The Greatest Showman Opening Scene Analysis

Oprah Winfrey once said, “The biggest adventure someone can take is to live the life of their dreams.” Michael Gracey’s musical hit The Greatest Showman was released on December 8, 2017. The film stars Hugh Jackman as a young, orphaned, but also ambitious Phineas Taylor Barnum with a mind full of imagination and adventure. Thirsty for innovation and success, Phineas; his childhood love, Charity Hallett; and his two daughters, Caroline and Helen, risk everything to open a wax museum. When it becomes unsuccessful, Caroline and Helen give P.T. the idea of using something alive, causing him to soon shift his focus to the unique and peculiar humans of this world. He introduces his extraordinary, never before seen live acts on a circus stage. P.T.
To start, in the opening scene, viewers watch Barnum perform with his circus, and the camera moves along with him as he acknowledges all of his performers. Eventually, the camera circles P.T. and everything around him becomes black. He turns around to see himself back as a penniless boy gazing into a store window at a beautiful red suit and top hat. The use of this iris transition from the first scene to the second shows the viewers that in that moment, the opening scene was just a figment of young Barnum’s imagination. It shows us his dream of doing something great with his life. Another iris transition that has an impact on the theme is during the third scene when Charity and P.T. are older and married. The second scene ends with the two lover on top of a roof dancing together and singing about their endless love. The camera then moves in on the two and viewers can see the scene changing in the background from the rooftops to their little apartment. The camera moves out to reveal that Charity is very pregnant representing that lots of time has passed since she and P.T. first moved to the city. Wipe is another transition used in this movie. An example of how a wipe effectively showed the theme happens when young Helen starts practicing in her first pair of ballet shoes. She has wanted these shoes for a long time, and now that she finally has
Since this movie is a musical, the words of the songs the characters perform aid viewers in knowing how the characters are feeling during each moment. This effectively helps represent and show the theme of the movie because watchers follow along with Barnum, in chronological order, through all his hard work. For example, during the opening song “The Greatest Show”, P.T. sings the words, “Your fever dream, can’t you see it getting closer… Impossible comes true, it’s taking over you… And the walls can’t stop us now.” These words in the song help watchers infer that Phineas is excited and won’t stop until he accomplishes his dream; also, nothing is going to get in his way. Another example includes the second song of the film, “A Million Dreams”. In this song, a young boy version of Phineas T. Barnum sings to his best friend Charity. The words he sing to her include, “They can say it all sounds crazy. They can say I’ve lost my mind. I don’t care if the call me crazy. We can live in a world that we design… A million dreams are keeping me awake.. A million dreams is all it’s going to take for the world we’re going to make.” This song represents the theme by showing that there is no age limit for dreaming, and dreams teach people to work hard for success no matter where they come from. The music in this film is one of the biggest ways the theme is