~Phantom of the Opera Film Review
2005-01-23 - 7:05 p.m.

So, I went to see The Phantom of the Opera yesterday afternoon with Emma and Maree.

I really enjoyed it, yet was disappointed. They didn't play around with the music, for which I was extremely thankful. I adore the music to Phantom and it would not have been worth making a film of the musical if they changed lots of it.

There were two things that meant this film was disappointing. The first was the actual pictures accompanying the music. In the stage show, every moment is tense, emotional, joyful, torturous, mesmirising, seductive or sorrowful and all are intense. So much of this film, especially the first half, lacked any intensity visually. Where, in the stage show, Christine would have been drawn in by the Phantom and intrigued by him, they spent half of the song The Phantom of the Opera with the pair of them walking down these tunnels, the Phantom leading Christine by the hand, and hardly even looking at her. There was no excitement, no magnetism from the Phantom, there was just travelling.

So often, there was just travelling, everyone moving from one part of the opera house to another, without the need for it. People know they're going to watch a musical, they can handle a little of people simply standing and singing their dialogue. After all, Curly and Laurie did it in People Will Say We're In Love from Oklahoma, Henry Higgins did it in that song after the ball from My Fair Lady, the Captain and Maria did it in Something Good from The Sound of Music, and the whole cast did it in You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel. The list goes on and on. People know that musicals are going to have singing in them. There should have been more coreography, more acting and less travelling. It continually undermined any real intensity.

The second very disappointing thing was the guy who played the Phantom. He didn't sing well at all, which is kinda crucial in the lead role of a musical, and he didn't perform well for the first half of the film. Even the second half he only really began to perform, rather than reaching any real brilliance. Michael Crawford has a fairly ordinary singing voice, but, right from the start, he sounds mysterious, sensual, slightly sinister and certainly wistful. His notes may not have wonderful support all the time, nor any special brilliance, but the sweetness and purity of his notes made it understandable that his voice would tug at Christine's musical soul and play in her head when he wasn't around. This guy, I can't even remember his name, couldn't really sing at all. His high notes weren't sweet, they were just flat (in timbre, not neccesarily pitch) and unsuported, usually sung in that more contemporary yelling way that attempts to pass for singing. His low notes weren't much better. In fact, he performed them best in the second half of the film where he outright yelled them, because at least he was getting the intensity up. I really missed having a chance to see from early on the way the Phantom was both beautiful and twisted.

Emmy Rossum gave a very lovely acting performance as Christine. She looked like she found the Phantom mesmirising, even if nobody could understand why. Her voice was a little disappointing because her high notes weren't really clear enough or supported well enough. Anyone with any appreciation of the classicially trained voice would find it hard to believe that she would be an acceptable lead soprano in a Parisian opera house. Other than that, however, she had a very sweet voice and performed most of the songs very nicely.

The rest of the cast was fairly unexceptional. The guy who played Raoul had a decent, pleasant voice, which made up for a sometimes bland, but otherwise acceptable, performance. Minnie Driver was good in a fairly straightforward spoiled Diva role, although Maree couldn't stand her "bad Italian accent". She performed the lower notes of the more dialogue/recitative songs very competently and the transition into the dubbed, higher operatic notes was seemless and convincing enough, if you didn't know what Minnie Driver's voice was like. The girl who played Meg Giry had a very sweet and pleasant voice. My favourite performance was from Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry. She was perfect, and about the only person who was more than fine in her role. She provided for so much of the mysterious, sinister and sympathetic emotions conjured for the Phantom, which he was fairly incapable of providing for himself.

Which reminds me of my earlier point about how the film was visually disappointing (despite the sumptious production design). One of the wonderful things about the stage version is the way I was drawn into the middle of the drama. I was sitting in the theatre and the Phantom's voice would echo all around me, even behind me, as if he was in the very theatre I was sitting in and not just on the stage. I think they could have made it feel like the audience in the cinema was more like the audience in the theatre, but instead I felt too detatched. The film showed so much more of what was happening. I remember, the first time I saw it in the theatre, when Bucket's body suddenly dropped down in the middle of one of the opera performances, his neck caught in a noose. It was such a shock and the sense that the Phantom had struck without anybody knowing and could still be anywhere felt very sinister and insecure.

In the film, they showed the Phantom chasing Bucket around the high ropes and platforms above the stage. What is mysterious about that? From early on, you see the Phantom actually leaving notes, locking doors, going through hidden passages. For much of the stage production, you can't help feeling a little awed and worried by the Phatom's apparent omniscience, omnipresence and even omnipotence. It adds to the intrigue and to the feeling of terror that possesses Christine as the musical progresses. No wonder there was no real intensity in this film.

By the climax, I had tears streaming down my face, but I don't think this was really because of the film. I have listened to the music for Phantom so often (as well as seeing the stage production twice) that I have the memory of emotions and visions attached to the music. I don't really need the pictures to feel sad when listening to the music, so watching it in a dark cinema with all of the pictures certain helped to catch me up in the moment.

In summary, I had a lovely time and got tingles constantly from the music, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who didn't already love the music (or, at least, knew they liked Andrew Lloyd Webber).