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May. 12th, 2005 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhondacrockettSo, my paper is done. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. The other postgrads I spoke to afterwards all said they enjoyed it, and I must believe them. I got a couple of questions which made me go, "Pluh?": one from our resident Marxist (all I know of Marxism comes from Animal Farm); one from Leon (yeah, thanks for that. Thanks also for not having my chapter read that I sent you *thinks* a fortnight ago. Bitch); aaand one from someone who I don't remember very clearly, all I know is that they were awkward. Leon passed me a few notes on how he reckoned I'd done and said I need to stop admitting that I haven't done stuff or don't know about that angle. Screw you. There's only so far you can spin an answer to a question you don't know about.
But as Mum said to me later, he's trying to mould me for academia, and I'm not going into academia, so he can piss away off.
There was one question I was very happy to answer. A postgrad asked me where I got the idea to base my stuff on Bakhtin. (Consider the fact that all the people who were on my differentiation panel were in the room.) "Well," I said, "I had an earlier version of this chapter at differentiation, which Brian and Leon and Caroline saw, and at that stage it didn't have any Bakhtin in it. And I was basically told to go away and get some theory." BIG sympathetic laugh from the room. Hah. I feel vindicated. :) Though Ashley later got all upset for me about this, cos she thought it was a crass question. I didn't care. It was my chance to tell them, even if in a blunted, ironic tone, how much the differentiation upset me.
There's a box of scrapped paper next to me, and the page facing me is all about woolly mammoths. Apparently they had a flap of woolly skin over their anus to conserve heat.
Just thought I'd remark on that.
----
I rented Phantom of the Opera last night because I figured, what better way to forget about horrible academic papers than to watch a Grand Guignol-esque Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about masked homicidal maniacs :D I had intended to see it in the cinema but didn't get around to it, and have been waiting impatiently for it to come out on DVD since seeing the stage show in London.
Having watched it, I wish I had seen it in the cinema, or at least on a bigger TV. My 14" screen, plus the widescreen letter-box effect made the picture somewhat cramped.
First, to a complaint that I think Minty made about the movie: the visuals are not overblown enough. To some extent, I agree. I watched Moulin Rouge not so long ago and was struck by how much more rich and packed that movie is. Take the tango scene for instance: the floor is filled with as many dancers as possible, its borders are draped in deep red-black shadows, and where there are no dancers, there are chairs, tables, stairs, musicians, instruments, fenced-off balconies, half-finished bits of stage etc. The whole space looks used. Now compare to the masquerade scene in Phantom. You should have been unable to see for the packed dancers, the brilliantly coloured costumes and the overpowering decor. Instead there were large areas of empty space, and the golden staircase was pale instead of burnished. You got a better sense of crowdedness when the scene switched to the bawdy backstage party for the ballet dancers and stagehands. (I'll be coming back to the backstage scenes later. Hey, parenthesis as a separate sentence! Peppy will be getting annoyed at me in a minute ;P) This sense of emptiness and paleness pervaded quite a bit of the film.
But the stage show, or at least the one I saw, also suffered from a lack of extravagence. The thing you need to know about London theatres is that they are tiny. Or at least the auditorium is; much, much smaller than you would expect them to be. The main, indeed for a long while the only, theatre here in Northern Ireland is the Grand Opera House, which I'd always assumed was pretty modestly sized for such an imposing name. You could fit the auditorium of Her Majesty's Theatre, which has been staging Phantom since it premiered in 1986, into the GOH's twice, maybe twice and a half.* It was a surprise I never quite got over while I was in London. Generally I liked it - it gave a sense of intimacy between the audience and the stage - but in the Phantom's case it worked against the play. The opera-performance scenes - Hannibal, the one with the Countess and the page, Don Juan - felt more spacious because they allowed the whole stage to be used, but others - the Phantom's lair, the masquerade scene - were cramped towards the front of the stage, leaving a big back-space that no one was doing anything with. Part of the reason I wanted to see the movie was for the sense of enormous space being used, which the theatre, because of space or set restrictions, couldn't give.
And sometimes, the movie got it right. That sweeping scene as the restored chandelier turns us back in time was perfect, all I hoped it could be, with burnished gold fittings, overwrought decoration and that thick red curtain. The bit of Christine's first journey with the Phantom, where they're walking down a narrow corridor lined with candleholders in the shape of human arms which seem to be moving back to let them through, was excellent. The Phantom's lair had all the space I was looking for (until they took up too much of it with water) and I loved the candelabra rising from the lake, and the mini-opera house was cute! But the best scene for me was the backstage scramble which is intercut with our time-travelling chandelier rising towards the ceiling. There was the enormous-but-cramped space I was looking for. In fact, it was largely the backstage scenes that were the best, although they too sometimes suffered from the empty-space syndrome, particularly when they focused on the drunken old stagehand the Phantom strangles. He was always skulking about the rafters on his own; surely there should have been more than just him up there? Again, I found myself comparing it to the backstage in Moulin Rouge, full of people, tools, stairs, low rafters, odd corners, the dancers' clothing, bric-a-brac and furniture.
On costumes: Christine should had a much more spectacular dress when "Think of Me" segued from her impromptu audition to the actual performance. Sparkly flowers in the hair are all very well but I wanted her in Carlotta's gold-and-blue number with the headdress, damnit! She was more exotic as a Carthaginian slave-girl. The masquerade costumes also disappointed me, being largely black and white. The stage show offered a more varied colour palette, with clowns, harlequins and someone dressed as the monkey from the music box. I think the movie designers wanted to echo the Phantom's black-and-white scheme, and I liked the guy in the half-white half-black mask, but they didn't need to ram home, "Hey, they're all wearing masks just like the Phantom!", and black and white doesn't come out as strikingly when everyone is wearing it. Also, the Phantom's masquerade costume: right shade of red, but where were the feathers? I wanted the profusion of feathers, jewelled turban and full-skull mask of the stage-show because I missed seeing its grand entrance the first time; I was tucked in the far right corner of the royal circle and the boxes blocked my view >:8 Granted, the red suit was gorgeously understated but hello? This is the Phantom we're talking about here! He doesn't do understated! He does big swirly capes and bright red feathers and the Voice of Dooooooooooom!
As for the Phantom's make-up: it was such a big letdown. The stage make-up was genuinely ugly and blood-curdling, all lumps and scabs and birthmark spots and puckered grey-white skin, with a single wisp of brittle white hair which tossed about as the Phantom moved. The movie-Phantom just looked like he'd got a bit of a sunburn and really bad hives. Psshaw. Psshaw, I say!
Ok, I think I'm done with the visuals of the thing, we'll move to the action. The movie made some things a lot clearer than they were in the show, like Christine's father's promise to send an angel of music, Madame Giry's story of the Phantom's origins (I loved this scene - aww, baby Giry!), how the Phantom made Carlotta croak like a toad and the strangling of the drunken stagehand mentioned before. In the latter case, the stage show had the Phantom's shadow projected randomly and in different sizes on to the back of the backdrop to the shepherdess ballet, and the strangling of the stagehand just seems a random act of murder. The movie, being able to move between backstage and frontstage, made the murder work better, although you did lose the sense that the ballet dancers were getting more clumsy as the Phantom kept spooking them, as well as being confused by having to come on early. I also liked the movie's handling of Christine's visit to her father's grave and the Phantom's attempt to put her back under his control.** The stage version had the Phantom clearly visible on top of the tomb, where Christine and Raoul could see him; hiding him until he attacks Raoul and making a false trail with the light from inside the tomb was more effective. On the other hand, the stage version suggested more clearly that Christine is under some form of mind-control as she turns towards the Phantom like a sleep-walker. Movie-Christine just looks like she's stupidly heading after the Phantom again.***
A couple of things the movie didn't do well: the mirror trick, for one. The appearance of the Phantom's reflection in the mirror and Christine being pulled through it was much more startling in the stage version. The soft focus they put on the camera during this scene fudged the issue of what was going on. I wanted to see it done the way it was on the stage, the mirror sliding back a crack to let the Phantom's hand to extend and pull Christine through. If they wanted to delay the discovery of the sliding mirror, they could have shot Christine's hand moving to the reflection of the Phantom's hand and touching the mirror surface, then shoot the Phantom's hand coming from the right of the screen, still with her dressing room as the background, grip hold and pull her towards it, shift to a shot of her dress moving as she walks forward, and finish with her profile emerging from the left side of the screen, into the hidden passage, to look up at the waiting, very solid Phantom.
I did like Meg finding the sliding mirror, though. It gave her something to do, poor girl.
Another disappointment was the Phantom's final disappearance. In the stage-show, the Phantom curls up on a throne-like chair and throws his cloak over it, covering it completely. When Meg arrives, she tears the cloak away - but finds only the half-mask lying on the seat. The Phantom smashing a mirror-door to a secret passage and pulling a curtain over it doesn't have the same impact. It also lessens the chill of Meg's discovery of the mask. In the roof scene, the movie gave away the Phantom's presence too early. In the show, the Phantom was only revealed after Christine and Raoul left the rooftop. It let the audience build up a sense of dread: "The Phantom is soooo gonna be pissed when he finds out --- Oh shit, he's already found out!!"
And Nissa, your userpic is completely right. What the hell?! She's fiddling about with his mask for ages before she gets it off, and he just lies there and lets her?!? The stage version was much quicker, a snatch-and-grab job done while the Phantom is furiously scribbling down his score and is distracted. Hence his rage was more believable. The stage-Phantom also did the hide-the-deformed-side schtick better. I mean, the movie-version looks at it full on in a mirror!!! The whole point of the Phantom's masked side is that we don't know what it looks like until Christine unveils it in the middle of Don Juan in order to betray him. Gah!!
A couple of small points to finish this "action" section. In the stage version I saw, when the Phantom shows Christine the dummy he's made of her in a wedding dress, the dummy half-fell forward when she moved towards it, giving her a much stronger reason for fainting (though the movie did give her a better bed to compensate). Oh, and I missed the scene of Carlotta's complaining that the Phantom's opera was impossible to sing and Madame Giry threatening her with another attack of the croaks :)
I'm not sure whether I like or dislike the action accompanying "Primadonna" in the movie. On the stage, it was all set in the managers' office, with Madame Giry arguing with them and Meg going through the Opera Ghost's notes on the table, worrying about her friend. In the movie it moves about from the dressing room, through backstage to the crowds waiting to be let in for the evening performance. I suppose the latter is more cinematic, and it is enjoyable watching Carlotta being carried in a litter by the managers through the backstage. But I really liked the office setting and the greater prominence of Madame Giry and Meg in the action of the stage version.
As for the black-and-white interruptions from 1919, I didn't mind them, though I thought they did too many. The auction at the beginning and the visit to Christine's grave at the end would have been enough. I rather liked that end scene; it made up for the loss of the Phantom's disappearing act in the chair.
Ok, casting and characters. I understand that a lot of people on my friends list really don't like Patrick Wilson. I have no opinion on the guy. And this movie could not help me form an opinion, because he was boring! Big mistake to make your romantic hero boring when he's facing off with a demented genius. The movie-Raoul was neither awful nor stunning; he was just drab. The stage-Raoul I saw was better-looking and more charismatic, capable of being a match for the Phantom. I also preferred the stage-Christine. When Raoul insists on taking her to dinner, stage-Christine's fear about what her "angel" will have to say about this was more papable. Movie-Christine merely sounds like a prissy school prefect: "Oh no, you can't do that, it's two weeks' dentention!" Plus I got tired of all the close-ups of her big cow-eyes. Minnie Driver, while not awful, is too young to play Carlotta. The stage-Carlotta did it with more flare and more subtlety, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Movie-Piangi was completely sidelined; the camera focused more often on his dwarf than on him, which turned his death into a non-event.
I know most people were happy with Gerard Butler as movie-Phantom, and no, he's not a non-entity like movie-Raoul, and yes, he gives a good performance. Perhaps I'm only dissatisfied because I saw the current stage actor first. In my opinion Movie-Phantom has too square a face. The stage-Phantom had a narrower, longer face, which suited my vision of the Phantom better. Further, I didn't think Butler's performance was as histrionic and vitrolic as the Phantom ought to be. He didn't cry or rage, he only attempted to. Then again, at the time I thought the stage-Phantom was going into major fits of overacting and I was waiting for someone to come out with his sedatives :)
Butler does swirl his cape rather nicely, though :)
But Meg: oh, Meg. My poor Meg. Where was my sweet, curious, pixie-faced, bright-eyed, over-worked, ever-concerned, slightly hysterical Meg? She was nowhere to be seen! They put this blonde automaton in her place. The only comfort was that the movie cut her role down, but it's cold comfort for someone who fell for the bouncy, blonde ballet rat she saw on stage *weeps*
There was some compensation for Meg. Simon Callow as Monsieur Andre, for instance, an actor I am very fond of, principally because of his love of and uncanny ability to play Dickens. But more importantly, there was Madame Giry.
Miranda Richardson was magNIFicent. There's no other word for it. It is the one piece of casting where I would say the movie got it better than the stage version. The stage-Giry was either poker-backed or crumbling into tears, and while I still liked the character in the play, Miranda Richardson showed me what Madame Giry could be: cold but kind, unbending but haunted, with a subtle, shrewd intelligence and sad, uneasy doubts about herself and the boy she rescued.
Lastly, the singing. The movie was acceptable. No one was horribly off-key, except Carlotta, and she was meant to do that occasionally, though I have a problem accepting that she would have become a lead soprano when she had a tendency to go off-key. The stage-Carlotta had an excellent voice, though overpowering and obviously-full-of-itself. That's how I explained the Phantom's distaste for her - she was a show-off who used music to serve her own reputation, rather than letting her voice serve the music. Some of the songs in the movie were played too fast in my opinion, and Christine's initial hesitation when asked to audition for Carlotta's part and her subsequent blossoming as she loses herself in the song was done better in the stage version I saw. Overall, the stage had stronger, more expressive, more charismatic voices and better pacing of the orchestration.
And I still can't follow "Primadonna"!
Footnotes
*Mind you, the GOH has a smaller reception area than Her Majesty's does. That was another thing: the receptions in London theatres felt bigger than the actual auditoriums. Very peculiar.
**My take is that the Phantom may hold Christine in a semi-hypnotised state, which explains her initial belief that he is her "angel", her increasing hysteria and her almost-giving into him at the tomb. And also all the lines about the Phantom being inside Christine's head and in her dreams, and how she is compelled to sing when he commands her at the end of the title-track. The mirror trick is another hint that hypnosis, or its progenitor mesmerism, is involved, as mirrors were used to induce a mesmeric trance. I'm not sure if this is the official line or not, however, which leaves me with an unsatisfactory sense of the story being disjointed.
***Here's a thought: the Phantom disguises himself with a mask that looks like Christine's father. It would make the deception more swallowable. He could take it off to reveal his usual half-mask when Raoul interrupts.
---
In summary, the movie has good points (Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, some well-done scenes and clearer exposition) but is largely disappointing. I hope that someone else can try to make another (better) version because I believe that Phantom belongs on the big screen. Meanwhile, I want to see the stage show again. It too has its disappointments, but its triumphs more than make up for it.
[Edit]: And is it my imagination, or does the Phantom, having been dark-haired all through the movie, start turning blond when his mask gets ripped off that last time?
But as Mum said to me later, he's trying to mould me for academia, and I'm not going into academia, so he can piss away off.
There was one question I was very happy to answer. A postgrad asked me where I got the idea to base my stuff on Bakhtin. (Consider the fact that all the people who were on my differentiation panel were in the room.) "Well," I said, "I had an earlier version of this chapter at differentiation, which Brian and Leon and Caroline saw, and at that stage it didn't have any Bakhtin in it. And I was basically told to go away and get some theory." BIG sympathetic laugh from the room. Hah. I feel vindicated. :) Though Ashley later got all upset for me about this, cos she thought it was a crass question. I didn't care. It was my chance to tell them, even if in a blunted, ironic tone, how much the differentiation upset me.
There's a box of scrapped paper next to me, and the page facing me is all about woolly mammoths. Apparently they had a flap of woolly skin over their anus to conserve heat.
Just thought I'd remark on that.
----
I rented Phantom of the Opera last night because I figured, what better way to forget about horrible academic papers than to watch a Grand Guignol-esque Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about masked homicidal maniacs :D I had intended to see it in the cinema but didn't get around to it, and have been waiting impatiently for it to come out on DVD since seeing the stage show in London.
Having watched it, I wish I had seen it in the cinema, or at least on a bigger TV. My 14" screen, plus the widescreen letter-box effect made the picture somewhat cramped.
First, to a complaint that I think Minty made about the movie: the visuals are not overblown enough. To some extent, I agree. I watched Moulin Rouge not so long ago and was struck by how much more rich and packed that movie is. Take the tango scene for instance: the floor is filled with as many dancers as possible, its borders are draped in deep red-black shadows, and where there are no dancers, there are chairs, tables, stairs, musicians, instruments, fenced-off balconies, half-finished bits of stage etc. The whole space looks used. Now compare to the masquerade scene in Phantom. You should have been unable to see for the packed dancers, the brilliantly coloured costumes and the overpowering decor. Instead there were large areas of empty space, and the golden staircase was pale instead of burnished. You got a better sense of crowdedness when the scene switched to the bawdy backstage party for the ballet dancers and stagehands. (I'll be coming back to the backstage scenes later. Hey, parenthesis as a separate sentence! Peppy will be getting annoyed at me in a minute ;P) This sense of emptiness and paleness pervaded quite a bit of the film.
But the stage show, or at least the one I saw, also suffered from a lack of extravagence. The thing you need to know about London theatres is that they are tiny. Or at least the auditorium is; much, much smaller than you would expect them to be. The main, indeed for a long while the only, theatre here in Northern Ireland is the Grand Opera House, which I'd always assumed was pretty modestly sized for such an imposing name. You could fit the auditorium of Her Majesty's Theatre, which has been staging Phantom since it premiered in 1986, into the GOH's twice, maybe twice and a half.* It was a surprise I never quite got over while I was in London. Generally I liked it - it gave a sense of intimacy between the audience and the stage - but in the Phantom's case it worked against the play. The opera-performance scenes - Hannibal, the one with the Countess and the page, Don Juan - felt more spacious because they allowed the whole stage to be used, but others - the Phantom's lair, the masquerade scene - were cramped towards the front of the stage, leaving a big back-space that no one was doing anything with. Part of the reason I wanted to see the movie was for the sense of enormous space being used, which the theatre, because of space or set restrictions, couldn't give.
And sometimes, the movie got it right. That sweeping scene as the restored chandelier turns us back in time was perfect, all I hoped it could be, with burnished gold fittings, overwrought decoration and that thick red curtain. The bit of Christine's first journey with the Phantom, where they're walking down a narrow corridor lined with candleholders in the shape of human arms which seem to be moving back to let them through, was excellent. The Phantom's lair had all the space I was looking for (until they took up too much of it with water) and I loved the candelabra rising from the lake, and the mini-opera house was cute! But the best scene for me was the backstage scramble which is intercut with our time-travelling chandelier rising towards the ceiling. There was the enormous-but-cramped space I was looking for. In fact, it was largely the backstage scenes that were the best, although they too sometimes suffered from the empty-space syndrome, particularly when they focused on the drunken old stagehand the Phantom strangles. He was always skulking about the rafters on his own; surely there should have been more than just him up there? Again, I found myself comparing it to the backstage in Moulin Rouge, full of people, tools, stairs, low rafters, odd corners, the dancers' clothing, bric-a-brac and furniture.
On costumes: Christine should had a much more spectacular dress when "Think of Me" segued from her impromptu audition to the actual performance. Sparkly flowers in the hair are all very well but I wanted her in Carlotta's gold-and-blue number with the headdress, damnit! She was more exotic as a Carthaginian slave-girl. The masquerade costumes also disappointed me, being largely black and white. The stage show offered a more varied colour palette, with clowns, harlequins and someone dressed as the monkey from the music box. I think the movie designers wanted to echo the Phantom's black-and-white scheme, and I liked the guy in the half-white half-black mask, but they didn't need to ram home, "Hey, they're all wearing masks just like the Phantom!", and black and white doesn't come out as strikingly when everyone is wearing it. Also, the Phantom's masquerade costume: right shade of red, but where were the feathers? I wanted the profusion of feathers, jewelled turban and full-skull mask of the stage-show because I missed seeing its grand entrance the first time; I was tucked in the far right corner of the royal circle and the boxes blocked my view >:8 Granted, the red suit was gorgeously understated but hello? This is the Phantom we're talking about here! He doesn't do understated! He does big swirly capes and bright red feathers and the Voice of Dooooooooooom!
As for the Phantom's make-up: it was such a big letdown. The stage make-up was genuinely ugly and blood-curdling, all lumps and scabs and birthmark spots and puckered grey-white skin, with a single wisp of brittle white hair which tossed about as the Phantom moved. The movie-Phantom just looked like he'd got a bit of a sunburn and really bad hives. Psshaw. Psshaw, I say!
Ok, I think I'm done with the visuals of the thing, we'll move to the action. The movie made some things a lot clearer than they were in the show, like Christine's father's promise to send an angel of music, Madame Giry's story of the Phantom's origins (I loved this scene - aww, baby Giry!), how the Phantom made Carlotta croak like a toad and the strangling of the drunken stagehand mentioned before. In the latter case, the stage show had the Phantom's shadow projected randomly and in different sizes on to the back of the backdrop to the shepherdess ballet, and the strangling of the stagehand just seems a random act of murder. The movie, being able to move between backstage and frontstage, made the murder work better, although you did lose the sense that the ballet dancers were getting more clumsy as the Phantom kept spooking them, as well as being confused by having to come on early. I also liked the movie's handling of Christine's visit to her father's grave and the Phantom's attempt to put her back under his control.** The stage version had the Phantom clearly visible on top of the tomb, where Christine and Raoul could see him; hiding him until he attacks Raoul and making a false trail with the light from inside the tomb was more effective. On the other hand, the stage version suggested more clearly that Christine is under some form of mind-control as she turns towards the Phantom like a sleep-walker. Movie-Christine just looks like she's stupidly heading after the Phantom again.***
A couple of things the movie didn't do well: the mirror trick, for one. The appearance of the Phantom's reflection in the mirror and Christine being pulled through it was much more startling in the stage version. The soft focus they put on the camera during this scene fudged the issue of what was going on. I wanted to see it done the way it was on the stage, the mirror sliding back a crack to let the Phantom's hand to extend and pull Christine through. If they wanted to delay the discovery of the sliding mirror, they could have shot Christine's hand moving to the reflection of the Phantom's hand and touching the mirror surface, then shoot the Phantom's hand coming from the right of the screen, still with her dressing room as the background, grip hold and pull her towards it, shift to a shot of her dress moving as she walks forward, and finish with her profile emerging from the left side of the screen, into the hidden passage, to look up at the waiting, very solid Phantom.
I did like Meg finding the sliding mirror, though. It gave her something to do, poor girl.
Another disappointment was the Phantom's final disappearance. In the stage-show, the Phantom curls up on a throne-like chair and throws his cloak over it, covering it completely. When Meg arrives, she tears the cloak away - but finds only the half-mask lying on the seat. The Phantom smashing a mirror-door to a secret passage and pulling a curtain over it doesn't have the same impact. It also lessens the chill of Meg's discovery of the mask. In the roof scene, the movie gave away the Phantom's presence too early. In the show, the Phantom was only revealed after Christine and Raoul left the rooftop. It let the audience build up a sense of dread: "The Phantom is soooo gonna be pissed when he finds out --- Oh shit, he's already found out!!"
And Nissa, your userpic is completely right. What the hell?! She's fiddling about with his mask for ages before she gets it off, and he just lies there and lets her?!? The stage version was much quicker, a snatch-and-grab job done while the Phantom is furiously scribbling down his score and is distracted. Hence his rage was more believable. The stage-Phantom also did the hide-the-deformed-side schtick better. I mean, the movie-version looks at it full on in a mirror!!! The whole point of the Phantom's masked side is that we don't know what it looks like until Christine unveils it in the middle of Don Juan in order to betray him. Gah!!
A couple of small points to finish this "action" section. In the stage version I saw, when the Phantom shows Christine the dummy he's made of her in a wedding dress, the dummy half-fell forward when she moved towards it, giving her a much stronger reason for fainting (though the movie did give her a better bed to compensate). Oh, and I missed the scene of Carlotta's complaining that the Phantom's opera was impossible to sing and Madame Giry threatening her with another attack of the croaks :)
I'm not sure whether I like or dislike the action accompanying "Primadonna" in the movie. On the stage, it was all set in the managers' office, with Madame Giry arguing with them and Meg going through the Opera Ghost's notes on the table, worrying about her friend. In the movie it moves about from the dressing room, through backstage to the crowds waiting to be let in for the evening performance. I suppose the latter is more cinematic, and it is enjoyable watching Carlotta being carried in a litter by the managers through the backstage. But I really liked the office setting and the greater prominence of Madame Giry and Meg in the action of the stage version.
As for the black-and-white interruptions from 1919, I didn't mind them, though I thought they did too many. The auction at the beginning and the visit to Christine's grave at the end would have been enough. I rather liked that end scene; it made up for the loss of the Phantom's disappearing act in the chair.
Ok, casting and characters. I understand that a lot of people on my friends list really don't like Patrick Wilson. I have no opinion on the guy. And this movie could not help me form an opinion, because he was boring! Big mistake to make your romantic hero boring when he's facing off with a demented genius. The movie-Raoul was neither awful nor stunning; he was just drab. The stage-Raoul I saw was better-looking and more charismatic, capable of being a match for the Phantom. I also preferred the stage-Christine. When Raoul insists on taking her to dinner, stage-Christine's fear about what her "angel" will have to say about this was more papable. Movie-Christine merely sounds like a prissy school prefect: "Oh no, you can't do that, it's two weeks' dentention!" Plus I got tired of all the close-ups of her big cow-eyes. Minnie Driver, while not awful, is too young to play Carlotta. The stage-Carlotta did it with more flare and more subtlety, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Movie-Piangi was completely sidelined; the camera focused more often on his dwarf than on him, which turned his death into a non-event.
I know most people were happy with Gerard Butler as movie-Phantom, and no, he's not a non-entity like movie-Raoul, and yes, he gives a good performance. Perhaps I'm only dissatisfied because I saw the current stage actor first. In my opinion Movie-Phantom has too square a face. The stage-Phantom had a narrower, longer face, which suited my vision of the Phantom better. Further, I didn't think Butler's performance was as histrionic and vitrolic as the Phantom ought to be. He didn't cry or rage, he only attempted to. Then again, at the time I thought the stage-Phantom was going into major fits of overacting and I was waiting for someone to come out with his sedatives :)
Butler does swirl his cape rather nicely, though :)
But Meg: oh, Meg. My poor Meg. Where was my sweet, curious, pixie-faced, bright-eyed, over-worked, ever-concerned, slightly hysterical Meg? She was nowhere to be seen! They put this blonde automaton in her place. The only comfort was that the movie cut her role down, but it's cold comfort for someone who fell for the bouncy, blonde ballet rat she saw on stage *weeps*
There was some compensation for Meg. Simon Callow as Monsieur Andre, for instance, an actor I am very fond of, principally because of his love of and uncanny ability to play Dickens. But more importantly, there was Madame Giry.
Miranda Richardson was magNIFicent. There's no other word for it. It is the one piece of casting where I would say the movie got it better than the stage version. The stage-Giry was either poker-backed or crumbling into tears, and while I still liked the character in the play, Miranda Richardson showed me what Madame Giry could be: cold but kind, unbending but haunted, with a subtle, shrewd intelligence and sad, uneasy doubts about herself and the boy she rescued.
Lastly, the singing. The movie was acceptable. No one was horribly off-key, except Carlotta, and she was meant to do that occasionally, though I have a problem accepting that she would have become a lead soprano when she had a tendency to go off-key. The stage-Carlotta had an excellent voice, though overpowering and obviously-full-of-itself. That's how I explained the Phantom's distaste for her - she was a show-off who used music to serve her own reputation, rather than letting her voice serve the music. Some of the songs in the movie were played too fast in my opinion, and Christine's initial hesitation when asked to audition for Carlotta's part and her subsequent blossoming as she loses herself in the song was done better in the stage version I saw. Overall, the stage had stronger, more expressive, more charismatic voices and better pacing of the orchestration.
And I still can't follow "Primadonna"!
Footnotes
*Mind you, the GOH has a smaller reception area than Her Majesty's does. That was another thing: the receptions in London theatres felt bigger than the actual auditoriums. Very peculiar.
**My take is that the Phantom may hold Christine in a semi-hypnotised state, which explains her initial belief that he is her "angel", her increasing hysteria and her almost-giving into him at the tomb. And also all the lines about the Phantom being inside Christine's head and in her dreams, and how she is compelled to sing when he commands her at the end of the title-track. The mirror trick is another hint that hypnosis, or its progenitor mesmerism, is involved, as mirrors were used to induce a mesmeric trance. I'm not sure if this is the official line or not, however, which leaves me with an unsatisfactory sense of the story being disjointed.
***Here's a thought: the Phantom disguises himself with a mask that looks like Christine's father. It would make the deception more swallowable. He could take it off to reveal his usual half-mask when Raoul interrupts.
---
In summary, the movie has good points (Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, some well-done scenes and clearer exposition) but is largely disappointing. I hope that someone else can try to make another (better) version because I believe that Phantom belongs on the big screen. Meanwhile, I want to see the stage show again. It too has its disappointments, but its triumphs more than make up for it.
[Edit]: And is it my imagination, or does the Phantom, having been dark-haired all through the movie, start turning blond when his mask gets ripped off that last time?
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Date: 2005-05-12 05:15 pm (UTC)"But the stage show, or at least the one I saw, also suffered from a lack of extravagence."
The traveling version I saw seemed pretty extravagant, although I don't have much to compare it to (aside from The Boy from Oz, which was mostly just Hugh-on-a-stage, LOL). But I'm sure a lot of it has to do with theater size and whatnot. Because of my limited experience, I don't know how to judge whether a theater is big or small. ;)
"The movie-Phantom just looked like he'd got a bit of a sunburn and really bad hives. Psshaw. Psshaw, I say!"
YES!!! Stage-Phantom had gaping wounds that looked wet and weepy (the view from the front row was perhaps a little too good at that point). Movie-Phantom looked like he'd clear up with a medicated cream. ;D
I also felt like Movie-Phantom roared and yelled a lot instead of singing. He was an angry Phantom, but not all that unhinged. On the other hand, I felt the same way you did about Stage-Phantom -- the one I saw was a bit *too* unhinged. I need a middle-of-the-road Phantom.
"In the stage version I saw, when the Phantom shows Christine the dummy he's made of her in a wedding dress, the dummy half-fell forward when she moved towards it, giving her a much stronger reason for fainting"
Agreed again. That whole moment was sort of muddled in the movie.
"The stage version had the Phantom clearly visible on top of the tomb, where Christine and Raoul could see him; hiding him until he attacks Raoul and making a false trail with the light from inside the tomb was more effective."
But then there was that stupid swordfight instead of the Phantom throwing explodey-light-balls at Raoul. ;D Changes like that made the Phantom a little too human for me -- I like him with a greater supernatural air.
"Plus I got tired of all the close-ups of her big cow-eyes."
Indeed.
"And is it my imagination, or does the Phantom, having been dark-haired all through the movie, start turning blond when his mask gets ripped off that last time?"
I wondered the same thing. I couldn't tell if it was the lighting, or what.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-13 09:41 am (UTC)I don't have much experience with theatre either, bar pantomimes at Christmas and Shakespeare productions we were taken to see when at school, but I expected London theatres to be absolutely enormous, certainly bigger than the GOH in Belfast - cos you know, theatre capital of the world and all that. Finding out that they were so... cosy was a bit of a shock.
Thinking about it now, most of the action had to be set to the front of the stage in order for everyone to get a half-decent chance to see it. If they'd placed it too far back, people like me in my corner would have missed half of it.
"Stage-Phantom [...] was a bit *too* unhinged."
Then you remember this is a guy who grew up in an opera house. One does not learn to do subtle from an opera house ^.~ Also, on stage, the actors have to think of the poor sods in the gallery. You have to carry the emotion and action all the way up to them. I suppose that's why extravagent acting is called "stagey".
And my stage-Phantom did a rather nice line in shaking fists :) He could turn on the trembles like *that*, which I had to admire, even as I did wonder where the men in white coats had gone.
"But then there was that stupid swordfight instead of the Phantom throwing explodey-light-balls at Raoul."
Ah, so that's what happened! I knew there wasn't a swordfight in the stage version but I couldn't remember what was there. I like swordfights, plus there was lots of swirly-cloak-y-ness involved which I enjoyed, but yes, it was mundane. They could have allowed the Phantom a few fireballs or to blow up a statue or two. Pirates of the Caribbean and Kill Bill could have taught them a thing or two about staging a thrilling swordfight.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:37 am (UTC)On an interesting sidenote, I was looking through my programme for the London show, and the guy who played the Phantom also played Gaston in the Beauty and the Beast show. From one extreme to the other.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 05:58 pm (UTC)That's fantastic. We should all be so lucky.