OPINION: Wicked, in cinemas

Allow me tell you a story of sedition against persecutors, merciless in its critique of fascism. A tale one might compare to Peter Weiss’ anti-Nazi epic The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975).

The narrative revolves around a pair of students attending a prestigious university. They become fast friends after overcoming an initial enmity based on their dissimilarity: one, born visibly deformed, has overcome a lifetime of rejection to become principled, uncompromising and brave. The other enjoys the fruits of privilege, good looks, popularity and – blonde hair.

Consequently the latter is naïve, and perhaps morally malleable as a result of a sheltered upbringing. While the latter falls easily into popularity, the outsider is derided (no change from the usual there) by the student body. The university staff on the other hand recognise the brilliance beneath the imperfect exterior. One of these teachers, a professor of history, belongs to that minority whose positions in all public institutions have been for years steadily stripped from them, along with their rights. The public have turned a blind eye to the state’s repressive legislation. Yes, this is a context we know well.

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The outsider-student, on account of society’s treatment of visibly-different people, can well empathise with the persecution to which this minority are subject. The student witnesses scenes that reveal just how dire affairs are getting for the professor’s kind. The professor holds a covert meeting at his house with other members of the intelligentsia, in which they discuss possibilities of emigration, and lament the steady disappearance of their friends from public institutions. And worse, the professor disappears by the secret police in broad daylight, and no one raises a voice in protest.

No one, except the one student who knows how it is to be an outsider to one’s own society. It is impressed upon the outsider-student just how precarious are the lives of all those who do not conform to the image of society, whether physically different, differently-abled, or belonging to a minority. The professor and all his like are being quite literally scapegoated for the crimes of the state. One student understands this; the other remains in blissful ignorance. The rest of the story seems inevitable: the state, seeing an idealist’s potential, will aim, by any manipulation, necessary to co-opt that potential for good into wickedness. The outsider’s resolve is steely; such manipulation does not compromise, but strengthens the resolve to fight against fascism.

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The secret police break in. They arrest the naïve student, while the outsider escapes. We know how this sheltered student is willing to take up the cause for such a close friend; but this student’s desire for validation has always been stronger than any desire for reform. We know the outsider, forced into hiding, will become the partisan and become a symbol of wickedness for the state apparatus. This is not 1937, and it is not Munich. It is Oz.

A reading of Wicked as allegory for the crimes of Nazism is the last thing I expected to get out of it, but it’s there; subtle, initially, so that at first I thought I was just imagining things, but once you’ve seen it, there’s no doubt, and I can’t believe that no one is writing about the unique and unmistakeable context in which, on a level just shy of the surface, this film takes place.

Wicked goes deep into the psychology of resistance, more than you might expect of a PG movie-musical. Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba fights against beastly injustice with the strength of someone who is born green (there’s the physical deformity I mentioned earlier), with strong acting and stronger singing lungs. We cheer for her against the odds, as she plays the rebel against a fascist state which means to vilify her for good in the eyes of the unquestioning collaborating masses of München Munchkintown. The film’s beginning foresees the Wicked Witch’s well-known end, an end which is, like her, in her own words, “beautifully tragic”. The popular Galinda is played by Ariana Grande, who sings as well as expected, delivers comic lines better than expected – and infuriates the audience with a blitheness and a moral compass unsettlingly askew.

The film works at the intersections of more than one social issue; viewers can expect to take home a lasting message about bullying, racial inequalities, and ableism. These ills are given a treatment that goes beyond simple identarian box-ticking, and with enough nuance that you can allow yourself to be lenient with any quibbles you might have; about, say, that garish, saturated colour-palette, like that of an AI-generated image, that pervades the film. (Don’t they have any cloudy days in Oz?)

Rather unsatisfyingly, much of the plot is left for Part two, because that’s where Hollywood’s at now. My friend and I, checking the time upon leaving the cinema, cried out in unison: “That was three hours?!” It seems that over the course of the century, we’ve wheeled back round to the likes of Fritz Lang’s five-hour, two-parter Die Nibelungen (1924). Wicked, nevertheless, makes for good watching if you and the kids have a few hours before dinner; likewise, if you have a few hours to fill with anti-fascist fervour before your underground, seditious pamphleteers’ meeting, this is the one.