The Magic Flute
A little over a year ago, I discovered that Stephen Fry and Kenneth Brannagh had done a rendition of the Magic Flute for the cinema in a WWI-type setting. This week I got to see it. It was fantastic.
First the downside:
The actors were not movie actors. They were opera singers/stage actors and this did show from time to time. This was good at times...it is an opera and to remain faithful to the music a few movie rules were broken - and it was good that it was people used to theatre rules who dealt with them. However, closeups were occasionally bad - especially when the singing was done in the style of internal monologue.
The interlude gives us a stylized view of WWI through the eyes of an impressionist artist. Lots of colour rather than the grimy horror it was. Instead of dark green uniforms, bright red and blue were used. Instead of mud, pastoral fields with butterflies. A push begins, with the 'blue' side making an advance with a small orchestra rather than a military band (violins instead of brass instruments basically). The main visual here is a captain telling people where to go and helping his men taking occasional potshots.
Having action during the interlude is something generally avoided in the Magic Flute, with good reason - but cinema makes it feasible. However the captain character was clearly being a theatre captain. His men were dying around him and he made some comical points to useless places in an effort to 'look like you are giving your men orders'. Maybe this was an intentional affect, but to me it kind of distracted me from the music - which would seem to kind of ruin the point somewhat.
Anyway, things quickly turn serious. And we see Tamino (Joseph Kaiser) get trapped by a gas grenade (he's on the blue team). This was a stroke of genius in my opinion. In the Opera Tamino is getting defeated by a great serpent, in the WWI setting the serpent was a tendril of mustard gas. And so Tamino cries for help "Zu Hülfe! zu Hülfe!" - the film is an English translation. Weirdly I spent a lot of the film translating from English back into the original German as best I could. This scene is the first reference I caught to Wilfred Owen, this one possibly setting up the latter one in some kind of strange dramatic irony. Anyway for now, our protagonist engages in an ecstasy of fumbling before passing out and getting rescued by the three ladies in the guise of nuns/medics. They clearly fancy Tamino and start showing off their cleavage. It's a wonderful song, but not much happens and quickly we find ourselves being introduced to Papageno.
Papageno is one of my favourite Opera characters of all time. He seems to be working (blue team) for the mines in the trenches (!?) where the three ladies from above also seem to work (!?). It's all a bit of fun and before long they are playing football in no-man's land whilst giving magic musical instruments to one another as Christmas presents. As I said, this doesn't sound quite normal for your average movie, but it kinds of fits into the rules of musical. Sort of.
In between that the Queen of the Night turns up (her daughter's been kidnapped and she's a bit miffed), in an iconographic way. Leather gloves, silhouetted on top of a rolling tank with blowing blonde hair and powerful Germanic music in the background. Hitler would have felt the need to place a cushion on his crotch lest someone saw what that scene did to him. Anyway, she's blue team.
So anyway, the two men go off on their way to rescue the poor kidnapped princess. I never understood this part of the opera but somewhere along the lines Tamino and Papageno get split up, and Papageno manages to both find and rescue the Princess. The film has a wonderful reference to this strange unexplained turn of events "Tamino loves you and has come to rescue you"
"So where is he?"
"Err..."
Anyway Papageno rescues the princess from the black rapist, Monostatos (red team officer), and they sing a wonderful duet about love and marriage in the process.
Meanwhile Tamino finds himself outside a building which proclaims "Dulce et decorum est - Pro patria mori" which he regards as wise words (Klugheit und Arbeit Und Künste hier weilen.) I've always disliked the character of Tamino despite him being written as a hero. This normally doesn't annoy me, but obviously this was designed to annoy the watcher and not liking Tamino I went along with it. It turns out to be red team HQ, and Tamino happily deserts with only a little convincing...women are liars and manipulators. Oh right, but our leader is a woman. Oh right. Guess I'll join your side.
Anyway, Papageno and the princess (Pamina) escape Monostatos yet again, this time using the magical bells given to him for Christmas by the three ladies in Act I. And they use Papageno's birdcalling whistle to communicate with Tamino who uses the Magic Flute to respond. Before they can meet, the big fish (Sarastro - Monostatos' boss and Field Marshall for the red team) turns up, sings some low notes demotes Monostatos for being a rapist (it's the least he can do right?) and refuses to release Pamina.
Anyway the second act starts and the only thing I really want to say about it is that it was a million times better than the first act. Out of nowhere I start to really like Tamino - they stopped portraying him as a pompous git and start transforming him into a Romeo type character. A man desperate to reunite with his one love but circumstance makes it difficult and he must face the fire/army before he can do. The on-screen chemistry between them goes through the roof and I confess I was crying whilst Pamina sung the end of her aria... "So wird Ruhe im Tode sein!". Amy Carson managed to really express Pamina's despair when she mistakes Tamino's vow of silence for rejection. She keeps this up for the later near-suicide aria 'Sieh Pamina stirbt durch dich!/ Dieses Eisen töte mich!'
Papageno's subplot about meeting the perfect girl is handled nicely too. To make it a little more realistic they have Papageno having met Papagena at a party or something, but he only saw her back and fell in love on the spot. They don't change much here, the old lady->Papagena ploy is still in play and they go and build a nest together. It wasn't the best Papageno near-suicide scene in the universe, but it was fairly good. It's difficult to do gallow's humour (literally!) well, but Branagh managed to get it to work.
The Queen of the Night is great. Lyubov Petrova manages to be beautiful, ice cold, warm, motherly, frightening, stern, tender, domineering and sympathetic all at the same time - though the second aria is somewhat ruined by silly kitsch special effects that looked like they came out of Bewitched. Given the theme of the Aria is kill the Red Team leader or I will disown you forever...the effects detract a little from the impact.
Instead of going through some arcane trial at the end, Tamino and Pamina end by walking into no man's land with the flute (the trial by fire) and then nearly drowning in a flooding trench (trial by water) which somehow ends the stalemate that had resulted in millions of deaths. Everyone is happy except the three ladies, Monastatos, and the Queen who decide there are better things to do in life than hang around under Sarastro.
I didn't really intend for that to end up like that, but what the hell. If you've never seen the Magic Flute, none of that makes sense I imagine. I recommend going to watch the film, it's Opera but it's in English and it doesn't take itself too seriously. I was kind of reminded of a musical version of Romeo and Juliet meets Blackadder goes Forth. There was a much happier ending though.
I've been in work since 7:30 am and the most work I have done is discuss what financial value there is in Facebook with my 'boss'. Oh, and I answered the phone twice.
First the downside:
The actors were not movie actors. They were opera singers/stage actors and this did show from time to time. This was good at times...it is an opera and to remain faithful to the music a few movie rules were broken - and it was good that it was people used to theatre rules who dealt with them. However, closeups were occasionally bad - especially when the singing was done in the style of internal monologue.
The interlude gives us a stylized view of WWI through the eyes of an impressionist artist. Lots of colour rather than the grimy horror it was. Instead of dark green uniforms, bright red and blue were used. Instead of mud, pastoral fields with butterflies. A push begins, with the 'blue' side making an advance with a small orchestra rather than a military band (violins instead of brass instruments basically). The main visual here is a captain telling people where to go and helping his men taking occasional potshots.
Having action during the interlude is something generally avoided in the Magic Flute, with good reason - but cinema makes it feasible. However the captain character was clearly being a theatre captain. His men were dying around him and he made some comical points to useless places in an effort to 'look like you are giving your men orders'. Maybe this was an intentional affect, but to me it kind of distracted me from the music - which would seem to kind of ruin the point somewhat.
Anyway, things quickly turn serious. And we see Tamino (Joseph Kaiser) get trapped by a gas grenade (he's on the blue team). This was a stroke of genius in my opinion. In the Opera Tamino is getting defeated by a great serpent, in the WWI setting the serpent was a tendril of mustard gas. And so Tamino cries for help "Zu Hülfe! zu Hülfe!" - the film is an English translation. Weirdly I spent a lot of the film translating from English back into the original German as best I could. This scene is the first reference I caught to Wilfred Owen, this one possibly setting up the latter one in some kind of strange dramatic irony. Anyway for now, our protagonist engages in an ecstasy of fumbling before passing out and getting rescued by the three ladies in the guise of nuns/medics. They clearly fancy Tamino and start showing off their cleavage. It's a wonderful song, but not much happens and quickly we find ourselves being introduced to Papageno.
Papageno is one of my favourite Opera characters of all time. He seems to be working (blue team) for the mines in the trenches (!?) where the three ladies from above also seem to work (!?). It's all a bit of fun and before long they are playing football in no-man's land whilst giving magic musical instruments to one another as Christmas presents. As I said, this doesn't sound quite normal for your average movie, but it kinds of fits into the rules of musical. Sort of.
In between that the Queen of the Night turns up (her daughter's been kidnapped and she's a bit miffed), in an iconographic way. Leather gloves, silhouetted on top of a rolling tank with blowing blonde hair and powerful Germanic music in the background. Hitler would have felt the need to place a cushion on his crotch lest someone saw what that scene did to him. Anyway, she's blue team.
So anyway, the two men go off on their way to rescue the poor kidnapped princess. I never understood this part of the opera but somewhere along the lines Tamino and Papageno get split up, and Papageno manages to both find and rescue the Princess. The film has a wonderful reference to this strange unexplained turn of events "Tamino loves you and has come to rescue you"
"So where is he?"
"Err..."
Anyway Papageno rescues the princess from the black rapist, Monostatos (red team officer), and they sing a wonderful duet about love and marriage in the process.
Meanwhile Tamino finds himself outside a building which proclaims "Dulce et decorum est - Pro patria mori" which he regards as wise words (Klugheit und Arbeit Und Künste hier weilen.) I've always disliked the character of Tamino despite him being written as a hero. This normally doesn't annoy me, but obviously this was designed to annoy the watcher and not liking Tamino I went along with it. It turns out to be red team HQ, and Tamino happily deserts with only a little convincing...women are liars and manipulators. Oh right, but our leader is a woman. Oh right. Guess I'll join your side.
Anyway, Papageno and the princess (Pamina) escape Monostatos yet again, this time using the magical bells given to him for Christmas by the three ladies in Act I. And they use Papageno's birdcalling whistle to communicate with Tamino who uses the Magic Flute to respond. Before they can meet, the big fish (Sarastro - Monostatos' boss and Field Marshall for the red team) turns up, sings some low notes demotes Monostatos for being a rapist (it's the least he can do right?) and refuses to release Pamina.
Anyway the second act starts and the only thing I really want to say about it is that it was a million times better than the first act. Out of nowhere I start to really like Tamino - they stopped portraying him as a pompous git and start transforming him into a Romeo type character. A man desperate to reunite with his one love but circumstance makes it difficult and he must face the fire/army before he can do. The on-screen chemistry between them goes through the roof and I confess I was crying whilst Pamina sung the end of her aria... "So wird Ruhe im Tode sein!". Amy Carson managed to really express Pamina's despair when she mistakes Tamino's vow of silence for rejection. She keeps this up for the later near-suicide aria 'Sieh Pamina stirbt durch dich!/ Dieses Eisen töte mich!'
Papageno's subplot about meeting the perfect girl is handled nicely too. To make it a little more realistic they have Papageno having met Papagena at a party or something, but he only saw her back and fell in love on the spot. They don't change much here, the old lady->Papagena ploy is still in play and they go and build a nest together. It wasn't the best Papageno near-suicide scene in the universe, but it was fairly good. It's difficult to do gallow's humour (literally!) well, but Branagh managed to get it to work.
The Queen of the Night is great. Lyubov Petrova manages to be beautiful, ice cold, warm, motherly, frightening, stern, tender, domineering and sympathetic all at the same time - though the second aria is somewhat ruined by silly kitsch special effects that looked like they came out of Bewitched. Given the theme of the Aria is kill the Red Team leader or I will disown you forever...the effects detract a little from the impact.
Instead of going through some arcane trial at the end, Tamino and Pamina end by walking into no man's land with the flute (the trial by fire) and then nearly drowning in a flooding trench (trial by water) which somehow ends the stalemate that had resulted in millions of deaths. Everyone is happy except the three ladies, Monastatos, and the Queen who decide there are better things to do in life than hang around under Sarastro.
I didn't really intend for that to end up like that, but what the hell. If you've never seen the Magic Flute, none of that makes sense I imagine. I recommend going to watch the film, it's Opera but it's in English and it doesn't take itself too seriously. I was kind of reminded of a musical version of Romeo and Juliet meets Blackadder goes Forth. There was a much happier ending though.
I've been in work since 7:30 am and the most work I have done is discuss what financial value there is in Facebook with my 'boss'. Oh, and I answered the phone twice.