Notes

Chicago

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Last year, Baz Luhrmann's bombastic musical "Moulin Rouge" moved viewers and critics alike. However, the work, which is overflowing with imagination and splendor of colors, met with rejection from some too. Too much of everything - a visual overkill, they nölten. This fate becomes the Golden Globe -Winner and Oscar favorite “Chicago” will not go again. Rob Marshall's debut in cinema is visually brilliant, superbly played and almost visionary cut and assembled - only the last spark does not really want to skip, so “Chicago” is a bit too good in the end lags behind "Moulin Rouge".



Chicago in the Roaring Twenties: They are as different as day and night. Diva Velma Kelley (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is where the seemingly naive Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) wants to go. On stage - and become a star just like the cool vamp who has men at his feet. But both should have one thing in common. They become murderesses. Velma catches her husband in bed with her sister - and shoots them both. Roxie cheats on her husband Amos (John C. Reilly) to advance her career - with little success. She is treated like dirt by her lover - and shoots him too. In jail, the rivals vie for the favor of star lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) - because he guarantees to get his client out of jail for 5,000 dollars. Roxie beats Velma with a ruse, and is represented by Flynn. He sets everything in motion to save his protégé. He launches newspaper articles, lies and cheats - and makes Roxie a newspaper star even behind bars. When she is free again, she has to realize that her stardom has almost faded again ...



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The story of &quot;Chicago&quot; based on true events has already been processed in all kinds of art forms. Maureen Dallas Watkins wrote a court report in 1924 and a stage play in 1926, followed by a silent film (1928), and later a sound film (1942) until the musical premiered in 1975 and was successfully reanimated in 1997. Now the celebrated stage choreographer Rob Marshall takes on the feverish saga of crime, power and the media in his directorial debut. The opening sequence immediately shows what makes “Chicago” so eventful. While Catherine Zeta-Jones (&quot;Traffic&quot;) brings an inspiring version of &quot;All that Jazz&quot; to the stage, the plot is introduced at the same time. This principle runs through the entire film. There is no dancing in the crime story and sung, that mostly happens in dream sequences of the protagonists. But the boundaries between these two worlds always merge very homogeneously. What is much more remarkable, however, is the extraordinary editing technique of the film. In bold cut-counter-cut montages, the divisions between reality and fiction blur into a pulsating cocktail out of sex, wrong morals, greed for celebrity and media manipulation.



Rob Marshall's strengths are obvious. The dance and song numbers are brilliantly choreographed, Richard Gere (&quot;Untreu&quot;, &quot;The Mothman Prophecies&quot;) surprises as a good stepper and finally as a convincing actor again. As a media-hungry manipulator who leads everyone around the crucial court scene in a staging that is ready for the circus, he has definitely earned his Golden Globe. All the more astonishing and incomprehensible is the fact that he was passed over at the Oscars despite 13 nominations for &quot;Chicago&quot;. Ren&eacute;e Zellweger (&quot;Bridget Jones&quot;, &quot;Jerry Maguire&quot;) and Catherine Zeta-Jones deserve this honor. The two different divas are driving the film forward and breathing life into it. Zeta-Jones, dancing and singing, does the 42nd Street “was already on stage, the better impression, but Zellweger makes up for this deficit with her naive but subtle charm.



Above all, Marshall uses the clear advantages of film to the full. There is no close-up on stage, no look in the main actor's face, no fabulous cuts. His staging exudes pure opulence and is never ridiculous - that danger always exists in a musical. He tells his story stringently, does not get lost in antics or tangled moral concepts. His murderers are anything but innocent victims - nevertheless, the sympathies belong to them. By the way, “Chicago” is a satire on the American judiciary and the mendacity of the media.



But something is still missing for a really great masterpiece. Maybe a little boldness - exactly what made Baz Luhrmann's &quot;Moulin Rouge&quot; so intoxicating, this will to go beyond what has been seen so far. Ultimately, &quot;Chicago&quot; remains too good in direct comparison. The dance pieces are all brilliant, but little b


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