Mark Reviews Movies: COME FROM AWAY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 9, 2021

When the lights of Broadway went dark and the stages were left empty on account of the ongoing pandemic, it formed a gap of art and culture. One of the unexpected benefits of the absence of live theater, though, is represented by Come from Away, a filmed version of the stage show of the same name. It's not adaptation, per se, since the film is a recorded performance of the show, which means we're going to have to go through yet another round of people claiming that such an endeavor "isn't a real movie." No one has ever made a convincing argument of that claim, but when has that ever stopped anyone from making terrible claims without a shred of logic or evidence?

Anyway, it's again important to note that this is a real film, capturing a real event that really took place in May of 2021. It was a time when the theaters of Broadway were still closed (In theory, they'll re-open in a matter of weeks, but in theory, people should make every effort possible to put an end to a highly infectious and deadly disease—for whatever use theories are worth) and no one had staged a production of anything on the Great White Way for more than a year.

That makes this film, not only a document of a stage musical, but also a document of a tiny, encouraging piece of history amidst the sickness and death of a global pandemic. For about two hours, the actors on the stage and the audience within the auditorium of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater joined together in that unique communal experience that is live theater. Christopher Ashley, the film's director who also helmed the stage production itself, lets us watch the audience come through the theater doors from an empty Times Square, take their seats, and wait for the metaphorical curtain to rise. The sequence is brief, but it feels a bit momentous.

Otherwise, though, the film is simply the theatrical production, played on a mostly and intentionally bare stage and captured by multiple cameras, set at various angles and usually moving in complement to the action on stage. It's not the first film to do something like this in recent memory, and hopefully, it won't be the last.

The cost and location restrictions of new and even new-ish stage productions are so limiting for so many people. While no recorded version of a stage show on any size screen could ever capture or re-capture the experience of attending live theater, a film such as this one—with its dedication to presenting a stage show as it happened and with a far closer proximity to the stage than even those in the front rows would have—at least gives us a taste of it.

This is a show that definitely benefits from that increased sense of intimacy. The story, written and with musical compositions by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, is itself a form of documentary, too—in a much broader notion of the word. Immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, all flights within and to the United States were grounded. In the small town of Gander, somewhere in the Canadian island province of Newfoundland, 38 planes—along with some 7,000 airline passengers and crew members—had to land on the runways of a mostly abandoned airport.

Years later, Sankoff and Hein interviewed Gander locals and some of those passengers. Here, their stories—of helping each other, learning the unthinkable news of those attacks, and finding some comfort in the basic and out-of-the-way decency of which humans are capable—are given voice and song.

We know these stories and words are authentic, especially because Sankoff and Hein evade some of the basics of traditional song composition in a good portion of the musical numbers. Melodies aren't clear. The rhythm of lyrics might not entirely match that of the music. Phrases don't rhyme. The whole of the effect gives a sense of the incomplete and off-kilter, which is, in a way, exactly what a story of this day and the days following it should be.

At its best, the show is a surprisingly affecting experience. At its least, the script might try to do a few too many things in terms of narrative (Some stories are established, only to be overshadowed or forgotten as the major ones form) and tone (It's basically a comedy set amidst a tragedy, and sometimes the show seems to be evading the latter), with a few too many characters in the mix.

As a piece of technical theater, though, the musical is a most impressive accomplishment of minimalistic but elaborate staging. Ashley's film coverage ensures that we see his theatrical mechanics at work, using only several chairs and a couple of tables to convey a wide range of settings (aboard planes and busses, in an air traffic control center, and at various locales within Gander and the surrounding area). That kind of complex simplicity extends to the ensemble cast, as well. Actors play multiple roles here, adding or eliminating pieces of costuming and adopting entirely different dialects, physicalities, and personalities.

In other words, there's a cohesive sense of whole to the stage production, and the filming of Come from Away allows us to appreciate it up close and from multiple angles. The play's the thing in a film like this, though, and it's definitely one that, barring the ability to see it live, should be seen in this medium.

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