When I was about five years of age I flew on a plane from Puerto Rico to the sunshine state of Florida, my mother taking us to our new home where we would meet up with my father who went ahead of us to get our living situation taken care of beforehand. After realizing how much I hated flying, we touched down and I almost felt like I was in a new world. I had been used to tropical climates year around, but that particularly year Florida hat been hit by a really cold winter, and it was a shock to my system to see my breath visible in the chill. I had gotten used to everyone around me speaking the Spanish language that I had just been finally grasping then, in my early years of school, but the language in this new, strange land was suddenly uncommunicable to me. Because we touched down in Orlando, I was greeted by miles of billboards reminding me we were close to Disney World, which for a very young kid growing up in Puerto Rico and watching old Disney movies seemed like a faraway land. We had a long drive to Tampa where the rest of my life would be situated until I achieved adulthood.
In time I realized Florida winters weren’t as bad as elsewhere and the cold was an exception to the weather in the state anyways. I eventually grasped English thanks to my mother forcing my brother and I to start watching movies without the English dub, so much so that today, while I can watch a Spanish language film or show without subtitles on, I sound like a foreigner traveling to Spain and trying to talk to the locals with little success when I speak the language. And in time I got used to Disney World being just an hour’s drive away, but I also realized soon enough it wasn’t a cheap stay. I was just starting grade school when I arrived to the states and Puerto Rico is technically U.S soil, but for the time it took me to get used to my new home I felt like a stranger in a new land.
When it comes to Puerto Rican culture, I can’t say I grew up embracing it as much as my father likely wished I had. I didn’t grow up learning to love Spanish music (Save for Ruben Blades and Willie Colon’s Tiburon – which took me until adulthood to realize was a song protesting U.S involvement in Central America and not a fun song about a shark at the beach). Puerto Rican entertainment on television bored me, and I didn’t find the island’s folklore or history particularly interesting either. By the time I was a teenager I was a listener of rock and metal, I had gotten into anime and classic monster features, and my interest when it came to history was in U.S and British subjects. Even though my parents spoke Spanish at home, cooked the same food, and continued to play the same music once over here, Puerto Rico was pretty much just a place I came from to me. Even though my dad would play the Spanish radio station when he drove us to school, and my parents would put on the feed to the popular television channels from the home island after dinner, I never had any particular pride for my heritage.
When I was about fifteen my parents flew us back as part of a big family reunion. Though it reaffirmed just how much I loathe flying, I found myself intrigued by the different food on the Island and the abundance of homecooked meals being served up by small business restaurants. The mountainous regions and the beautiful beaches were a sight to behold, and I was mesmerized by learning the number one show on the island was that of a literal Muppet nicknamed “La Comay” giving out the news of the day to the residents. Not that I learned to love Spanish music either, but by the time I got back to the states I was actually keeping up with the aforementioned news show and learned to appreciate some of the financial advantages I had been blessed with here in the states over growing up in an island plagued with a history of poverty.
I didn’t give my heritage much thought again until life came and changed gears for me again. In time I was separated from my family more and more as an adult. I left home to live in another county with much less of a Latino population than the one I had grew up in, surrounded more so by my wife’s southern family where I came to appreciate fried meals and finally had others I could exchange conversations with on rock music. I also got into bourbon, not rum like most Puerto Ricans do. In time though, the lack of exposure to my heritage would make me appreciate it more. Through the appreciation of classic big band I’ve grown accustomed to, and at times fond of, classic Spanish tunes. I realized how beneficial my growing up and learning about cooking other food my wife and her family had never eaten was when I could introduce it to them. I’d still rather play Led Zeppelin than El Gran Combo, and I can watch hours of docs on British Prime Ministers instead of Spanish television, but compared to where I was mentally when I lived with my parents, I now have more Puerto Rican pride than I’ve ever had since.
That Caribbean Latino pride is in full effect this past week through the release of the new movie musical, In The Heights. The film is an adaptation of the 2008 Tony award winning stage musical conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame himself. Set in the Latino heavy Washington Heights area of New York it tells the tale of its younger residents with dreams of escaping their current situations and having those very goals tested in the midst of a blackout and with questions as to who won the big lottery prize of 96,000 dollars. Characters include: Usnavi — a storekeeper with hopes to move back to the Dominican Republic; Venessa — the young woman he crushes on who wants to become a fashion designer; his best friend Benny who finds his life uphanded when his ex Nina returns from college ready to drop out at the protest of her father; and a supporting cast of characters such as his younger cousin Sonny who faces tribulations through his immigration status, and the show stealer of the whole thing, the matriarch of the block in Abuela Claudia.
Story-wise it’s a pretty simple and traditional plot, but what really sets this one apart are the musical numbers which are filled with influences of rap and Spanish music – particularly the Spanish music I grew up hearing coming from my dad’s radio. Music influences from the Latino culture are especially present in three songs – The Club, Carnaval Del Barrio, and another one I’ll get to later. The former plays to the beats of the merengue music that my parents would dance to at our Christmas parties and the latter includes folklore musical lyrics that almost bring me back to my days growing up around a Latino environment. It’s like nothing I’ve heard in other musicals that I’ve loved; it’s my heritage and culture presented in a form of storytelling that I enjoy but always saw through the eyes of white producers and song writers. Don’t get me wrong; I love the classics like My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, or The Sound Of Music and I just as much enjoy the more modern stuff like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Chicago. But none of those have the flavor of the place I came from, of the environment and culture that I grew up around. The heritage I took for granted until I was further away from it all.
And as if this musical couldn’t speak to my soul enough, Director Jon Chu’s attention to detail in the choreography which includes an amazing homage to the movies musical icon Busby Berkeley produced in the song 96,000 and even an ode to Fred Astaire’s dance across the walls and roofs in Royal Wedding for the song When The Sun Comes Down, linking a modern musical with a Latin flavor to Hollywood classics.
As of this writing I’ve watched the film six times in four days including three trips to the theatre, one in which I dragged my musicals-hating brother to come along and he left the theatre declaring it one of the best films of the year. I’ve seen films I instantly fell in love with, but this is different. I had an almost spiritual experience watching this for the first time last Thursday night. It was as if someone dared to make one of those grand musicals I love but made it more infused with the culture that I know. Seeing Usnavi sing about his feelings of being stuck in the same place with the go to for us in Café Bustelo coffee behind him, merengue playing as they hit the club and dancing like my relatives do at the family parties, the dinner table set with food I grew up with, and Abuela Claudia singing about what it was like to come from Cuba to New York.
Oh yes, that’s the song I wanted to bring up earlier – Paciencia Y Fe or in translation, Patience and Faith. As Abuela Claudia fades away, she has a spiritual experience walking through a literal tunnel of light via the subway as dancers around her match with her words on her experience growing up in a new land she had to learn English in, had to get used to new weather, and had to learn to make her own living — the very things that I can relate to even as a much younger person from another Latin Caribbean island. As she looks back on her life and recounts her struggles, I can’t help but tear up. All six times I’ve watched this film I always need to grab the napkins or tissues to wipe my eyes when this number comes on. It also helps that she’s played by Olga Merediz who turns in such a stellar performance that she might have a longshot chance to get an Oscar nomination for it. The cinematography, the choreography, the performance, the situation at hand in the story, and how relatable it all is to me just makes for what might be the best scene in cinema this year.
Those who have seen In The Heights have mostly fallen in love with it. The film is in the high nineties with critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, is in the high eighties in Metacritic, has an A grade on Cinemascore, and has a high score with the stuffy types that dominate Letterboxd. The film’s album has premiered at number one on iTunes, and the passion for this movie has propelled it into becoming the first real Best Picture contender even though I would objectively still place it just outside the bubble when it comes to likely nominees. The only major bad news has been a tepid box office and slow streaming numbers as general audiences (Especially here in the states) continue to prioritize franchise films over original flicks — which is a whole other subject I’ll get into maybe another day.
For the longest time The Shop Around The Corner was my favorite film of all-time. I still love that movie to pieces. I’ve written about it before and why I recommend it every Christmas season. I never thought as someone whose top favorite films tend to have come out before his parents were born that if that film was ever surpassed it would be by a film that came out in 2021. It’s not something any cinephile worth their salt does lightly, especially when it involves a brand spanking new film. But I can’t deny what is so obvious to me. In The Heights speaks to me as a fan of musicals, as a fan of homages to classical Hollywood, as a sucker for stories of chasing dreams, getting the girl, and community. But more importantly it does all that with characters that look like me, have the same culture as me, and have had the same experiences as me. It makes me laugh, tap my foot, and even cry. As I said in my original review over at my newsletter, In the Heights isn’t just the movie of the year to me, or the movie of the summer, but perhaps the movie of my lifetime that I’ve been waiting for. It has become my favorite movie of all time and I’ve seen a lot of really damn good films.
I don’t know what the rest of the box office run is going to look like for this one. I’m going to do everything in my power as I follow the awards scene to be as objective about its chances as I should be, but neither of those things change that this film has touched my soul. I think I understand now why some African Americans and Asian Americans reacted to films like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians like they did. I only hope stories like this become less of an exception and more of the rule in the near future. With pacienca y fe I’m cautiously optimistic that will become more of the case in due time even if it won’t happen overnight. Now if you excuse me, I feel like planning another screening of In The Heights…
To my extremely casual ear, the Caribbean influences (or at least a ‘traditional’ Caribbean sound) really didn’t start to become apparent until a few songs in. But that’s probably only because ‘hey this sounds a lot like Hamilton’ because Miranda himself has a distinct sound.
For that matter, In the Heights could be considered in the same ‘franchise’/‘cinematic universe’ as Hamilton, with the whole ‘orphan from the Caribbean affected by a major hurricane trying to make it in Manhattan during changing times’ going on. (And really, it’s almost certain that this movie, in development purgatory for a decade, finally got green lit on the strength of Miranda’s now star power)
I enjoyed it. But I must say, there was no real plot, and even the ‘twist’ is apparently something that wasn’t in the original stage production? (Although, again, knowing nothing going in, I thought the apagón was going to shake out into some sort of Do The Right Thing kinda setup, instead of a pleasant exuberant street party. Which, yeah, was probably the point)Report