Hamilton Review (Film, 2020)
There are multiple layers of criticism to address when evaluating Hamilton. First, as this is a film review, we need to look at the quality of filmmaking. Second, as a review of a stage adaptation, we have to look at how the piece plays in the context of film. They’re vastly different mediums and the crossover is not always the easiest to negotiate. Third, as in any piece of criticism, we have to look at cultural and thematic implications of the piece at large.
For the uninitiated, Hamilton is the 2015 Broadway musical by writer/composer/star Lin-Manuel Miranda about Alexander Hamilton. Act I deals with the Revolutionary War; Act II deals with the foundation of the US government and the succession of the presidency. Told with an iconic hip-hop score and cast with a diverse company mostly comprised of performers of color, Hamilton is meant to tell the founding of the United States from the voices of people all too often ignored and erased from the history books.
As a piece of cinema, Hamilton is electrifying. Thomas Kail, the Tony Award-winning director of Hamilton, takes the director’s chair for what is arguably the best produced recording of a stage musical ever. I only say arguably because I’ve only seen one other stage recording that felt anywhere near this cinematic, 2009’s Passing Strange directed by Spike Lee. I’d want to revisit that, what I considered the pinnacle of filmed staged productions, before definitively declaring Hamilton the best. I suspect Hamilton comes out on top.
Hamilton does not hide that it is a stage show; it embraces it. Hamilton is a dynamic piece of theatre featuring a modern score and innovative choreography. There is constant motion and life onstage as the large ensemble dances through their roles as civilians, soldiers, congresspeople, and nobility. The set (one of the most brilliant in modern theatre) is a wooden framework of stairs and walkways set in front of exposed brick walls This forces the action (played on a rotating turntable) downstage center, giving Kail plenty of room on the sides to get compelling screen images out of beautiful stage pictures.
The most remarkable element of the film to me is the lighting. I work in theatre. I’ve designed a lot of lights in a variety of spaces. Do you know how hard it is to accurately capture what stage lights look like on film? Traditional fixtures are a little easier to record, but they’ve largely been replaced by color changing LED fixtures in most professional theatres. The flickering of the LEDs lights (and they are constantly flickering at a very fast pace) disguises the true tone, intensity, and shade of even pure white light on camera. Hamilton actually looks like the stage lights you would see in the darkened theatre with your own eyes. Some people cried because they saw the opening song for the first time; I cried because I now have a masterwork of contemporary musical theatre lighting to study, learn from, and reference whenever I need to.
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The show itself is a stunning production. Kail’s direction pulls together a whole lot of disparate elements in the show. I don’t use disparate lightly. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score is cohesive, but the book covers decades of history in a few short hours. The show jumps from revolution to personal drama with little warning, but Kail’s keen eye for detail and stage picture makes the flow work. From the interlocking turntables spinning backwards like hands of a clock for “Helpless” to the constant sense of life and motion on the wooden balconies during the battles and debates, Kail connects the dots by finding the exact perfect stage image to transition between the different locations and combinations and characters.
The original cast returned for this recording and it’s a masterclass in musical theatre performance. I’ve always thought the ladies of Hamilton stole the show and the film does not change my opinion of that. Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo are heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measure as Angelica and Eliza Schuyler. Jasmine Cephas Jones gets plenty of close-ups as Peggy Schuyler and handles the challenges of Maria Reynolds, Alexander Hamilton’s mistress, with great skill. We’re going to swing back the Schuyler Sisters for the third section of this piece.
The film demonstrates how strong Daveed Diggs (Lafayette/Jefferson) and Chris Jackson (Washington) are in critical supporting roles. Diggs doesn’t drop a syllable in a thick French accent during his lengthy rap verses, and Jackson makes me want to take up arms for whatever cause he’s championing at the time. The close-ups allowed in film serve Leslie Odom Jr.’s performance well, really showing off the subtlety in his expression that made him an easy winner for Best Actor at the Tony Awards (Diggs and Goldsberry also won; Soo and Jackson were nominated).
The biggest revelation for me is Jonathan Groff (also a Tony nominee that year: Hamilton won the most and dominated the acting nominations). Groff is King George, who has three scenes in the story. He’s phenomenal. He is the only true villain in the show, what with this being partly the story of the American Revolution, and he is equally charming, dangerous, and hilarious. There is a moment in “You’ll Be Back” where his King George does not blink for close to 30 seconds of a song as he threatens the destruction of every person in the colonies if they do not back down. Then I realized that Groff largely did not blink while singing to create this intensity of purpose. Groff’s King George is one of the all time great stage villains because Groff found the levels needed to make that character a threat.
All of this brings us to Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’m a fan of his writing and composition. I think he’s a genius with words and melody, especially layering multiple parts in dramatically compelling ways. He’s charming. I don’t think he’s a great actor, but he is a good leading man. He can anchor a show and keep you interested in what’s happening and sometimes that’s enough. I’m excited to see what he creates next.
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Travel back in time with me. The year is 2015. I’ve had some awful experiences with some very powerful people in NYC theatre. I’ve been blacklisted from every major press list for writing a negative review of a show in 2009 that was panned across the board because I didn’t kiss butt at a digital press event meant to only create positive stories about an expensive and flawed show. The reason I used to be able review so much theatre on Sketching Details (then Sketchy Details) was busting my butt to get on press lists and being offered tickets as a critic or a member of the press. Still I had to spend more money than I really wanted to in order to even get into NYC and see the show for reviews. I was always treated as lesser than for working in digital publishing and was ultimately disposable.
I hear rumors of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new show from the contacts I still had. It’s revolutionary. It’s going to change the industry. They wish they could get me in to see it. The show was Hamilton. Someone graciously made me their plus one for the off-Broadway run at the Public Theatre. It was, indeed, one of the greatest productions of a show I’d ever seen onstage.
I had issues, however, that were immediately dismissed. You thought I had a bad reputation before? Guess what happened to me when I dared to question why we were glorifying the slave-owning founders of the United States and claiming a historically faithful retelling of the same old historical highlights was revolutionary just for having people of color sing the story? If you guessed that I never got free tickets from anyone in the professional NYC theatre industry ever again, you were correct.
Hamilton is an amazing stage production of a problematic show. Take the casting out of the picture, as one day the rights for this will be available to everyone. Do you think this show would be progressive social commentary if the cast is all white? Cause that will happen whether the license holders restrict it in the contract or not. Is it going to work as anything more modern than 1776 when schools inevitably produce it en masse? I don’t believe so.
You cannot tell a faithful adaptation of the life of Alexander Hamilton where he is in anyway considered a hero and actually do anything progressive with the historical narrative. It’s impossible. While Hamilton did not own slaves, he married into a slave-owning family. His fellow founding fathers owned slaves and they all silenced the voices of Native Americans and women when writing the history of this country. This is especially true in a story performed by actors of color that does not include anyone who was not white as a role in the story. Thomas Jefferson has a throwaway joke about Sally Hemings (the “Sally, love” asked to deal with the letter). That is the extent of representation in the show. That’s inexcusable.
I understand and acknowledge Miranda’s intentions in telling Hamilton’s story. Hamilton was an immigrant who fought to have a voice in the founding of a new nation. What is the role of Hamilton in that history? He founded the national bank and defined the foundation of economic policy. He held office. He was also constantly vilified by his fellow founding fathers and, as demonstrated in the show, harassed for not being white. He was a victim of the same system for the same reasons.
Framing the foundation of America around Alexander Hamilton is an angle on the same story. The nature of Hamilton as an outsider voice is limited to him being contentious, too loud, too aggressive to really fit in. Lean into that more and this could have been a very different retelling of American history. Instead, it’s subtext at best, a few throwaway lines at worst.
Frankly, the most innovative part of this story is the use of the Schuyler Sisters. Letting any women have a voice in the narrative of founding the United States is the start of something radical or revolutionary. Even then, they are largely kept for romantic and family drama connected to Alexander Hamilton. Act II is far more rewarding, especially once Eliza gets to sing “Burn” and chooses to erase herself from his story.
She also (finally) gets the focus in the final song detailing all the incredible acts of charity she did following the death of Alexander in his duel with Aaron Burr. The ending moment before the final blackout is the most radical thing to happen onstage in this show. I do not deal in spoilers here, but the literal last moment of the show is the first and only time the show actually does anything innovative with the story of the founding of America. I wish that energy, that focus, that thumbing of the nose at the whitewashed history of America was at the forefront of this show.
Even then, the women who are allowed to have a voice in this show are the wealthy daughters of slave owners. Peggy doesn’t even get her early death acknowledged onstage, and her actor turns into the musical theatre trope of the mistress. Justice for Peggy is an old gag about Hamilton, but there are many more people who were essential to the history of this country that don’t even get to do a little two step in the party scenes.
Where is the voice of the common woman? Or the women who offered support in battle? Or nursed the wounded? Or kept up the necessities of day to day life so that the men could fight to found this country? They don’t exist in this narrative.
Neither do the Black men forced to fight or the Native men fighting to save their own culture from erasure. Where is the voice of the slaves? Where is the voice of the Native Americans whose land was stolen long before the revolution? They were forced to risk their lives because they were viewed as property or not even human so that we could have this country. Hamilton is the same whitewashed history found in every k-12 textbook in America and it easily could have been so much more.
The reason you never got my review of the performance at the Public is quite simple. I still worked in theatre. I still do and I bust my butt every day to keep that career. I quite literally could not afford to come out against the problematic aspects of Hamilton. Call it cowardice if you must; I call it self-preservation. There are powerful people who have a very long and petty reach over the theatre scene in the greater NYC area. These are the people who will hear from a friend of a friend that you’re being considered for a position and make it a point to convince a theatre company that you are a bad hire. You can only burn so many bridges in an industry before you just can’t get a job anymore. I have fought for years to have the small slice of professional theatre work I have now.
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Hamilton is a complicated piece to analyze for a variety of factors. One of these is reconciling what we know about the sins of the founding fathers with the story being retold to extensive critical acclaim by a Puerto Rican man writing a mostly sung-through musical in rap, hip-hop, and R&B styles. Broadway is still largely the playground of a bunch of white artists patting each other on the back for being so smart and progressive. If the producers were as progressive as they pretend to be, there’s a myriad of wonderful shows written, directed, choreographed, composed, and starring diverse performers that would be given the Broadway stamp of approval; they largely aren’t. That Lin-Manuel Miranda got Hamilton on Broadway at all is as incredible as getting In the Heights on Broadway. I can only hope that this one-two punch of Best Musical winners is opening the door for more representation on Broadway.
The casting of Hamilton is revolutionary because Broadway has major issues with casting when it comes to race. Shows as recent as The Drowsy Chaperone in 2006 made jokes about yellow face while using yellow face to make those jokes. There’s, sadly, a certain kind of show that is acceptable for Broadway featuring performers of color. Hamilton broke down a lot of barriers in casting that has allowed far more diverse casts to headline shows in the following years.
I don’t love the expression “problematic favorite.” I do, however, think it’s the best way to describe my relationship with Hamilton. I think this is a phenomenal stage production. It is one of the most beautifully crafted shows I’ve seen. Everything from lights to choreography to sound to casting to costumes to properties is perfection. The score is gorgeous. I have issues with perspective, theme, tone, and purpose. The book of Hamilton is a missed opportunity to reinvent this narrative.
The time was not right in 2015 for this conversation, but the release in 2020 as a film that anyone can watch if they have Disney Plus allows this discussion to be had. I am so incredibly proud of the brave critics, largely much younger people than me, who are speaking out loudly and proudly about the problems of perspective in this musical.
I know how challenging it can be to go against the general critical discourse and face the opinions of an impassioned fan base. None of what they have said and none of what I have written erases your enjoyment of the show. Viewing media critically does not mean telling other people what to like or not like. Viewing media critically means analyzing the significance of what you are watching and evaluating any of the greater implications of a text within and beyond its medium. Critics place art into a broader conversation with society. Take our opinions or don’t; we just want you to think about what media actually means to the world.
By all means, watch Hamilton. Love Hamilton. Stan Hamilton. Just understand that even the most polished piece of media you can imagine is not above being analyzed for even the tiniest faults; what doesn’t bother you might be a deal breaker for someone else. Even after this level of critical analysis, I would gladly see Hamilton onstage when Broadway reopens if I were to win the lottery or be invited. The price of accessing Broadway is its own debate for another day.
Hamilton is streaming on Disney Plus.
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