Director: Thomas Kail*
Cast: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs
Have I Seen it Before: Well that’s a heck of a question in this particular case. I had heard snippets of the soundtrack during its cultural ascension during the far-flung era of 2016. I immediately bought the soundtrack album the day after the cast offered a special announcement of hope when then Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a show with his daughter. Then President-elect Trump called it—and I’m paraphrasing—the worst thing to happen to a politician in a theater. Which… Well, I’ve read “Our American Cousin,” so the least I could do here was get the album.
Anyway. Loved the soundtrack from that moment. Saw the travelling company production (one of three, if I’m not mistaken) that came through my town.
The Hamilton Mixtape is also in regular rotation on my Apple Music app.
But my wife, she’s the real Hamilfan.
Did I Like It: I would struggle to come up with any piece of art created since the year 2000 that is more of a work of breathtaking brilliance from every angle under which it can be observed. Its simplest, most wide-angle description is a story of two men. One is trying to get the other to be more like him and not throw away his shot. The other is trying to get the first guy to be more like him and wait for it. By the time they’re finally listening to each other, it destroys them.
I could go into each and every song in detail, but they’ve been written about to death. I live for the type-A numbers where Hamilton keeps writing like it’s a psychological defect, for reasons. I’m less into the songs about being a parent, because I’m not one. Every note is brilliant and beautiful, and that’s not even counting each The West Wing reference that Miranda uses to make sure I’m paying attention.
So, there can’t possibly be anything to dislike in this accelerated concert film of several performances in June 2016. You know, before everything happened. You get the original Broadway cast, when that was an astonishingly difficult ticket to procure when they were all still performing the play. There’s a different energy to the performance here, though. At first, I worried that this might have been recorded late in the tenure of this cast, and they were too comfortable with the material. They were rushing it. I thought they may have been trying to get the material into a theatrical running time**, but then realized that the play and the movie are the same length. The intermission is the only thing pared down. Then I realized that this was seeing the real interaction of live theater. This is as close as many of us will get to the Richard Rodgers theater. What more can you expect from what is essentially a concert film.
And yet, there is something missing here. It isn’t the film’s fault; a camera would never be able to fully communicate this aspect of the Hamilton experience. The center of the stage is constantly in motion, a Lazy Susan (ironically enough) of theater. To see it live, it is a mesmerizing display of precision timing and walking backwards. Here, there are several moments that eschew that brilliance in favor of closer shots, and even from the wider shots the choreography doesn’t appear to be the delicate balancing act that it really is.
When it comes right down to it, in order to really experience this thing, you’ll have to go to the theater.
…when theaters are a thing again.
*Pretty much throws the auteur theory into question, doesn’t it? Even though there are a plethora of splendid moving parts in orbit of this piece of theater, is anyone willing to say that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not the author of what we all watched on Disney+?
**Get this! Typing the phrase “how long” into Google will autofill into “How long is Hamilton?” The internet still can surprise me.