an elephant. A little person riding an elephant is probably the least harmful atrocity committed by Barnum but has an insidious effect. Elephant tourism is notoriously awful to these creatures and still prevalent today - most animal tourism is deceptively harmful. (Let it go on the record: if you go to a place where you can ride an elephant, you are part of the problem. Ask Forbes, Peta, Dodo, or VICE). Even in an attempt to cutely include Barnum’s elephants, they’re still promoting a concept that’s insulting to anyone who remotely cares for animals. You can find the Ringling Brothers legacy of harming animals and following lawsuits on their Wikipedia page. Most of these atrocities that turned into lawsuits happened within the last 20 years, under a more scrutinous public. Animal treatment in the days of Barnum himself was far worse.


In spelling all this out, my issue is less with Barnum himself and more with those that chose to repurpose him. Barnum was a horrific opportunist and exploiter, but in the end, he’s a product of a different era without today’s morals. I do have a serious problem with revisionist history. I abhor that a brand new movie is being sold to the masses as inspirational and progressive builds upon the legacy of someone disgustingly antithetical to those morals. As the movie continues to gobble up family-friendly money, Barnum’s legacy is continually rewritten. Perhaps even more painful is that the filmmakers (many of whom are extremely talented and responsible for phenomenal films such as Logan and La La Land) seem to rely solely on Barnum’s self-fabricated biography to tell the story. In his interview with MovieMaker magazine, we get a clear idea first time director Michael Gracey did not care to fact-check the film’s script: “Gracey responded not only to the opportunity to make a large-scale musical but to the idea that Barnum was a visionary similar to men like Steve Jobs and Jay-Z today; he loved the idea of telling a story about transcending everyday life through a dream and changing the world.” Barnum has more in common with a slave trader than with Jobs or Jay-Z. IMDb’s first bit of trivia on the film claims Jackman read three dozen books on Barnum, which raises more questions about knowingly selective history. I have yet to see any publications ask the film’s talented cast and crew about Barnum, nor have I seen any of them address this yet.

For future filmmakers looking to spin history into family-friendly fun, I recommend picking figures who didn’t commit heinous atrocities. Last year, Ringling Brothers Circus shut down permanently in the face of decades of criticism. Barnum would have you believe people have lost their magic. I’d argue maybe they can find it somewhere that doesn’t need cruelty to achieve it.

I’ll end with a quote taken directly from The Greatest Showman that Hugh Jackman’s Barnum says to Zac Efron’s character: “Comfort is the enemy of progress.” Seeing movies that make history inspirational is comforting. It’s easier to think of people as showmen than as human & animal rights abusers. But the era for those types of films is over. Instead of settling for a sugar-coated version of history in film, my preference is to embrace movies that are authentic in their message of progressive values: The Greatest Showman is not one of them.

Notable nonprofits that support elephant or human rights:

Further reading:

For an investigative expose of Barnum’s early career, the book I recommend is this one. It largely helped me understand the realities of Barnum:

  • The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum’s America by Benjamin Reiss

For a better understanding of the painful relationship between elephants and their captors, and their true emotional intelligence, I recommend this book:

  • Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity by G.A. Bradshaw

Other articles:

https://www.peta.org/blog/greatest-showman-cruel-racist-history/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-pt-barnum-greatest-humbug-them-all-180967634/

https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/p-t-barnum-and-alcohol/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/17/out-goes-p-t-barnums-circus-in-comes-donald-trump/?utm_term=.2cb256a03d10

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/may/22/ringling-bros-barnum-bailey-circus-final-show

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/18/hugh-jackman-new-film-celebrates-pt-barnum-but-lets-not-airbrush-history-the-greatest-showman

http://www.elephantsdc.org/circus.html

 

Footnotes:

The Showman and the Slave, by Benjamin Reiss, page 13

Ibid., page 42

Ibid., page 28

Ibid., page 163

Ibid., page 164

Ibid., page 38

Ibid., page 135

Ibid., page 135

Ibid., page 129

Ibid., page 111

Ibid., page 170

Ibid., page 26, page 169

Ibid., page 150

Elephants on the Edge by G.A. Bradshaw (page 102)
Elephants on the Edge by G.A. Bradshaw (page 64)