The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (Recently Seen: Revenge of the Sith)

I am in the midst of reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and just watched RotS. Interesting parallels to be drawn between these two, especially the emphasis on the protagonists' status as "The Chosen One". And the death of a much beloved character in Half Blood Prince mirrors the "death" of Obi Wan Kenobi in the first Star Wars movie (now called Star Wars IV: A New Hope, but which will always just be Star Wars to me).

I hope that RotS is the last movie that George Lucas plans to make on the Star Wars saga. I did not dislike this movie, but the entire "prequels" trilogy has been a disappointment. The first two misconceived prequels damaged the franchise and robbed the Star Wars mythology of some its magic. For those of us who watched Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Revenge of the Jedi as children and young adults, this is unforgiveable.

In keeping with my previous posts on the Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies, I will dredge up painful memories of the first two prequels. I saw both movies only once each, and had no desire to see either again.

Ep 1: The Phantom Menace.
AKA The One with the Non-Acting Moppet
This was okay, passably entertaining summer-movie fare. The action sequences were exciting and made for a thrilling experience when watched in a super large-screen cineplex. I rather liked the pod race with little Anakin Skywalker. Seeing young Obi Wan, Yoda and the Order of the Jedi was also rather cool. On the minus side, Jake Lloyd, the child actor who played Anakin, was cute but an unconvincing actor. He was no doubt hampered by George Lucas's famous preference for CGI characters over human performers. This was also the movie that inflicted Jar Jar Binks on the world, so I am compelled to hate it on principle.

Ep 2: Attack of the Clones
AKA The One with the Non-Acting Pin-Up Boy
This movie should have been subtitled The Annoying Adolocence of the Chosen One. It was downright painful and cringe-inducing. The effects were better than ever and the movie looked great, but the action sequences seemed to drag. When the action scenes are not going well in a Star Wars movie, you know you are in deep trouble because the talking scenes are not going to save the show. My goodness, the screenplay was simply atrocious. Each time Anakin or Padme were given lines to say, my eyes got a rigourous rolling workout. The whole story line about the clone army was also boring - surely Lucas could have found a more interesting narrative device to tell his story about Dooku and the Dark Side. And the entire Harlequin-tinted romance between Padme and Skywalker took up far too much screentime. The scenes showing the "development" of their relationship were overwrought and yet managed to leave me completely cold. And as for the actor who inherited the role of Anakin Skywalker, the good news was that Hayden Christensen is a strapping and fine-looking young fellow. The not so good news was that his acting was unbearably bad. To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he just could not rise above the awful dialogue. Although, it has to be said that most of the other actors had equally bad dialogue and did manage to come across better.

And now, onto Ep 3: Revenge of the Sith, AKA The One where Things Improved.

Judged by the standards of the preceding movies, this is a masterpiece. It's certainly the best of the three prequels, and in some ways, a better movie than the rather cheesy Return of the Jedi (but it lacks the charm and satisfying closure of RotJ). On its own merits, this is a very flawed movie, but nevertheless a thoroughly respectable addition to the Star Wars canon.

Because there were more things I liked than disliked, let me get the negative points out of the way.

• The screenplay has more than its fair share of clunkers. George Lucas cannot write a love scene to save his life, as evidenced by these gems:
  
  Anakin: You are so ... (huge, awkward pause) ... beautiful.
  Padme: It's only because I am so in love.
  Anakin: No, it's because I am so in love with you.
  Padme: So, love has blinded you?
  
  Padme: Hold me, like you did by the lake at Naboo, so long ago, when there was nothing but our love.
  
  As some might say, OY! Kudos to the actors for not falling about laughing. Poor Natalie Portman - that "Hold me, like you did ..." line is just excruciating, like something from a parody of bad Gothic romance novels.
  
  Apart from the love scenes, bad writing abounds. Obi-Wan's speeches, Palpatine's lines when he seduces Anakin to the dark side, even the expositional exchanges between members of the Jedi Council; all could have done with some tighter editing.
  
  
• I am sorry, but Hayden Christensen is almost as bad here as he was in Ep 2. It is especially frustrating because he plays Darth Vader, iconic evil bad guy whose name alone is supposed to strike fear in every heart. As played by Christensen, the guy is petulant and a bit of a love-lorn wimp; it's difficult to imagine being terrified of this Darth Vader. Even at the height of his madness and fury, he seemed little more than a teenager that didn't get his own way.
  
  
• I don't know if these were intended, but the allusions to Bush's decisions on Iraq and the corruption that comes with absolute power were extremely heavy handed. Yes, a movie can have topical relevance and a movie can be a cutting commentary on the norms and mores of our times. But not this movie. The screenplay is nowhere clever enough to be taken that seriously.
  
  
• Either because of the screenplay or the direction (or both), Anakin's motive for joining the Dark Side is rather muddled. I think that Lucas was trying to say that Anakin was first attracted to Palpatine's offer because of the promise that he could save Padme from foreseen death. It was later that he began to crave power in and of itself because of his disillusionment and frustrations with the Jedi. If this was Lucas's intention, it was never communicated clearly enough (or perhaps, acted well enough) such that we understand and feel the full impact of Anakin's journey into darkness.
  
  I found this annoying because the overwhelming impression I got was that Anakin did it primarily to save Padme. I suppose this is not implausible, but to hinge the creation of Darth Vader on this makes a mockery of the greatest villain in pop culture. The big bad man killed all those people, including innocent kids (albeit kids in Jedi training), all to keep his one true love alive. Excuse me while I gag. If this was true, and if Padme had survived, she would have divorced his lame ass faster than you can say "Naboo".
  
  For the story to have true gravitas, Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader should be underpinned by his attraction to his own darker side; his own weakness for power and power's promise of invincibility. Oh well, that is the story I have in my mind, and I think it is also the story that Lucas was trying to tell. It's just too bad that it didn't quite come out that way.
  
  
• General Grievous is George Lucas's latest CGI wet-dream. A blah and uninteresting character, despite all the CGI wizardry, this was a character we could have done without. He seemed to have been included so that Lucas could film another light sabre duel.
  
  
• Darth Vader's cry of "NOOOO!" when he learned that Padme has died was laughable, mainly because it took so long to get out. After Palpatine told him that she was dead, Darth Vader seemed to just lumber around aimlessly for quite a long while, before letting out that wail. I suppose he could have been emoting, coming to grasp with the horrible revelation, but when the actor is in a mask, we cannot see what he is doing. I thought he was just coming to grips with his new metal encased body, because the whole sequence suggested a physical rather than emotional struggle.
  

Unlike the first two movies, the good stuff makes up for the bad. What I particularly liked about this movie that the Star Wars universe now looks like the one we first encountered in 1978. The costumes and hairstyles are especially well chosen, with special mention to Padme's breadroll hair that appropriately acknowledges Carrie Fisher's famous Leia 'do. The design for the Imperial Army's uniform and the space crafts and the look of the droid units are also spot-on.

As in all Lucas films, the set designs are dazzling and the look of the movie breath-taking. As Anakin and Obi Wan fly through intergalactic space in the first sequence, you have to admire the details on large spaceships, small crafts, distant planets and various bits of flying and floating objects.

Any Star Wars film must first and foremost be an entertaining summer movie and RotS fares well in this department. The action sequences (including many light sabre duels) are well staged and everything moves along at a snappy pace. The rescue of Palpatine, which opens the movie, harkens back to the tongue-in-cheek campiness of the original trilogy. It's all great fun and reassures the viewer that whatever else might happen, this is an entertaining movie.

Lucas spent the entire wretched Ep 2 on showing the Padme-Anakin relationship, but the true love story in the prequels is the bond between Obi Wan and Anakin. This is the relationship that will have the greatest repercussions in the future that takes place in the original trilogy. Obi Wan's sacrifice of his life in Star Wars is even more poignant in light of the events of RotS. The first part of the movie establishes the brotherly camaraderie between Anakin and Obi Wan and the easy banter between them is reminiscent of Redford and Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The buddy movie touch was a nice one and worked far better in establishing the tone of this relationship than all the romantic scenes did in establishing the Padme-Anakin relationship. As the movie progressed, we see that Obi Wan was genuinely concerned for Anakin and devastated when he learned of Anakin's brutal acts of murder. Anakin's side of the story is not so clear, again, because he's generally portrayed as a temperamental teenager.

Obi Wan emerged as the true hero of this film, and maybe even of the entire prequel trilogy. He had been a bit of a wet noodle previously, a little more so in Phantom Menace and less so in Attack of the Clones, but in Sith, he was classically heroic. More so than almost anyone else, he was betrayed by Anakin, yet could not bring himself to kill him. He was not as skilled as Anakin, but took him on and defeated him. Ewan McGregor gets first billing, and rightly so. He has the true leading role, and does it justice. (I had thought that McGregor seemed somewhat uninvolved in the first two movies, where the problem mostly laid with the under-written Obi Wan character.) In the buddy movie sequences, he displayed a cheeky sense of mischief which is his great gift as an actor. As the tone of the movie got darker, Obi Wan Kenobi was saddled with much speechifying, and McGregor did his best with clumsily written lines. His great accomplishment is that he succeeded in sounding like Alec Guinness. I could see how this Obi Wan will age graciously into the much-loved Ben Kenobi of Star Wars.

Apart from Christensen, most of the actors acquit themselves well. Ian McDiarmid is a standout as Palpatine. This was an over the top portrayal with much hamming going on, but with the lines he had to say, this was a brilliant approach to the role. He dropped the hamminess when the scene called for it and there was a genuine menace about his Palpatine. Even while he played off a rather stiff Christensen, McDiarmid was dynamic. Natalie Portman had to deal with corny lines and bad hair, and while this was not great acting, it was at least better acting than her screen husband managed. She even managed to inject deep anguish into the line "Anni, you are breaking my heart" (which Lucas wrote in such a "literal" manner). In smaller roles, Frank Oz (as the voice of Yoda), Jimmy Smits and Samuel L. Jackson provided reliable support.

This is an emotional movie, telling the tragic tale of a man's descent into darkness as he yields to the temptation of power. Notwithstanding the muddled motives (see above), Lucas handled this with the right dramatic touch, and resisted the temptation to relegate the emotions to second place behind the razzle-dazzle of special effects. Even as Obi Wan Kenobi fought Anakin in the final light sabre duel, the underlying emotions of betrayal, disappointment and resentment took pride of place over choreographed moves and the background CGI. I particularly liked how Lucas handled the pivotal moment when Obi Wan disarms (yeah, bad pun) Anakin. In that one second, we finally learned the background behind the powerful visual image we have always had of Darth Vader, in dark helmet and suit. Also in that one second, we begin to more deeply understand the words that the older Ben Kenobi spoke to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, and the dying words of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Lucas could have indulged in excruciating slow motion (ala John Woo!) to underline the importance of this one second, but he resisted it. The moment is all the more powerful for its brevity and its suddenness (it did come from nowhere and I found myself thinking, "Holy S***! Did Obi Wan just kick Anakin's ass?").

After all the fighting is done, Lucas takes time to tell us the backstory to the separation of Luke and Leia and to set up the events in the first Star Wars movie. These scenes are filled with great pathos. We also learn how Yoda and Obi Wan ended up in their separate planets in the future. Lucas also explained how Obi Wan was able to come back to communicate with Luke, after seeming to die at Darth Vader's hand in Star Wars. I appreciated these touches, as Lucas is acknowledging the devotion of fans who had grown up with these movies.

When I watch the original trilogy again, any scenes with Luke interacting with Yoda and Obi Wan will take on greater significance. This, then, is the ultimate endorsement for RotS. I don't think it's quite great enough for me to forgive the first two prequels, but it's good enough to stand on its own without the baggage of those two films.

Recently Seen: The Aviator

Martin Scorcese is a master of the language of film. He understands the possibilities of cinema and brings this faith in the medium to every film that he makes. This does not always result in great movies, but a Martin Scorcese movie will always be authentic and innovative.

The Aviator is not a great Scorcese film, but it is a perfectly fine one. It tells the tale of Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), one of the great originals of 20th Century America. Hughes was one of the richest men in the world. He led an eventful life, finding success in the glitzy world of film-making and blazing a path in the early days of commercial and military aviation. This dual career was dazzling and all the more amazing because Hughes was obsessive about both pursuits, although flying was always his most enduring love (hence The Aviator, and not The Producer). Hughes was also to die a recluse, having been mentally ill for years.

The movie traces Hughes's life in the 1920's up to 1946, ending with a triumphant maiden flight for the Hercules, his flying boat that had seemed earth-bound and been laughingly called the Spruce Goose. But this is not a feel-good biopic. Early on, we learn that Hughes sees things that others do not and his OCD driven tics are also revealed gradually but surely. We know that this is not just an eccentric millionaire genius, but a mentally troubled man, driven by demons he could not understand,

Perhaps the reason why this is not a great film is that we do not understand these demons either. We do not really understand Hughes and as such, we cannot empathise with him, although we may sympathise and even root for him. I suppose this could be a problem that was not within the film-makers' powers to resolve. In choosing Hughes as a subject, they had to work with a character about whose inner motivations little was known.

What they did have was a man who lived a colourful life, who did many interesting things and knew many interesting people. The film is about these events in Hughes's life and about Hughes's relationships with the people he knew. As these are enacted, Scorcese weaves in scenes to show us Hughes's mental decline, some of which are masterful film-making (I particularly liked the scene in the men's washroom when Hughes scrubs his hands and uses up all the towels and then finds himself unable to place his bare hand on the doorknob). There are also several well produced aviation set pieces, including one where Hughes crashes into a house and burns three quarters of his body. The music is wonderful, drawing on popular songs from the period, with very clever jazzy, big-band sounds serving as background music to several scenes. Visually, this is also a marvelous looking film and as always with a Scorcese picture, the attention to period detail is fantastic.

The movie depicts the events very well, but is less successful in depicting the relationships. Because the movie is so centred around Hughes, we do not learn much about the people around him or what they might have thought of him. The movie shows his relationship with two very famous women, Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). Hepburn, in particular is featured prominently but always in relation to Hughes. The male characters fare rather better. We know without equivocation what rival airline owner, Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) thinks of Hughes and the spikiness of their relationship is obvious from the moment Trippe first shows up on screen. Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) launches an investigation in Hughes's dealings with the US Military. The interaction between Hughes and the Senator is the highlight of the movie for me. I wonder why it was that the characterisations of the women in his life could not be so balanced and well-fleshed out.

The acting has many hits but also a few misses. Leonardo Dicaprio is an intelligent actor who immerses himself in this role. He has several wonderful scenes and was especially convincing as a man in the grip of destructive phobia. However, as a whole, the performance is more admirable than laudatory. Perhaps it has to do with Dicaprio's ridiculously youthful appearance, which no amount of dishevelledness could cover. He just seemed rather light-weight in moments which called for greater gravity. That said, he has to carry the show as he is in almost all the scenes and he more than pulled his weight on this difficult project.

Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for her supporting role as Kate Hepburn. She perfectly reproduces Hepburn's singular speech patterns, physical traits and archness. It is something of a marvel to watch and listen to, because she did look and sound so much like Hepburn in her earlier movies (sidenote: In this period of Hepburn's life, she made Bringing Up Baby, which is a great, funny film). I understand why some critics had said that this was impersonation and mimicry, rather than acting. But I blame this on the role, which gives Blanchett little to work with. She is on screen a lot, but usually as a cipher for Hughes's latest display of eccentricity. I have read a couple of biographies on Kate Hepburn and she was a fascinating woman, not just a great actress but fiercely intelligent and independent. Her family background itself could make for a mini-series, with her parent's socialist leanings, her siblings' overachievements and her mother's activism in the suffragette movement. It is a pity that the movie could not give Blanchett a chance to play a more multi-faceted Hepburn. Taken on the terms of what she had to do, this was a very fine performance indeed.

Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner, on the other hand, was bland and did not register much. She looked gorgeous, but not at all like Ava Gardner who was sensuous and beautiful in a very unconventional manner, with her slanting cat eyes and full lips. Beckinsale is a much more mainstream beauty, so this was a visual mismatch.

Alan Alda was nominated for an Oscar and it was justified, in my opinion. His performance is very understated and edged with a guarded wariness. He does not have any big histrionic scene, but he makes an impact in all the scenes he appears in. His jousting with Dicaprio during the hearing is a highlight of the movie. Alda palpaby conveys the Senator's deflation and crumbling confidence as he senses the tide turning towards Hughes.

My favourite of the supporting roles is Hughes's long suffering assistant, Noah played very well by John C Reilly. I wished he had been given a few more scenes as Reilly made this beleagured man so sympathetic and likeable.

This is a very respectable movie indeed, with fine acting, great production values and Scorcese's trademark sure-handed direction. The technique and technicalities are superb, and while the artistry is not at the same high levels, this is fine film-making. The movie falls short of greatness but is a valuable addition to the film vaults.

Movie rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Recently Seen: Being Julia

Set in pre-war London, this movie enacts the tale of Julia Lambert (Annette Benning), a great actress approaching a difficult age. She is surrounded by an entourage of characters including her husband and manager (Jeremy Irons), the ghost of her her mentor (the great Michael Gambon), dresser (Juliet Stevenson), gay admirer (Bruce Greenwood) and patron-business partner (Miriam Margoyles). They are both enablers and detractors of her neediness, her ego and her melodramatic sense of self. She is acting every minute of her life, but as her son points out, she isn't just playing one character. She does not always know herself what "being" Julia means.

The movie has two distinct parts. In the first, Julia begins an affair with a young American, Tom (Shaun Evans). Playing yet another part, she convinces herself that she is in love with him and her inner glow enhances her stage performances. She supports him financially and brings him to her family's summer home, where she watches him as he favours the company of young people his age, including her son. He eventually strays to a young promising actress, Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch) and ends their affair.

In the second part of the movie, Tom convinces Julia to help Avice obtain a supporting part in a new play that Julia will star in. Avice gets the part and it is revealed to Julia that Avice is dallying with her husband, who is directing the play. Even before the play opens, Avice is much lauded and London is abuzz about this new star. We get into All About Eve territory, as Julia fights to keep her turf as London's pre-eminent actress. This culminates with Julia hijacking Avice's big scene on opening night, wearing an unplanned eye-catching gown, ad-libbing her lines, throwing counter-punches as Avice attempts to engineer the scene back to her own advantage. Julia emerges the undoubted star of the play as her entire entourage watches in admiration.

This movie is a slight, frothy affair. It is a comedy which is charming rather than amusing. There really is not much of a coherent plot and other than Julia, none of the characters are sufficiently developed enough for us to care about. The first part of the movie drags and the pace is generally just too leisurely. On the plus side, it has pretty period London scenes and a tuneful soundtrack of songs from the era.

This movie would be completely inconsequential if not for a great central performance by Annette Benning. She is tremendous in this role, dominating the screen every time she is on it. You find yourself becoming very fond of Julia despite her egoism and her ocassional bitchiness, because Benning infuses her portrayal with an always present humanity and compassion. Even when Julia is being difficult, Benning makes you care and remember Julia's generosity of spirit. Her playing of the ad-libbed opening night scene is masterful in the steeliness of her resolve and the mischief that steals through in the twinkle in her eyes. This is a great actress playing a great actress.

Movie rating : 5 out of 10 (discounting Annette Benning); 6.5 out of 10 (accounting for Annette Benning)

Recently Seen: The Machurian Candidate

Films about paranoia are hard to pull off. It requires a deft touch to sustain tension and reveal the truth in tantalising bits and pieces. The Jonathan Demme directed version of The Manchurian Candidate succeeds, although perhaps without the same impact as the original 1960's version. The story has been updated to make Raymond Shaw (Liv Schrieber) a candidate for US Vice President instead of a political assassin, as in the original movie. This new conceit works in the current US political climate, especially if you subscribe to Michael Moore's view of the unholy link between big business and the Bush administration. What it gains in relevancy, however, it loses in urgency because lifes are not as immediately at stake.

Nevertheless, I found this movie enjoyable. The screenplay is intelligent, with a notable absence of cringe-inducing lines. I particularly enjoyed the language used in the political convention, campaign speeches and the conversations involving the politicos. Jonathan Demme also kept proceedings moving at a snappy pace, so our attention never flags.

The performances are also uniformly excellent. Denzel Washington is one of the most reliable actors around, always able to believably inhabit any role. He particularly specialises in the noble Everyman, and the role of Ben Marco provides him with another chance to portray a damaged, confused and angry man, who is never anything less than a good at his core. Liv Schreiber is a scene stealer; the Raymond Shaw character is complex and calls for a duality - charming politician and conflicted introvert - which Schrieber manages with great subtlety. Schreiber has always been known for his serious acting chops, but I have only previuosly seen him in supporting roles in Scream and Kate & Leopold, and was not prepared for such a fine, nuanced performance. His performance made his sacrifice of his own life in the penultimate scene all the more touching. Meryl Streep plays Raymond's formidable mother, Senator Eleanor Shaw. She is as one usually expects Meryl Streep to be - exceptionally good. She can shift from cut-throat intensity to tenderness so gracefully, you almost cannot believe it while watching it.

All in, this is highly watchable, although perhaps less thought-provoking than it could have been. It would have been great if a movie could have caused us to really question the control that corporations have over polticians and government officials. But perhaps a movie like that would not have been half as entertaining as this movie is. It succeeds in keeping us interested for the duration of its running time, and perhaps to ask for more is being unreasonable.

Movie rating: 7 out of 10. Solid, enjoyable entertainment with great acting.

Recently Seen: Phantom of the Opera (the movie)

Obligatory Musical Theatre Nut Confession
As I have recounted elsewhere on Ascending Chaos, I love musical theatre. I don't have the highest opinion of Andrew Lloyd Webber as a composer of "thru-sung" musicals, but he does churn out pretty melodies in the manner of other musicians who rank somewhat below the highest echelon (Meyerbeer and Mascagni, to name a couple in the same mould of composers of "popular opera"). I certainly don't get sniffy about ALW musicals. He is unashamedly mainstream and knows how to appeal to a mass audience. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not high art, but it brings pleasure to many more people than would an experimental opera by Phillip Glass (I have seen Einstein on the Beach, so I know that of which I speak).

I own a copy of the Original London Cast recording of Phantom, and have done so for 17 years. I saw the show on stage around 15 years ago. I have the VCD of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 50th Birthday Celebration concert. And I have two versions of Michael Ball singing All I Ask of You (Ball's voice is one of my favourite theatre voices).

At one stage in my life, I could sing along to the recording, even the overlapping parts, so imprinted had the libretto become in my mind. There was a time when I didn't listen to the recording for months on end, but each time I returned to it, I could remember every note, if not every word.

My favourite parts of the score:

• All I Ask of You (especially the introductory notes, that swell with romantic ardour approaching Puccinian levels. I also like the bittersweet aftermath, with the Phantom sobbing "Christine, Christine")
• Music of the Night (great theatrical piece and I especially like the ending, and the haunting chord changes when the singing stops)
• The three part harmony in the Graveyard scene (the fragment Wandering Child, after Christine sings Wishing you were Somehow Here Again),
• Prima Donna (a lush, swinging main melody and interesting overlapping lines)
• Notes (nice comedic writing and a welcome respite from the high drama of the lair scenes) and Notes 2 (clever lyrics)
• He is Nothing but a Man .... Twisted Every Way (Raoul tries to calm Christine as she voices her fear over his plan to trap the Phantom. It's a relatively short segment at the end of an ensemble piece but the music expresses the emotions with great economy - tender and wistful on his part, terrified and conflicted on hers).
  

I am pretty familiar with the music of Phantom, although not the staging, as I have only seen it once. This is why I was pretty excited to watch the Phantom movie, to see if the stage experience could be captured (I did not expect it to be emulated or even recreated, as these are two very different art forms). I saw Phantom on stage in Melbourne, with Anthony Warlow singing the role of the Phantom. This remains one of the most memorable nights I have spent in a theatre, and I have had a fair few of those. Whatever else you might think about the syrupy music and overwrought sentimentality, Gaston Leroux wrote a wonderfully atmospheric piece of Gothic romance and a halfway decent adaptation would be gripping. On stage, it worked marvellously. How would the movie do?

The Movie
I had not followed news about the movie, only knowing that they had cast relative unknowns, as the original cast of Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman are now too old to assume the roles. Other than this fact, I knew nothing else about the cast or crew.

Director: Joel Schumacher ??? Here's a head scratcher. Joel Schumacher made Batman and Robin, for crying out loud! This was the movie that killed the Batman franchise, before Chris Nolan's current rescue mission. What would Joel Schumacher know about making a musical? Could they not get Baz Lurhman? This was not promising.

And so it turned out that Joel Schumacher had a decidedly pop music-video approach to this movie. The movie is very glossy and visually beautiful but in achieveing this, Schumacher loses the Gothic edge and darkness that worked so well in the theatre. I suppose it helps to make the movie more accessible to audiences not familiar with the stage show.

This is also the Sexy Phantom of the Opera. Erik the Phantom (not named in this movie) is years younger than both the book and stage versions. In casting Gerald Butler, the film maker had a conventionally good looking leading man who is supposed to be horrifyingly disfigured. He wears a half mask, the edge of which traces his chiselled profile to perfection. He is filmed as often on his uncovered side as he is on his masked side. Before Christine ripped off his mask, I found myself thinking more than once that the actor must be quite nice looking if the right side of his face looked anything like the left.

When the mask came off to reveal the Phantom's deformity, I thought - "oh, is that all?" You see worse on an average episode of Nip/Tuck when they are introducing the case of the week. Really, the disfigurement was hardly terrifying, and the libretto describes the face as being so distorted, "it was hardly a face". This did not come anywhere close to that description.

Schumacher's directorial choices remove the mystic of the Phantom; he is supposed to be mysterious, other-worldly and a figure of horror. The mild disfigurement makes the character more tolerable to look at on a storey-high cinema screen, but ultimately, less complex and conflicted. This is compounded by having his illusions (so thrilling and inexplicable in the stage version) explained early in the game, so that we know from the start that this is NOT a ghost. I understand that the movie Phantom does need to be more human than the stage version; the nature of cinema dictates it. But to so completely strip him of his mystical qualities makes a mockery of the title Phantom of the Opera. In the end, this could have been a high-school teen-drama about a slightly deranged boy with skin problems, the newly discovered star of the cheer squad and the Porsche-driving football captain. The point of Gothic romance is that it is somewhat over the top and larger than life. It could have worked on screen - a Phantom at once human and supernatural. It just needed a better understanding of the material, and probably a better director.

Schumacher also plays up the sexual tension between Christine and the Phantom, rather than underlining the romance, which is inherent in the score or the theme of redemption which has always been the point of Leroux's novel. The Phantom is overtly an object of sexual desire. He stalks with feline grace into the Masquerade scene, generally exudes masculine swagger before his final breakdown, and enacts two seduction scenes, firstly during Music of the Night and later, on stage performing Point of No Return. In both seduction scenes, Schumacher drapes Christine provocatively over the Phantom, her cleavage heaving in time to the music.

Talking about cleavage, Christine wears one bosom-baring dress after another. Even in the cemetary scene, where she is wrapped up everywhere else, with snow falling around her, her cleavage is on decorative display. I suppose that part doesn't get cold?

In all, Schumacher's vision for this movie appears to have much more to do with sexuality than romantic tension. That is fine, in so far as that is the director's prerogative. Where I feel it fails is that this sexualised approach doesn't work with the music, which is rendered tawdry, instead of yearning, despairing and romantic (and I mean romantic in the sense of being about naked emotions, not in the sense of mist-swirled ardour). The danger has always existed with this particular ALW score; it is overwrought and unsubtle in construction. It can be served well if interpreted as a form of opera seria, self aware of its own cliched trappings within the conventions of the genre. Otherwise, it is one note away from being schlocky.

The Cast
It's not easy to cast a musical movie, especially if you insist that the actors do their own singing. They have to look right for the screen (all those close ups!) - something which is less critical for the stage, must sing reasonably well and must act decently. I would have thought that the best thing to do was to scour the musical-theatre stage for suitably photogenic actor-singers, but that is not apparently the way that Schumacher and gang went about it.

Gerard Butler (the Phantom)
As I said earlier, he is somewhat younger than expected and considerably better looking. He has screen presence, being tall and broad and having a gravelly speaking voice and an ability to emote through his eyes. Having such a good looking Phantom presents problems, as his burden of ugliness just does not seem that much to bear when the disfigurement on his face isn't particularly terrible. When Gerard Butler sighs, sobs and wails in anguish, I admire his craft and believe in his internal struggle, but wonder, all the same, if he isn't just being a tad melodramatic. But this is not the actor's fault, so much as the director's. Butler has obviously found a motivation for his character and portrays its many facets with subtlety, skill and charisma. His redemption scene at the end, when he releases Christine, evokes real pathos. He understands, more than his director seemingly does, that the key to the Phantom is his sadness and suffering. His acting is perfectly fine. He rises above Schumacher's mishandling of the character and delivers a heartfelt and emotionally nuanced Phantom.

His singing, though, is far from ideal. The voice itself is not bad; his tone has an unabrasive rock hoarseness, and he manages decent resonance on some of the head notes. But the Phantom is a difficult role to sing and his lack of training tells. He has trouble hitting notes and on Music of the Night and Point of No Return, he sounded like three completely different people singing as he moved between registers. His interpretation of the music was also sometimes overly forceful when subtlety or insinuating sensuality was called for; he resorted to shouting instead of singing, which probably has to do with lack of technique,

Emmy Rossum (Christine)
She received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance, and I am not quite sure why. She certainly looks right for the part, with her doe-eyed beauty and unaffected screen presence. Christine Daae should have a touch of the unworldly innocent about her, and Rossum has the youth and charm to convey this. The camera loves her and she is simply luminous, with her glowing, flawless complexion and her dark hair and eyes. In terms of looking the part, she cannot be faulted.

I wish I could say the same about her acting. There are moments when I found her truly moving, but too many scenes where she seemed to completely lack emotion. Part of that might be Schumacher's fault, so it might not necessarily reflect her abilities as an actress. But she set the tone for the entire performance with her lack of facial expression during "Think of Me" when it transitioned to the gala performance. Here she was, with her big break, singing the star role, and she just stood there looking blank, her voice seemingly coming from an offstage recording (of course, it did!). It was almost like someone had said that singers look horrible on screen, with open mouth and possible sighting of tonsils, and she was determined to appear perfectly decorous, hardly opening her mouth at all. She relied on her eyes to do all the acting, but does not quite yet have the emotional maturity to be completely convincing.

Her singing was much vaunted as she had sung with the Met Opera Children Chorus. Her voice is certainly rich, especially in its lower register, but the girl needs lessons on technique. There were far too many cheats in hitting the high notes and in the transition between notes. And quite a few high notes were squeaked, rather than sung. When she wasn't struggling with unsupported notes, and resorting to scooping in and out of notes, she did sound lovely, rather like an old-style Hollywood soprano (Shirley Jones comes to mind, although I think Rossum might be more of a mezzo than a soprano). It's a pity they didn't give her more time to be properly trained; the promise is apparent, which makes the sour notes harder to take.

Patrick Wilson (Raoul)
Raoul is a thankless role to play, being essentially one dimensional and rather boring, compared to the complex Phantom. Patrick Wilson pulls off the acting about as well as expected; it's a dull, stereotypical romantic lead and he portrays it exactly as what it is. If it comes across as a somewhat bland performance, I think it has more to do with the role than the actor. Schumacher put in additional action-hero scenes to enlarge Raoul's role, but I felt these did nothing to make the character more interesting. Raoul is a narrative device; he is noble, impulsive-heroic and a bit dandyish - and is described as such by both Leroux's prose and Lloyd Webber's score; a fine and admirable character but not all that interesting. He is as an uncomplicated character functioning as a foil to the Phantom. A convincing performance of the role is one in which Raoul is superficially charming and ardent, and Christine's love for him is believable. In this, I think Wilson succeeded - he brings an easy laid-back charm to his early scenes and is suitably intense as the melodrama intensifies. I found Raoul in the movie to be extremely likeable, if not very interesting. It did take a while for me to warm to the character and I initially felt that he had been miscast, but much of that is because his appearance was so much fairer and paler than I expected.

He also gets saddled with a horrific hair-piece, which would be envied by any woman, so perfectly fine and silky are his tresses. This has the unfortunate effect of detracting from his great bone structure, and succeeds in making the character look even more foppish. Add the open-necked white shirts and tight breeches, and what you have is a Raoul that is styled from the cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel.

Raoul does get one of the best songs in the score, so while not a great role to act, it is a grateful role to sing. Patrick Wilson's singing is the best of the three leads, which is somewhat of a pity as he gets the least actual singing. He has a lovely lyric tenor, a light and sweet tone; it is a very "musical theatre" type of voice. He has two Tony Award nominations (one for playing Curly in Oklahoma! - I would love to hear his voice on Oh, What a Beautiful Morning) and his Broadway-cred is telling. He is the only one of the three leads without obvious vocal problems. Compared to Gerard Butler's rock-edge growl, he has less vocal heft, but considerably better technique and greater musicality.

The Supporting Cast
Miranda Richardson is a regal but human Madame Giry. Apart from the three leads, this is the most important role, at least in the movie version. Madame Giry is almost portrayed as an accomplice of the Phantom. It would have been easy for an audience to think that she approved of Buquet's murder and the obsessive stalking of Christine Daae. Miranda Richardson manages to infuse trepidation and remorse behind her icy gaze, so that this is never so clear-cut.

Minnie Driver plays Carlotta as a completely over the top caricature of an Italian Prima Donna. I found this somewhat grating, but the blame here lies squarely with the director. The singing is supplied by someone else who was instructed to indulge in the worst ever parody of an unmusical soprano, complete with broad vibrato and ear-splitting shrieks. This is just wrong, as Carlotta is the star of Opera Populaire and is supposed to be able to SING, whatever else might be wrong about her personality.

Simon Callow and Ciaran Hinds play Andre and Firmin, the two theatre managers. They are possibly my favourite thing about the movie, especially their scenes in Notes and Prima Donna. Simon Callow is a wonderful comic actor and his lightness of touch never fails here. He also does a fine job with the singing and produces a few wonderfully plumy tones during Prima Donna. Ciaran Hinds (who played Captain Wentworth in the movie Persuasion, talk about versatility!) was a delight with his smirking and raised eyebrows. He has no singing experience, but a great speaking voice and manages to pull off the singing well enough.

General Comment on the Singing
They marshalled the resources to have a 105-piece orchestra perform the score. This is welcome news indeed to cast recording collectors. I had always wondered why there wasn't a Symphonic recording of Phantom, like the one done for Les Mis (which is a marvellous recording, sound wise). This movie soundtrack could have filled that gap. Unfortunately, the uneven singing abilities of the lead cast has voided this promise. They are by no means bad, but not equal to performers in cast recordings.


The Movie vs the Musical on Stage
Changes were made in the movie, presumably to make it more easily digestible by a movie audience. Some of it works better than others:

• Black and white flash-forward scenes, showing Raoul forty years after the main events. On stage, there is one future scene, right at the start, serving as a prologue. In the movie, the flash-forward scenes intersperse the set pieces and there is a substantial scene acting almost like an epilogue. As a cinematic device, this was useful but overused.
• Changing the Phantom's back story as told by Madame Giry. In the stage musical, she talks about a disfigured man escaping from the travelling fair, but does not know what had become of him. In the movie, she is the one who, as a child, showed him the way to the dungeons below the Opera Populaire. I did not care for this change in the Phantom's history. It establishes a strange relationship between Madame Giry and the Phantom which the movie does not satisfactorily resolve (I think it cannot be resolved, because it's not in the score at all). This backstory also wipes out the Phantom's history of being a known genious, who had built a maza of mirrors for the Shah of Persia.
• Adding spoken lines of exposition. The bulk of this took place in the first scenes as they established the characters. Later, Christine does a bit of explaining about her father and the Angel of Music and Madame Giry tells the story of how Erik came to the Opera's underground lair. I actually felt these were unecessary and broke the flow of a mostly sung-through musical.
• Having certain lines spoken instead of sung. This did not make any sense to me at all. They kep the music playing in the background, so perhas they were going for a Rex Harison style of speak singing. Why, though?
• Showing the backstage activities at the Opera. This was great, one example of how the cinematic medium can open up the action and show what happens off the scene on the stage.
• Raoul defeats the Phantom in a duel. This was a strange scene, tagged on for seemingly no reason, other than perhaps generating some Schumacher type action. In itself, that is a sound idea, to take advantage of the cinematic medium and to produce a movie that was more than just a filmed stage show. The scene was well-filmed and generated some excitement, but seemed to have come out of nowhere. Having Raoul win the duel was jarring, especially after the Phantom had been shown to be so assuredly masculine and powerful.
• Raoul almost drowning. I suppose they wanted to give the third lead a little more to do. The problem is that these scenes add nothing to the story at all. The thing that Patrick Wilson does best is sing, not play action hero. Couldn't ALW have written him a couple of extra verses if they wanted to give him more screentime? Although, I did not mind this addition as much, because it fit better with the structure of the movie - an active sequence in the midst of other sequences with people on the move - the Phantom dragging Christine to his lair and the group out to "track down this murderer".
  
• Cutting Raoul's part in the three part harmony in the Cemetary scene. As mentioned above, this is one of my favourite parts of the score. Chopping it up this way was quite unforgivable.
• Leaving out the final verse of Phantom of the Opera. So, it's the title song, right? And they left off the final verse. Go figure.
• Leaving out the entire Notes II segment and the subsequent scene showing rehearsals for Don Juan Triumphant. Some of my favourite "Notes" lines are in this scene - the one about the third trombone is particularly droll. In the stage show, Christine has her breakdown (leading to Twisted Every Way) in this section, in front of everyone. It's a powerful scene in the theatre. The movie version has this segment as a two-hander with Christine and Raoul. It's more intimate and works quite well, but I would have preferred the old version, if only to see more of Andre and Firmin.
• The chandelier dropping during Don Juan and not at the end of Il Muto. This was necessary because there is no intermission in the movie. In the musical, the chandelier comes crashing down just before intermission, creating a nice climax point. They saved this for a later point in the movie, but it did lose some impact because they then plunged headlong into the Phantom's kidnapping of Christine, Raoul's drowning scene and the group storming the lair, out for the Phantom's blood (while the theatre supposedly burnt above them - logic gap?)

For me, the movie does not have even a fraction of the energy and magic of the theatre experience. Scenes that grip you by the throat in the theatre seems oddly flat on screen. On stage, Music of the Night is a masterpiece of creepiness and mystery. In the movie, it lacks atmosphere because of poor direction that did nothing to sustain tension. The lair was also too well lit and too beautifully appointed. On stage, All I Ask of You is truly swooningly romantic, the Phantom's sob afterwards is heart-rending and his final declaimation "You will curse the day ... " is chilling. In the movie, these scenes play out and are pleasing to the eye and not too uneasy on the ear (see comments on the leads' singing above), but lack drama. Masquerade in the theatre is simply fantastic, a great set-piece and meta-commentary on the Phantom story. In the movie, there were a few too many cuts and the gold and black theme was visually arresting, but lacked the gaudy colour demanded by the bachinallian intentions of the music.

It has been said that this movie is not only for the fans, but for those who might not otherwise watch a staged musical. Hence the young, good looking stars, sexy costumes and heightened sexuality. I suspect the movie succeeds better in pleasing these casual viewers than the long-time fan of the show. And on those terms, we have to regard the movie as a success.

It is rather hard for me to watch this from the perspective of a movie-goer without the "baggage" of a having expectations formed from the musical on stage and on recordings. I imagine, though, that in terms of appealing to a wider audience, Schumacher probably made an astute decision to cast younger actors and ramping up the sex appeal of the story. How would audiences have responded to an uglier, older Phantom, a modestly dressed Christine and a less swashbuckling Raoul? Would the lack of sword-fighting and a more dingy lair diminish the movie as a cinematic spectacle?

Schumacher set out to make a movie, not a film of the stage musical. He remained faithful to much of the material in the sense of excising very little from the original score and book. Through casting and direction, he did change the psychology underlying the events. (In particular, Schumacher alludes to the "sexual and deeply soulful" connection between Christine and the Phantom, which is more than vaguely disturbing in an Oedipal sense. Christine spends much of her time believing the angel of music to be the spirit of her father - Schumacher even has the Phantom sing "Far from my fathering gaze" during Wandering Child, instead of "Far from my far-reaching gaze", as in the original libretto.) Lloyd Webber's Phantom still owed much to Leroux's Erik. Schumacher's Phantom seems to have been inspired less by Leroux and more by Alexander Dumas or even the Baroness Orczy. It makes for an enjoyable enough 2 hours in the cinema, but it isn't really The Phantom of the Opera, neither Lloyd Webber's or Leroux's.

Final Thoughts

For those who have never seen Phantom on stage, this is not a substitute, because it isn't even really the same work once Schumacher has had his way with it. As a movie, it achieves the virtue of being entertaining. The cast provides enough eye candy to satisfy the sweetest tooth. The sets are sumptuous and beautiful, and the cinematography showcases one visual highpoint after another (sometimes at the expense of logical story-telling). Movie-goers who are not allergic to on-screen singing and wall-to-wall swelling violins would probably enjoy this. I think it would especially appeal to women because it is so ostensibly romantic, especially the dramatic denouement in final lair scene with both Butler and Wilson in half-open white shirts and Rossum in a shoulder-baring wedding dress.

This is well worth watching for any fan of the musical, if only to see how it translates onto the big screen. It is wonderful to look at and certainly never boring. For me, it lacks the spark of the live theatre experience and most disappointingly, the singing is uneven. That said, it is a welcome edition to the video library, as there has been no recorded version of the stage play or even a concert performance.

Movie rating: 7.5 out of 10 (as a movie), 6 out of 10 (as a movie version of the stage musical)