Screen adaptation of ‘In the Heights’ most joyous film of year.
“In the Heights” is a celebration of a neighborhood, a culture and a type of music. But with its release now, after a year of delays due to the COVID19 pandemic, it also feels like it’s celebrating the return of movies and the slow but steady return to normal life.
If you want to see joy onscreen, if you want to feel joy at the movies, you will not have a better chance in 2021.
Directed by Bay Area native Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”), “In the Heights” is the screen adaptation of LinManuel Miranda’s first Broadway hit. Transfers from one medium to another are trickier than they seem. The stage relies on an audience’s imagination, but the screen makes all things possible. The challenge for Chu was to make “In the Heights” look, in actual fact, just as colorful, glorious and fulfilling as the emotions it incites.
Chu succeeds and, in the process, he creates a visual landscape that’s as bursting with brilliance as Miranda’s lyrics. Everywhere you look, there’s something to see. Turn your attention to any corner of the screen, and there will be some colorful detail you might have missed. It’s a world that is grounded in realism, but with the vivid haziness of nostalgic reminiscence. It’s a New York without ugliness, where breaking into song and dance seems like the normal response to beauty.
The musical takes place in Washington Heights, the northernmost point of Manhattan, a neighborhood made up mostly of people of Dominican ancestry, some immigrants and
some born in the United States. Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owns a momandpop grocery store, and he has two dreams that are somewhat in opposition: The first is to someday return to the Dominican Republic. The second is to win the affections of Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who works in a salon but whose dream is to move downtown and become a designer.
Though Usnavi is the main focus, “In the Heights” aspires to be the portrait of an entire neighborhood’s dreams and struggles. And so we meet others, such as Nina (Leslie Grace), who’s enrolled at Stanford University but is thinking of not returning; and her father, Kevin (Jimmy Smits), a local businessman willing to put himself into hock to assure his daughter’s success.
Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the book for the musical, also wrote the screenplay. It’s not the smoothest piece of work, but its main fault is easy to forgive. It has the awkwardness of its author having too much to say. Technically, “In the Heights” might have been better at two hours rather than at 143 minutes in length. But who knows? It might not have been the same movie. In any case, though it drags a bit in the middle, “In the Heights” recovers soon enough, and everything that’s good about it makes up for any minor flaw.
It’s alive. Art is either alive or dead, and this movie is emphatically and exuberantly living, energized by what can only truly be described as love. The movie’s love is for the place, for the characters and for all their dreams. In movies, as in life, love is rare. It makes everything better, and it must be respected.
Ramos has the task of filling the shoes of Miranda himself, who played the role on Broadway. Sometimes, as in the opening title number, he even seems to be imitating him (and doing a good job of it), but he gradually brings his own kind of warmth and makes the role his own. (Miranda has a small role asa piragua ice vendor.)
As Vanessa, Barrera has a combination of fierceness and softness that’s moving, and Grace, as the intellectual Nina, brings the outsider perspective of someone rediscovering a hometown she’s already known.
Twice in the film, Nina stops and closes her eyes so she can listen to the sound of her neighborhood. The second time she does it, we realize that somehow — even if we’ve never been there, even if we’ve never given it a thought until two hours earlier — we’ve come to love it, too.