There’s been enough raving about Chicago (2002), winner of six Academy Awards, and they’re richly deserved, as watching this story of women on death row in a Chicago prison, and how they deal, or fail to deal, with their potential fates, told through song, dance, and flashback, is a riveting story.
But it’s worth noting the undercurrent of most of those stories, the theme that ties them together. While it’s true that there’s corruption and gangs and violence in the story, what struck me as the unifying theme was the misbalance of power in the traditional roles of man and woman in America in the early years of the 20th century, which certainly reaches a millennia and more back. We can see it in the lead story, that of Roxie Hart, a housewife and wannabe stage star, who succumbs to the boasts and blandishments of salesman Fred Casely, who claims he can put her on the stage of the nightclub Onyx; after several intimate encounters, he doesn’t confess so much that he lied, as he boasts about it. He fears no repercussions. Such is the role of the man.
So when she shoots him, he’s surprised. At least for a brief moment, until he’s finished bleeding out.
So is she. And now, because we know that a jury of the period will most likely find her guilty and quite possibly send her to the electric chair, despite the mitigating circumstances, the lying begins: to journalists, to judges, to lawyers, to whoever will listen. There’s no discussion balancing risk vs reward, there’s simply lying, and a bit of misdirection. When Roxie’s husband, the naive Amos, hears that she’s pregnant, then his repugnance, developed from her violence and implied sexual wantonness, is forgotten; then, when the reality that he cannot be the father is thrust upon him, he once again resumes his hatred of Roxie, and, importantly, the company of the inflamed mob. There is no constancy, no respect for her as a person, merely a somewhat defensible reaction based on her activities and how they conflict with the common man’s morality of the time period.
Brought about because a cheating woman killed a cheating, lying man.
But for some, the cheating and lying is secondary; simply the fact that Roxie had to cheat, had to circumvent husband Amos, in order to work towards her dreams, is enough to prove the point, to the extent that a movie can prove a point, that the power misbalance of the era was unjust.
And it’s not a bad argument to make.
Chicago is a fascinating peek into the mores of 1920s Chicago, or at least what the storytellers imagined it to be, and is exceedingly well done. Recommended.
