I could have just selected a different movie; Christine Baranski has one of those careers where I could just pretend that I first think of her from another movie, and it wouldn’t be completely wrong. I did first see her in something else, but it simply isn’t where I first think of her. In both cases, I would say that the only reason she fails to steal the movie is that they are movies full of scene-stealing performances. I’d call them both ensemble movies, and I think that’s where Christine Baranski shines.
She’s also someone who can get you to turn on your opinion of a character with one line. Admittedly, that’s in no small part because the character she’s standing up against is evil instead of just petty and malicious, but still. In another actress, you might just role your eyes at a triumphant cry of, “Slipper socks. Medium!” Baranski makes it work. Oh, no similar redemption is written for various of her other characters, who often remain petty and malicious to the end, but she’s capable of it and capable of making you pleased with it.
She’s also best at a very specific kind of petty and malicious. Most of the characters for which I know her are concerned with status. Becky Martin-Granger would be shocked to hear you say it, of course, but there’s no surprise that the pilgrims are all blonde and perfect and WASPy. Wednesday and the others can come to that awful camp because they’re rich, but they’re the wrong kind of rich, and being rich in any way other than the way Becky and Gary are rich is almost as bad as being poor.
Apparently, in the original stage show of Chicago, the character of Mary Sunshine is played by a man in drag. I’m glad they didn’t go with that for the movie, and indeed Christine Baranski is one of many people in that great ensemble to give a great performance; it’s a staggeringly well-cast movie, in my opinion. Baranski’s the third person from it I’ve written about, come to that. Several of the others are due. She is nowhere near close to stealing that movie, but she isn’t given much to do in it—and she is also one of the best parts of Into the Woods and frankly higher on my list of “people who should have played the Witch than Meryl Streep.”
Honestly, I think the only character I’ve ever seen Baranski play who’s just genuinely good is Katherine Archer from The Birdcage. Here she not only fails to steal the movie, she’s easy to miss. She plays the biological mother who has been gone from her son’s life pretty much since he was born. But she is given the opportunity to do one good thing for him, and she does not hesitate to do it. Raising him was just not something she was able to do, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love him. Circumstances are just against her, both when it comes to raising her son and when it comes to being there in time to help him. But she tries. And she gets to meet her son. It’s a good moment.
