Disney +
By the time i saw Hamilton, just over four years ago this week, he had saved the recording of the cast in memory, each note, each inflection, each pause, as seeing it was like experiencing three hours of déjà vu. But there was a moment that completely surprised me, one that the millions of people who know Hamilton Only as an album and not as a stage performance will you be able to experience it for the first time when the filmed version of the show hits Disney + on Friday.
Looking the Hamilton The movie, which was directed by Thomas Kail from the theatrical production and filmed with the original cast of Broadway on-site at the Richard Rodgers Theater, you may see some pieces from the show that didn’t end on the album. Most famous is the “surprise scene” in which Alexander Hamilton learns of the death of John Laurens, which features the longest exchange of dialogue spoken in the musical sung, and there are some brief interstitial cues that help usher in the Jonathan Groff’s King George on and off stage. But the most significant moment that is only in the theatrical version reaches the end; in fact, it’s the last thing you see, the moment Eliza Hamilton lets out her last breath and joins her husband on the other side. .
Hamilton It closes with “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” which provides an answer to the seemingly rhetorical question that has been addressed through the program. Hamilton is dead, killed in a duel by rival Aaron Burr, and is survived by his wife, Eliza, who spends 50 years after his death caring for his legacy. Until that time, Burr has served as the narrator for the musical, a chronicler amazed at the inexplicable success of his bitter enemy. (Kail’s movie largely keeps the camera on the audience side of the proscenium, but it gets close enough that you can see the grimace of Leslie Odom Jr.’s face as she remembers how Hamilton has once again managed to be at the top.) But in the end, Eliza takes the baton from her and tells her not only the story of her late husband but also hers.
Throughout the show, Eliza is the character most concerned with Alexander’s legacy and wonders if she even has a place in him. She begs him to “let me be part of the narrative, in the story you will write someday”, and, after he violates her trust by having an affair and dishonors her by making it public, she decides that she is pulling herself out of the story together, striking back by destroying what she knows he values most: his words. They reconcile after their son Philip is killed in a duel, but it is only after Alexander’s death that Eliza returns to the narrative, not as a taxpayer expecting a brief mention, but as its author.
There are so many things packed in that instant, not least, the short, sharp shock of it, a sudden scream that cuts through the end of the company. Note.
It is a great change, and one that HamiltonDespite its range, it is barely equipped to drive. Putting aside the go-girl feminism from “The Schuyler Sisters” (work!), It’s a show where women are muses and love interests, and occasionally just hurts. Despite the incandescent luminosity of Phillipa Soo’s acting, Eliza’s role comes down to a variation of what Emma Thompson memorably summed up as “Please don’t go and do that brave.” “Who Lives, Who Dies” doesn’t fix that problem, but it does acknowledge it, and one way to read the show’s final moment, when Soo approaches the edge of the stage, he raises his eyes and lets out a gasp of amazement. It is like a separation from the fourth wall, a reminder that there is a world outside the work and more stories to tell. (For those who feel that it is time for history to center figures like Eliza, Hamilton echoes George Washington’s question about whether the black soldiers who fought to liberate the United States should be emancipated: no. Still.)
Interpreting that final gesture became a kind of obsession for Hamilton fans who really saw the show. In interviews, Soo kept its meaning open, saying only that it had something to do with “transcendence.” For me, it felt like a way to definitely change the focus of the story to the narrator, because the show survives Hamilton’s death, but ends the instant Eliza dies; she rises to the light, and the audience is plunged into darkness. In the movie, with the proximity that only a combination of deep pockets and good weather could have previously allowed, you can see the way Soo raises her eyes upwards every time she sings to her husband’s memory, so when she gasps and, in an exquisite close-up moment, he seems to catch a glimpse of something in the light, no doubt who he is looking at. Alexander promised to be waiting on the other side, and when she crosses, it shows that he was true to his word.
There’s as much content in that instant, most notably the brief, sharp impact of it, a sudden scream running through the company’s bottom note, as the last blip before a heart monitor, and it’s all the more surprising if you’re waiting for the Show to end as the album does, with the chorus gently fading in unison. Telling her story has been the way Eliza kept Hamilton alive, not just her memory, but the ideals she championed, even when she couldn’t embody them. By taking away the pen from his jealous rival and writing Hamilton’s story as an act of love, the kind of love in which you see your subject’s failures for what they are, becomes a representative of Lin-Manuel Miranda himself, offering a new vision of the United States. history to people who have long been denied their rightful place and who also claim their own place in history. Eliza loves Hamilton in the same way that Miranda loves the United States, embracing the best and fighting to prevent the worst from overcoming it, using her past as a tool to brighten her future. When she finally sees what she has wrought, it is almost more than her mind can bear. But just before the lights go out, her expression passes through confusion and fear of something that looks more like joy.
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