8. Cabaret – Tomorrow Belongs to Me
Context is everything. There are far better songs in this list than this one, but it deserves its place here, capturing as it does a genuine moment of aspiration and ambition in the hearts of the citizens of the pre-Reich Weimar Republic. Germany had been crippled by reparations payments following their defeat in World War I and was on its knees in the 1920’s. Against this backdrop, Cabaret gives us the shifting relationships between a number of characters in Berlin, mostly revolving around the cabaret club that gives the film its title, while the National Socialist party begins to rise.
The song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” is essentially a song about Germans looking to the future with hope, believing that they can and will be restored to former glory, though of course we see the moment through the lens of a history they have yet to create and in particular the path that would be taken under Hitler’s leadership towards recapturing that “glory” and the unimaginable human devastation that path would create.
In much the same way as a throwaway line at the end of Fiddler on the Roof (“we’re heading to Poland”) resonates with profound sadness, as we and the script-writer know the end results of that decision even though the characters don’t, Tomorrow Belongs To Me impacts us far beyond the superficial effects of a song in a film. The grand, powerful “tomorrow” to which many of them look is ultimately to be one of pain, death, destruction and misery. Yet all they can see is glory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN7r0Rr1Qyc
