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The Sound of the Best Musical

How the Sound of Music justifies the Musical genre.

By Danny DuffPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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The Sound of Music is the best musical because it's actually about music.

So I don’t really like musicals that much. I have a hard time getting over the whole, characters randomly bursting into song for no reason, thing. But The Sound of Music does something really interesting with the music that I think justifies the genre more than any other movie musical.

So The Sound of Music is about a nun named Maria who's not sure if she really wants to be a nun because she wants to be where the people are. She wants to see, wants to see them dancing. She ends up working as a nanny for this military captain man who lost his wife and has like a bunch of kids. She teaches them songs and stuff for like 3 hours and eventually Captain Military and Maria fall in love. That's basically it.

The main reason this movie works is that all of the songs are fuckin bangers. The Hills are Alive, Problem like Maria, Do a Deer, So Long Farewell, Climb Every Mountain, Brown Paper Packages Tied up in Strings, these are a few of my favourite things. All hits. The one song I don't really care for is the main love song between Maria and Captain Military. It comes right after I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen and is not nearly as good. It’s kind of a generic falling in love song. I also don't think they build up that relationship very well. At first they don't get along because he is serious military man, and she is singy-sing song lady, but then they sing this love song and now they do get along. You could also probably cut the goat song which is pretty much pointless, but even that one is fuckin' catchy.

Then like way late into the film, they're like, "Oh shit it’s 1938, and we're in Austria!" That's right the Nazis show up. This seems like it should be the main conflict in the film, and arguably this should be the initiating event, and not the beginning of act 3. For instance, Rocky doesn’t start his training till like an hour into the movie, but Rocky is only 2 hours long, whereas Sound of Music is 3 hours and the Nazis don't show up till almost 2 and half hours in.

But I think the movie actually makes this work. So the whole movie Julie Andrews has been teaching the kids these songs, and they’ve been singing and having a grand musical time. And then at the end they are performing their music at this theatre when the Nazis show up. They sing Austria's theme song: Edelweiss, and warm the hearts of the Austrians and the audience. And then at the end of their set, they use the So long, Farewell song from earlier to sneak off stage while all the Nazis are watching. So even though the movie subjects you to 2 hours and half hours of just people singing songs, it all pays off in the end because they literally use their music to escape the Nazis. And then they literally climb the mountains to escape out of Austria. Again, the song from earlier that was metaphorical comes back in a literal way.

And the best part is, it’s all based on a true story. The family Von Trapp are a real family that really sang songs and did shows and really escaped Nazi occupied Austria in the late 30s. So even though there's a bunch of songs and the movie is 3 hours long, it all pays off in the end because the music was used in a real way that effects the story in the climax of the film.

The Sound of Music, literally saves the characters from oppression.

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About the Creator

Danny Duff

Danny Duff is a writer and filmmaker. He likes writing about movies, TV, and sometimes video games.

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