The best scene in Wicked doesn't have any singing in it

Wicked opened in theaters this past weekend to glowing reviews and an explosive box office; the movie has made $164 million worldwide, already recouping its $145 million budget (although it probably has a while to go before it makes back what I imagine was an equally huge marketing budget; you couldn't avoid hearing about this thing). It's a hit.

I loved the movie. I'm a big fan of musicals generally, but they have a spotty reputation at the movies. Wicked adapted Stephen Schwartz's musical with all the glitz and gusto it needed, helped along by excellent casting in the form of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda, the future Wicked Witch of the West and Good Witch of the North respectively.

After wading through middling movie musicals like Sweeney Todd, Les Misérables, and Joker: Folie à Deux — all of which give too much screentime to performers who are clearly more comfortable with acting than singing — it was beyond refreshing to hear Erivo and Grande, two trained singers, sing the music in Wicked as it was meant to be sung. That said, the best scene in Wicked didn't have any singing it at all: it was the scene where these two characters finally come to an accord.

The set-up feels like something out of a sitcom, depending as it does on an escalating series of misunderstandings. Elphaba and Glinda are forced to be roommates at college and take an immediate dislike to each other. Glinda is jealous of Elphaba's innate magical talent and Elphaba sees Glinda as an empty-headed mean girl. Glinda plays a cruel trick on Elphaba by giving her a pointy black hat and then inviting her to attend a dance at the Ozdust Ballroom, knowing that the hat is unfashionable and will open Elphaba to ridicule. (Personally I thought it looked pretty cool but I don't know anything about fashion in Oz so let's move on.)

Around the same time, Glinda helps set up Elphaba's wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose with a boy she likes. Glinda does it mostly so the boy will stop mooning over her, but it makes Nessarose happy and Elphaba appreciates that. To repay that good deed, Elphaba insists that Glinda be allowed to join an exclusive sorcery seminar, something Glinda badly wants. Naturally, Glinda only learns of this kindness after Elphaba has already shown up at the Ozdust in the allegedly stupid-looking hat. Everyone starts laughing at Elphaba, who refuses to dignify their ridicule by breaking down; instead, she decides to dance alone. Glinda, feeling like an utter piece of shit, joins her. Because Glinda is popular and pretty, everyone else starts doing the dance lest they be left out of the latest trend, social disaster is averted, and the two leave the dance as friends.

Had I not choked back my manly tears in the theater — I can only imagine what the folks around me thought of the noises — this scene would have had me bawling. I've always been a total sucker for surprising expressions of kindness in movies and TV. Glinda was an asshole and then she experienced a moment of painful guilt that inspired her to open up her heart to something new, and she changed. I absolutely eat this stuff up. At its heart, Wicked is about the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, and I'd say that this scene is the hinge on which that relationship turns, even moreso than the show-stopping "Defying Gravity" song at the end of the movie.

And it's a wordless dance number. I would say the scene is more "grounded" than the movie's musical numbers, but that would be a lie; the dance is carefully choreographed and it takes place in a fantasy dance hall where talking squirrels play the drums. This scene is as campy and earnest as the rest of the movie, which somehow gives it a directness it might not have if it were more "realistic." That's the charm of the musical format; freed from the restrictions of realism and logic, emotion can be much closer to the surface. Go too far and that becomes cringey, but do it right and it's the kind of epic, crowd-pleasing melodrama the movies could use more of.

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