Cabaret

Cabaret is very enjoyable with amazing music and excellent performances most notably Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Joel Grey as the Kit Kat Clubs host the Master of Ceremonies. Many of the scenes in this movie stuck with me for a while after watching particularly the 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' scene and 'If You Could See Her', both of these scenes struck out to me due to their sinister and underlying message beneath them. If You Could See Her is this fun song about our Master of Ceremonies or the Emcee singing about his love for a gorilla notably discussing her traits that make her like any other person despite her outwardly ugly appearance, he says "She's clever, she's smart, she reads music" not only telling the audience about her heightened intelligence but also her love for music, this is in great contrast to her animalist appearance. The song presents it self as funny and lighthearted all the way to the last line where the Emcee says "But if you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all" where suddenly we the audience realizes that this gorilla was actually just a horrible depiction of a Jewish girl, the song now is much more sinister and a lot less fun. Although I do think this movie is great their are some glaring issues. Firstly I do not care about these new characters at all most if not all the characters that were added to the movie and weren't in the musical were bland and boring to watch but luckily their screentime wasn't too high and when they were on screen it was accompanied by a character that wasn't boring. My second issue with this film is its departure from the original source material, this movie cuts out many characters or changes their entire personality, some of the characters that are cut or changed drastically were the housekeep Fraulein Schneider, the Jewish resident Herr Schultz, Fraulein Kost, and later to be revealed Nazi Ernst Ludwig. Many other small details are changed in this movie like the names of the Cabaret girls changing and the name change of Cliff to Brain. Along with the changes to characters another big change was the lack of songs, every song in this movie apart from the Kit Kat Club songs and 'Tomorrow Belongs to me' are cut, I think this severely neuters the plot and some of the depth within these characters. All around this movie is a great time, Cabaret fan or not. Watch it to see Liza Minnelli in her best role ever, would recommend.