We’re almost exactly a year out now from when In the Heights, the much-anticipated adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first hit Broadway musical, was supposed to open on June 26th 2020. In that reality, its’ celebration of community, socialization, and optimism would have perhaps gone undervalued, regardless of how the movie was received. It’s not a particularly original observation to note that it hits more powerfully now than it would have back then and encapsulates a catharsis we all share as the pandemic is waning down. Timing is a major factor in how this movie is being received, and welcomed with much greater enthusiasm than it could have generated a year ago. But perhaps all that timing does is reveal the importance of those values. In the Heights would have been just as great a year ago, but the reasons for its’ greatness are more meaningful now.
It’s been a long time since a musical like this came along. Not counting that filmed performance of Hamilton created for Disney last summer, it’s maybe the first time since La La Land I’ve seen a movie musical so ecstatically interesting and immediately mesmerizing in all the right ways (and its’ opening sequence dance number certainly gives that films’ a run for its money). There’s just a really ingratiating character to the whole thing from the opening scenes, a terrific blend of grounded realism and hyper-stylized fantasy in its expression that colours its’ world with an irresistible charm. And speaking of charm, its’ cast has nothing but, especially the lead played by a magnetic Anthony Ramos in what has to be his long-awaited star-making role.
Ramos plays Usnavi de la Vega, owner of a bodega in Washington Heights, North Manhattan and the movies’ primary focal character, who dreams of moving back to the Dominican Republic from where his family emigrated when he was a child. He’s not the only dreamer in his neighbourhood though -it is rather a theme, as love interest Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) longs to be a fashion designer, college dropout Nina (Leslie Grace) wishes to make a difference in the world, and Usnavi’s best friend Benny (Corey Hawkins) simply dreams of a life with Nina. And that’s not to mention the allusions to literal Dreamers such as Usnavi’s cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) peppered throughout the film.
In the Heights is pretty brazenly a movie about and for Latin-Americans, and specifically that community in New York, where they make up nearly 29% of the population. It is teeming with that specific (yet also extremely diversified) culture at every turn: characters speak and sing casually in Spanish, particular cuisines and art and tokens are glimpsed all throughout the movie, no accent is repressed, and the music is full of Latin styles and motifs. All of these are vital to the identity and appeal of the film. And to that point, there’s no sugarcoating it, this is a watershed movie for the American Latinx community, or just the general immigrant Latinx community around the world. For a movie of this scale and this quality, populated almost entirely by not just Latin-American performers, but performers native to that corner of the world with nary any whiteness in sight, it is genuinely groundbreaking and pretty awesome to see. And the joy in these filmmakers realizing such unfettered representation is contagious, the enthusiasm translates as warmly as the culture.
With that of course comes politics, and the story has been updated accordingly (by the shows’ original writer Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes) from what those were in 2008 when the show originally premiered. Explicit reference is made to systemic racism and immigration policies -one scene takes place at a protest of the rescinding of DACA. And gentrification has palpable consequences. I don’t know how Usnavi’s plans to leave were meant to be taken in the original show, but in the movie they’re coded with foreboding from the start -his leaving would just be another step in erasing the neighbourhood. We see it already happening in some clearly white businesses visible in the backgrounds; Nina’s father Kevin (Jimmy Smits) is willing to sell his taxi company to pay for her further education -it’s quite grim. In a framing device where an older Usnavi is telling the story to a group of children, he repeatedly asks them to say the name “Washington Heights” so that it doesn’t disappear -because that is a real threat that underscores so much of the story.
Yet that framing also gives Washington Heights a lovely mythical quality that lends itself really well to the flights of fancy that are the musical numbers. For a movie in which multiple characters want to leave the neighbourhood, it really paints a picture of a neighbourhood that would be the most fun place to live. A lot of this is down to the choices by its’ director, Jon M. Chu who, for his relatively mediocre track record, proves himself to have been the right man for the job. The spontaneity of the musical sequences, the sheer creativity in how they’re constructed, and a smattering of strong visual and technical choices that give the piece real personality (starting with a sewer grate being used as a record scratch) shows he knew and was capable of the exact level of style needed for a film like this. There are set pieces in this movie like I’ve never seen in a musical! Ample credit to cinematographer Alice Brooks and choreographer Christopher Scott, but for a collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose artistic voice is so distinct and powerfully singular, it’s remarkable that Chu’s own voice and contributions ring out just as loudly.
And the best songs tend to go with the most visually exciting sequences, whether it’s “96,000” with a hundred extras in a public pool, “Blackout” in the firework-lit city streets, or “When the Sun Goes Down” along the side of an apartment building -to say nothing of the captivating street dances of the inaugural “In the Heights” and the Finale (in which one shot creates a beautiful arch between streetlights and spraying water for the dancers in the middle) of a calibre not seen since West Side Story. It’s neat too for those who know Hamilton to note where the DNA of some of that musicals’ numbers came from -motifs and melodies that are strikingly familiar. Perhaps the best in both sequence and song is the dreamscape elegy “Paciencia y Fe”, performed primarily by the one returning cast member from the show, Olga Merediz as the neighbourhoods’ matriarch Abuela Claudia. She sings with tremendous depth of emotion as the decades-long struggle of Latin-American immigrants is illustrated all around her in some of the most profound imagery of the movie. For emotionality, it can only be matched by the earlier “Breathe” sung by Grace -a song encapsulating the anxiety of finding yourself back home after having left for greener pastures. It should be noted the cast is all fantastic, from Grace and Hawkins and Barrera to stage legend Daphne Rubin-Vega to the typically reliable Smits. Merediz surely deserves some awards, Diaz has an exceptionally bright future, and Ramos proves himself incomparable. And of course Miranda himself has his standout cameo (and even a short solo) as the Piragua guy, with fellow original cast member Christopher Jackson as his commercial rival.
I don’t think I substantively addressed the plot of this movie, but the plot really doesn’t matter (it’s conventional though in a congenial way). In the Heights really is more about the sensation; about coming together and having a good time and understanding an experience outside of your own. That isn’t to say the principal story of the film and of its’ characters aren’t important -indeed these are eminently likeable characters and their stories are very endearing. But the movie delights most in sharing its positivity, and that’s something not to be taken for granted. It doesn’t live up to all of the hype (and never could have), and will certainly play differently outside of this period in time -though not to its’ detriment I firmly believe. For now though, undeniably and deservedly we have a movie of the moment, and it’ll be extremely difficult for any film this summer to take that crown away from In the Heights.
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