The 97th Academy Awards are just around the corner, and the film adaptation of Wicked is in the running with 10 nominations; including Best Actress for Cynthia Erivo, Best Supporting Actress for Ariana Grande, and Best Picture.
Among the seven other nominations it’s up for does not include Best Director – a detail that even the Critics Choice Awards poked fun at, as director Jon M. Chu was given their Best Director award. How strange it is to consider, especially given how long it took to get the musical, based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel of the same name, from the stage to the screen.
Chu brought his all to Wicked with the elements that he’s best known for: Big, bombastic moments, elaborate set designs, and well-choregraphed dance scenes. But what really should have secured him a nomination is his ability to create touching, vulnerable moments that convey the message that to be truly seen is so very powerful.
It goes without saying that the Ozdust Ballroom scene did just that. In a film that takes the creative liberties of expanding a lot on what the stage musical has already established, this is one of the ones where the move to do so was well warranted. As fellow NOC writer Mike Manalo was wise to point out in his review, while the stage production played the moment for laughs, Chu went deeper by showing Elphaba (Erivo) who she is through dance. While her peers unabashedly ridicule her, it’s her loathing roommate, Galinda (Grande), who at last accepts her by joining her on the dance floor, igniting their friendship.
It’s such a touching, tear-jerking scene for all the right reasons. It’s so moving that it also feels familiar in a way. While I may not have realized it during its theatrical run, I’ve since come to realize that there is an equivalent of this very scene that can be found in Chu’s 2018 film, Crazy Rich Asians. That scene is where singer-songwriter Kina Grannis makes her cameo as the wedding singer.
Now arguably, a lot is going on in that scene. Colin (Chris Pang) and Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) get married, and Nick (Henry Golding) and Rachel (Constance Wu) stare lovingly at each other from across the room. The sentiment can easily be expressed about really anything that’s happening in that scene. All the while, Grannis ties it altogether with her rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
It’s both what she brought to that moment and what she represents just by being there that I found to be equally as resonating as the Ozdust Ballroom scene. She’s a singer-songwriter who, despite being signed to Interscope Records at one point, wound up leaving the label and carved a path for herself on YouTube, in a time when Asian American representation on the mainstream front was still seldomly seen. There’s also the fact that she’s a biracial Asian American, in a film where there was such an outcry over the casting of other biracial actors such as Golding. But by having her very clearly in frame, covering that song so beautifully that she very well made her own, felt like Chu’s way of validating her place in the community.
From Crazy Rich Asians to Wicked, Chu has a knack for creating moments either about or evoking feelings of being seen and validated. Why the Academy failed to recognize that with their lack of nomination for him for the latter is beyond comprehension.
I guess that’s another good thing about splitting Wicked in two: Another chance for Chu to conjure such a moment, and another chance for the members of the Academy to pay attention for next year.
