REVIEW: The Phantom of the Opera (1998) (NO SPOILERS)
Finn Clark
The Phantom of the Opera (1998)
...or in the original Italian: Il Fantasma dell'opera (1998)
Directed by Dario Argento
Starring Julian Sands, Asia Argento & Andrea Di Stefano
This film has a bad reputation. It's Dario Argento's big flop, or so I'd
been led to believe. It's full of cock-ups and mis-steps, but frustratingly
there's a good film in there struggling to get out. If you can see past the
flaws, you might even catch a glimpse of it from time to time.
The first thing to realise is that it's a fantasy. One might expect a
typical Dario Argento movie or a costume drama set in 19th-century Paris,
but the film never appears to be straining for realism (historical or
otherwise). Its characters are silly caricatures, and I'm not just talking
about the almost universally terrible acting. Look at the Ratcatcher and
his dwarf. Look at their Ratmobile. I mean, honestly. My jaw hung slack
when that hit the screen; was this a whimsical Jean-Pierre Jeunet fantasy or
some Gilliam-written nonsense starring the Muppets? It would be easy just
to dismiss the Ratmobile as a hideous mistake, presumably the consequence of
Dario taking all the drugs in the world and then letting his trained chimps
loose on a million typewriters. However I think it's indicative of a
fantastic world that we're supposed to regard as equal parts historical fact
and Grimm's fairy tale.
Viewed in this light, all kinds of weird directorial choices fall into
place. Why does the Phantom have psychic powers? Because he does! Why has
Dario Argento made a Phantom of the Opera movie that feels like Batman
Returns? Because Tim Burton is the modern American fantasist supreme,
that's why. (I'm not kidding about the Batman Returns similarities, by the
way. After being abandoned as a baby like the Penguin, this Phantom will
swoop on to the stage like Batman and generally act like a superhero. He
even has superpowers: Reduce Air Temperature, Commune With Rats and Make
Murderous Surprise Attack From A Deep Well While Presumably Standing On Thin
Air.) Check out the grotesquely fat nudists at the bathhouse, an
anti-erotic touch which can only have been inserted for surrealism value.
(Personally I thought that was cool, actually.) Check out the daft
characters - the Ratcatcher, or the simpering aide to that fat Italian diva.
This is not a film that's aiming for realism.
The Phantom himself looks like a visual nod to Cocteau's 1946 La Belle et la
Bete, which is kinda appropriate since Phantom of the Opera is a variant on
the Beauty and the Beast story. (We'll overlook the fact that the Phantom's
supposed to be hideously disfigured. This one's downright handsome.)
I think to enjoy this film, you've got to forgive things like the Phantom's
rowboat. This is a boat in which you row while standing up, presumably
because the water coming through the bottom of a sewer-boat wouldn't be fun
to sit in. It looks good on the screen. However you're looking backwards
as you row, and anyone using it for the first time while navigating
treacherous underground tunnels would probably end up cracking his head like
a walnut. As Dad said when I made this point afterwards: "You're not
supposed to think about things like that."
Oh, and surely even the most curmudgeonly fantasy-hater would have to admit
that the rats are cool. The Phantom's relationship with them is an
interesting elaboration on the usual story, and I loved their reaction to
the Phantom's final fate. (Watch this movie and you too can see Asia
Argento and Andrea Di Stefano being out-acted by rodents!) If you try to
see the rats on a realistic level, you'll hate 'em. Seeing rats rescue a
little baby instead of eating its eyes out is an "Oh, please!" moment, but
in a way that opening sequence nicely mirrors the film's ending. As a fairy
tale, I think that works.
I liked the world of this film, which bears no particular resemblance to any
Paris that ever existed but looks nifty anyway. I liked the vignettes of
Parisian society at the opera. I liked the perversion, such as the nudists'
bathhouse and the paedophile chocolate-mongers. (At one point I even
wondered if the Phantom was about to have sex with a rat.)
All this is interesting stuff. Maybe 'twas deliberate and maybe not, but I
still liked it. However for everything that I thought was cool, along came
something dumb and annoying to club me over the head. Where to start, where
to start...
1. The acting! Dear God alive, the acting! Julian Sands is good as the
mysteriously handsome Phantom (he'd make a good Dracula), but everyone else
goes from poor to dreadful to so unspeakably dreadful that even Dario "I
like shite actors" Argento realised it couldn't stay in the film and had the
scene dubbed. Asia Argento is poor, but given the material she had to work
with that's a minor triumph. Even Dame Judi Dench might have staggered away
from this looking like a raw rookie. Asia's character is awfully written,
lurching from one emotional state to another with so little warning that the
Phantom must have been manipulating her with his psychic powers. I see no
other explanation. Unfortunately the love scenes with Asia's second
romantic interest are just as bad.
The first scene between Asia Argento and Julian Sands is unbelievable. They
bump into each other in the corridor and suddenly the Phantom is expressing
his undying love and Asia isn't running into her room and calling the cops.
Five minutes of character establishment would have helped here.
But I haven't finished with the acting. Even if we overlook monstrosities
like that loon's performance as the Ratcatcher (hard, I know) there's still
the problem of the accents. Every conceivable accent is on display:
cut-glass English, Standard American, French, Italian and more. Even the
individual actors aren't necessarily consistent in their choices. Hearing
someone switch from UK English to American is kinda jarring. And then, just
when you've made yourself accept characters so broadly played that they're
unbelievable, it gets worse! Yes, there are child actors. They try to
laugh. I screamed.
2. Then there's the singing. This is where a modern filmmaker could never
compete with Lon Chaney's classic adaptation - the silent era was best
suited to portraying opera. Dario Argento decided to dub the actors. This
dubbing is very, very bad.
3. The gore! Surely even a shite Argento movie will at least have cool
gore scenes, right? Wrong-o. There's a CGI death, which despite fierce
competition is the biggest artistic mistake in the movie. When a chandelier
falls and crushes heads, they're obvious dummies. But even if those
production problems were fixed, Argento's trademark directorial sadism isn't
there. There's a mousetrap scene and a tongue-biting, but for the most part
this film is tame.
4. One girl gets a protracted death scene which might have been scary...
had the silly bitch not been so magnificently stupid that she loses all
audience sympathy. Ironically the film's only scene of true tension
revolves around the fat Italian diva, whom I thought was well-acted and a
good character.
5. The script sucks the farts from dead donkeys. Quite apart from being
the root cause of many of the aforementioned problems, it wastes far too
much time on scenes of irrelevant side-characters who are neither
interesting nor believable. Oh, and Argento's best slashers were all
anonymous. The moment you see their faces, they stop being scary... but
this shows us the Phantom's face right from the beginning. And hot damn, I
wanted him to kill that little girl.
And I haven't yet slagged off the mega-suckage ending. The Phantom causes a
disaster that would have finished the Opera House, then mysteriously expects
business to continue as usual. (Phantom: "The role is yours!" Audience:
"No mate, the show's closed.") When there's another full house for the
second night with no explanation, audience disbelief rolls over and dies.
Soon afterwards the Phantom becomes a complete pussy, accepts the True
Feelings of Asia Argento's Heart (pass the sick bucket) and tells her that
"if they catch you, they'll kill you." Why? God knows. The Ratcatcher
turns up just when we'd dared to hope he was dead, and all around it's
complete bollocks. Except for the rats, which were cool.
At least there was plenty of nudity, though I'm still worried about that
huge close-up of Asia Argento's bare bottom. Normally when a father takes
nudie photos of his little girl, we call the police. Dario, stop it.
You'll go blind. But in fairness I liked Asia's opening scene in that dress
with a translucent top and no bra. This is definitely a good film for the
Dirty Mac Brigade.
There were a few inspired touches. I liked the throwaway of the opera in
rehearsal being Faust, and that yucky shot of a desperate drink from a
rancid underground puddle. I also got a laugh from: "You laugh badly and
you don't lie any better." It was also amusing to see Dario work through
his checklist of Creepy-Crawlies And Other Ickies (rats, bugs, bats,
spiders, worms, lizards, etc.) If you can get behind the central love
triangle of Asia Argento, Andrea Di Stefano and the Phantom, you might well
find this movie to be an enjoyable piece of overblown fantasy. My Dad did.
On the other hand, if you can't get past its many flaws then you might
decide that it's a nonsense of cock-ups and missed opportunities.
More interesting than its reputation might suggest, but it might drive you
crazy.
Finn Clark.
gareth young
"Finn Clark" <kafe...@blewbury99.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aoslkc$b0e$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...
> NO SPOILERS
>
> The Phantom of the Opera (1998)
> ...or in the original Italian: Il Fantasma dell'opera (1998)
> Directed by Dario Argento
> Starring Julian Sands, Asia Argento & Andrea Di Stefano
>
> This film has a bad reputation. It's Dario Argento's big flop, or so I'd
> been led to believe. It's full of cock-ups and mis-steps, but
frustratingly
> there's a good film in there struggling to get out. If you can see past
the
> flaws, you might even catch a glimpse of it from time to time.
>
after already doing opera.
--
gareth-quote of the day
there's no coffee here in nilbog -it's the devils drink!'