Words for My Enjoyment

Why The Film ‘The Sound of Music’ Is Completely Unrealistic

April 4th, 2007

If you haven’t seen the movie The Sound of Music you may now go to lunch.

If you have, then you’re more than aware that people often call it one of the most “significant movie musicals ever.” Based on a successful book turned Broadway production by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the musical tells the story of the von Trapp family — run by a widowed WWI captain without a wife, he hires a woman (Maria) to take care of his mischievous children and everyone sings, falls in love and generally lives happily ever after. The film version, starring Julie Andrews, was also wildly successful despite one very significant issue…

…that the film The Sound of Music is completely unrealistic.

Let’s get a few of the simple, easy reasons out of the way from the outset. The songs and their lyrics are mostly unrealistic and don’t draw most viewers into the drama of the story. For example, when Maria sings the song “My Favorite Things” and I hear her tell me that some of her favorite things include “raindrops on roses,” “whiskers on kittens,” “bright copper kettles” and “warm woolen mittens” (and even “brown paper packages tied up with strings”) — I pretty much spit my coffee out (if I drank coffee, that is).

Totally unrealistic.

“Videogame consoles and sharp HDTVs,
American Idol and gleaming black Humvees,
Celebrities getting caught in controversial flings,
These are a few of my favorite things…”

Totally realistic.

But when you’re crooning away about cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels and doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles and geeze that fly with the moon on their wings, I pretty much have a huge issue signing on to you and your list of your favorite things.

And yet, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why The Sound of Music is completely unrealstic.

In fact, despite a slew of other songs that really don’t connect with the audience or seem any more real than the Smurfs, the biggest most unrealistic thing about The Sound of Music is the most iconic sequence from the entire feature film. It involves Julie Andrews running out into an open field, with wheat and barley sprouting up all around her — and watching her sing an entire song while spinning in circles.

Hasn’t anyone ever heard of vertigo?

When I was in junior high school and college, I was a part of an elite group of singers — an elite chorus, if you will. We practiced songs and elaborate performances involving songs and there was always one thing no one could ever do no matter how skilled in the arts of singing they were.

That one thing was spinning.

If you’ve ever tried spinning and doing anything else at all, you’ve probably noticed three things. That it makes you dizzy, that it completely ruins your concentration and that more often than not when the fluid in your ear canal reaches your outer ear, that you feel a kind of debilitating pain shoot from your skull down into your wrists which disables your ability to use your hands to break any fall you may be gearing up to be involved in, thus making the act of singing and spinning an even more violent scenario than previously thought.

And yet there’s Julie Andrews, singing and spinning in what appears to be a pretty overwhelming pollen-heavy locale.

Which brings me to my next bit of unrealism. If you’re allergic, which Julie Andrews happens to be (classic Hollywood gossip consistently tells the tale of her bout with allergies and her quest to get allergy shots to get rid of her aversion to pollen) and then you’re spinning around in a heavy-pollen environment, your gonna get all stuffy. And dizzy. And the last thing you’re going to want to do is spin in pollen, while attempting to sing a song.

It just doesn’t work.

Which is one of the major main big reasons why The Sound of Music is completely unrealistic. And just like every time you watch The Family Stone and can’t buy into the fact that Dermot Mulroney and Sarah Jessica Parker would simply show up to his house as boyfriend/girlfriend and then each hook up with eachother’s siblings… Or just like every time you watch Star Wars and have trouble buying into the fact that Luke would really be able to nail that one shot into the Death Star’s air-conditioning valve without any misses… It’s the same reason why I can’t watch The Sound of Music without throwing my hands up in frustration at the ridiculousness of it all.

And don’t even get me started on that song Do-Re-Mi.

Sure, Doe is a female deer and all and Me is the name I call myself — but La? A note to follow Sew? There’s no damn note in the entire musical scale called “Sew.” Come on, musical-makers! You’re killing me!!

It just gets me, people. It gets me bad.

Posted under Julie Andrews, Movies, Musicals, The Sound of Music, Unrealism. |