The Essence of P. T. Barnum

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2018)

From the beginning, cinema has always been about the magic of entertainment. Telling living stories, they are able portray events, moments, people, and show so many things that can never be seen anywhere else. This in essence was everything P.T. Barnum could have wished for.
Now, I'm writing this review mainly do to the recent divisiveness this movie created among critics (Look no further than the 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) with the main critique among them all being the portrayal of the main character himself P.T. Barnum. They claim the showman to be a watered down version of the real Barnum and say even more so that the film glosses over much of the real life events that show him to be a much more complicated figure, than seen in the movie. Now this is a fair critique, character is portrayal is one of the key aspects when making a biographical picture, but in this case I think a more cheerful watered down version may have benefited it. Now I hate to sound condensing, knowing that I am not a professional critic myself, but I feel many of whom have missed the point. Barnum would not have wanted a serious, 60 year old, dialogue heavy portrayal of himself, if anything he would have loved Hugh Jackman's performance. He's excitable, happy, energetic and just like his ideas you could even call him magical. Same with the rest of the characters (Many of whom did not exist in real life) like the Anne Wheeler, the trapeze artist played by Zendaya, who has to deal with racism along with bigotry do to a romance. She too is in love with performance and has the same magical quality to her. Characters like these capture the scope of Barnum's ideas along with the imagination. If portraying real life versions of some the characters the movie (As Barnum would have hated) would have become grounded in realism taking away much of the wonder that Barnum thought was necessary for entertainment.

The movie also goes for a stylistic choreographed style seen in many musicals. This style is especially apparent during the musical numbers, full of lights, stunts dancing and complex camera movement. The movie looks great during these scenes and even when there isn't music or dancing it's still present by having great set design and mesmerizing colors. Everybody behind the scenes must have worked incredibly hard and it it really shows. This is movie reliant on these set pieces in which it definitely holds up. There is a part in the movie where someone tries to convince him that drama/plays are a definitive form of entertainment, in which (From what I remember) Barnum says something along the lines of "Who would want to watch people talk for 2 hours". Views such of these from Barnum is why I believe the filmmakers decided to make the movie such a flashy, cinematic, musical instead of a drama it could have easily been. This I believe captures what his shows meant and exactly the way Barnum would have wanted a adaptation such as this to be.
In conclusion, this movie did a great a great job capturing Barnum, not in sense of character, but more of sense of spirit and gives a grand cinematic retelling of his life. The movie is not perfect, it can be cliche at time and it's fast pacing can seem a bit sudden many times. However, this movie entertained me and memorized me many time and I would recommend a viewing (Especially while it still is in theaters). But be warned if you don't like musicals I doubt you'll like this.