In the Heights, now playing in cinemas.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Many years before Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first musical was In The Heights: a love letter to the neighbourhood in which he grew up. It is arguably less technically sophisticated than his later Pulitzer Prize-winning ode to America’s first treasury secretary, but its pure celebration of the Latinx communities of Washington Heights in New York has won it legions of fans and four Tony Awards. After years of development, it has finally been made into a movie, and its fans will no doubt be very pleased indeed with how it has turned out.
There is always the temptation with musical adaptations to obsess over small changes and miss the bigger picture. In The Heights is one film where the bigger picture is so exuberant, colourful and full of life that you forget any delusions that you could have done it better yourself given a chance in the director’s chair.
Firstly, Anthony Ramos is phenomenally good in the lead role of Usnavi, illuminating the screen every time he appears and always finding the perfect balance between goofy charm and sincere concern for the serious issues affecting his community. This Bodega owner pines for Vanessa, the salon worker with big dreams of making it in the downtown fashion world, played by an assured and sparky Melissa Barrera. Her character is a little more fleshed out than in the stage version, which works wonders for our investment in this front-and-centre relationship.
Fans of Nina and Benny – the show’s other pair of young lovers – might feel a little short-changed by their relegation to second priority. However, they will absolutely not be disappointed by Corey Hawkins and Leslie Grace’s performances. From their early scenes in Benny’s dispatch booth to their climactic dance on the side of an apartment block, their talent and chemistry make every moment of surreal musical magic feel not just earned, but right.
The small cuts to their parts are understandable given the time constraints of a blockbuster Hollywood movie, but it is disappointing that we do not get to see Benny confront the same hurdles of racism and prejudice from Nina’s father as in the stage version. As well as making his story that much less compelling by removing a key obstacle, there is another important side effect. In The Heights has been criticised since its debut for side-lining the issues affecting Washington Heights’s black Latinx community. Removing Benny’s struggle with prejudice only takes the film further away from the reality it aims to reflect.
Usnavi’s cousin Sonny, however, sees an improvement over his stage persona. His story takes in the plight of “Dreamers” and undocumented migrants, in addition to the original Sonny’s broadside against gentrification. Gregory Diaz IV takes full advantage of the cinematic close-ups: he is so expressive in the face of what becomes an incredibly personal fight, it is impossible not to root for him.
It’s hard to fault a single performance in this film. The salon girls Daniela, Carla and Cuca (Daphne Rubin-Vega, Stephanie Beatriz and Dascha Polanco) provide delightful comic relief; Graffiti Pete is portrayed as a big-hearted rascal by Noah Catala; and Jimmy Smits does an incredible job playing Nina’s loving but sometimes stern father Kevin.
A great highlight of the cast – as she also was when she originated the role on Broadway all those years ago – is Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia. With the screen time she is afforded by this somewhat abridged adaptation, Merediz manages to convey not just heart, but entire generations of history and heritage. Her swansong ‘Paciencia Y Fe’ is utterly heart-wrenching and worth the ticket price alone.
Miranda himself makes a cameo as fan favourite Piragüero, and even the most minor roles see the appearance of some objectively brilliant if not yet Hollywood-famous faces, including RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Valentina and Hadestown’s Patrick Page. It is heartening to see a movie musical that takes its casting so seriously and does not rely on big names for the sake of big names. Miranda has stated that one of the missions of this film is to make bankable stars of its diverse and superbly talented cast. If Hollywood producers are paying any attention at all, it certainly will.
On its debut, In The Heights marked the first time that hip-hop music had been integrated into the Broadway idiom in a commercially and critically successful way. Miranda’s songs are, of course, catchy and rich, but it is also worth celebrating the original show’s musical director and co-producer of this film’s soundtrack, Alex Lacamoire, whom Miranda credits with perfecting the arrangements of the numbers. There is a sublime fusion and tension between the brass of traditional Broadway and the brass of traditional Latin music; the rhythmically complex beats of street drumming and the simpler but harder rocking beats of a modern musical; and powering it all along: those impeccably written and rhymed verses. The band in my head will be playing to the distinctive rhythms of Washington Heights for some time.
This is a movie utterly unashamed to be musical. There are no apologies made for the fact its characters sing. Instead, Washington Heights is made so colourful, so vibrant and so magical, that bursting into song feels like the only appropriate response. Jon M. Chu’s assured direction luxuriates in the fine details of home-cooked meals, local fashions and hairstyles, before some of the most frenetic and ambitious dance scenes I’ve seen on screen for some time.
Some of the best revisions come from screenwriter Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the original show’s book. As personal as this show is to Miranda, he has been very open about the impact Hudes has had on making the story work as well as it does. Here, she frames the action as a yarn Usnavi is telling a younger generation, which proves to be a brilliant device. Stage Usnavi is at his best playing directly to the audience, and it would have been a tragedy to lose those moments of narration.
The political and social commentary of In The Heights is sometimes overlooked, but it has always cut a lot deeper than some might expect. On stage, a lot of time was spent acclimatising the predominantly affluent, older, white Broadway audience to a world “north of Ninety-Sixth Street”. Here, with a diverse cast and crew and a hungry audience of millions of fans around the world, In The Heights stands as a triumphant celebration of a people who once struggled to get their story told at all. A spellbinding cinematic firework piercing the cultural blackout of the last 15 months.
Ian Bowkett
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