The Sound of Music

I've approached most of the Best Picture winners I've watched with an open mind, save for a very small few. Musicals have been the genre I've overall dreaded most. It's my least favorite genre of movies. I find the interruption of the narrative for song and dance to be irritating, and songs are either pointless filler or exposition dumps. There are some exceptions -- I refuse to write off any genre, that's ignorance disguised as taste -- but it's the genre with the most uphill climb to start. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that a three hour musical that's so family-friendly it's on Disney+ to be enjoyable. Quite enjoyable. Not perfect, but I never felt the length or found myself checking the timer. Before this, the most recent Best Picture-winning musical I watched was Oliver!, and I found that a slog to get through, in no small part to paper-thin characters, a flimsy sequence of segments stitched together in place of a plot, and a lifeless lead character. Sound Of Music actually builds its characters and tells a story. Yes, it's a fairly simple story, and yes, it leans on what are now some rather shop-worn cliches, but things don't become cliches in movies without being shown to work, and Sound Of Music makes its elements work. Maria is bright and energetic, but also unsure of herself, and torn between her desire to devote herself to being a nun and her burgeoning love for Captain von Trapp. The Captain, meanwhile, starts off as stern and humorless, but it's easy to see he's hiding the grief he's afraid to face. There is an existing love interest, the Baroness, that could easily be a snide, conniving witch, but she's not; she is defensive, yes, and can tell Maria is however unwittingly encroaching on her relationship with the Captain, but her reactions are natural and normal. It really comes down to the acting from Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. I shouldn't have to sell anybody on these two legends of acting, so of course they're excellent here, too. I will say the movie is perhaps a bit too long, with a few too many reprisals of certain musical numbers. The last half hour is also a violent tonal shift, from a rollicking, sweet, romantic story to a tense and dramatic fleeing from the Nazis. It honestly feels stapled on and unnecessary. Still well done, but it's so different, it makes the end on a somewhat bittersweet note. Still, I am beyond surprised by how much I enjoyed this. The direction was gorgeous, the songs catchy and more often than not make sense in the context of the movie (and lack the everybody-in-town dance numbers), and the performances were as good as it gets. This is the kind of musical that can get people who don't like musicals on board. It worked for me.