Monday, February 13, 2017
Is Fantasy Fluff?
Top Hat takes place in a fantasy world. All people are wealthy, dress impeccably (often in "top hat and tails") and stay in luxurious hotels with impossibly large rooms. The characters can impetuously buy all the roses in a hotel or jet down to Italy in a moments notice. The sets in the film are also artificial reconstructions of a Europe of the imagination (not unlike Epcot Center in Disney World). Venice has canals alright -- but they are more swimming pool than navigation channel. The buildings are all modern Art Deco hotels without a church or museum in sight. Add to that that the genre of the musical is perhaps the most unrealistic one since most people don't spontaneously break out into song. So is this film just entertaining or is there a bigger message amidst all the fakery? What does it tell us about love and illusion? What does it tell us about the American Dream in the midst of the Depression? Is this movie a fluff piece or is it telling us something about the contrast between fantasy and reality?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I believe the reasoning behind having Top Hat take place in a fantasy world is to show how people feel when they’re in love. When in love, our rational thinking disappears and we think with our hearts instead of our heads. The director tried to capture this sense of haziness that is cast upon those in love. The director shows how people tend to feel like they are in their own world by making the world they are in in Top Hat a word of fantasy and idealistic. One example from the movie that exemplifies this sense of fantasy is the big dance scene. Dale and Jerry are out on the dance floor with many people around them, but soon end up on a dance floor of their own, oblivious to their surroundings. This scene shows how love has blinded them to everything else and allowed them to enter their own world. So, the reasoning for making the hotel rooms ridiculously large or allowing the characters to be able to buy out an entire flower shop at the hotel or having Venice look like a fantasy world is to send the message that nothing matters when you’re in love. Love allows you to enter your own fantasy and disregard everything else around you.
ReplyDelete