VISUAL OPULENCE AND EMMY ROSSUM NOT ENOUGH

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Directed by Joel Schumacher; written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher, based on the novel by Gaston Leroux; director of photography, John Mathieson; edited by Terry Rawlings; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber; lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe; choreography by Peter Darling
With: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Simon Callow, and Ciaran Hinds. Running time: 143 minutes. This film is rated PG-13



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

The Phantom of the Opera carries high expectations. This film is an adaptation of a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber—an originator of Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and many other very successful musical theater productions—that was based on Gaston Leroux’s novel that has spawned a slew of films dating back to a Lon Chaney silent classic in 1925. The film opens impressively. Faux-newsreel footage set in 1919 shows a sad-eyed, aged man of means making a grim pilgrimage to a neglected shell of a Paris theater. There he joins others—including a lovely older woman the camera tacitly acknowledges. They are there for a macabre auction of the baubles and bangles of productions long past. Suddenly, the passionately rich orchestral music begins to swell while the ugly thick gray dust is scoured from the theater to reveal the gloriously opulent edifice that existed in 1870. The auction’s handful of somber attendees, both the reverent and the rapacious, is replaced by a stage full of colorfully arrayed singers and dancers. It is, as they say on Broadway, a showstopper.

It would be both unkind and inaccurate to say it’s all downhill from there, but the film never quite owns the audience as completely the rest of the way. Sadly, the film is uneven. It has some terrifically powerful music, but sometimes the execution is underwhelming. It is a significant challenge to transfer a successful large-cast theatrical musical to the film medium. This was considered so true that from the mid-60s (when The Sound of Music won the Best Picture Oscar) to the present day, very few film musicals were tried and an even fewer number were considered successful. That trend has changed a bit in recent years with first the adaptation of Lloyd Webber’s Evita, then Baz Luhrmann’s original Moulin Rouge, and, ultimately, the Oscar-winning Chicago. The success of those films no doubt emboldened Lloyd Webber to try once again to bring his very successful theater work to the big screen. Director Joel Schumacher might seem to be an odd choice. Schumacher specializes in directing gritty, violent films (8MM, Falling Down, Tigerland, and Phone Booth to name just a few) with little in his filmography that would suggest a strong affinity for this rich and powerful operatic musical. Schumacher has directed music videos, but on the basis of this film, it would appear that experience might not have been quite enough to fully prepare the director for this challenge.

The strength of the film is that it is a tremendous spectacle to enjoy. The art direction (Oscar nominees Anthony Pratt and Celia Bobak) and production design are topnotch. The theater interior, where most of the action takes place, is absolutely glorious, but the film makes excellent use of other settings and sets. The theater’s back stage and its labyrinthine link to the Phantom’s subterranean lair are an ingenious mix of creative imagination and engineering skill. The terrific cinematography (Oscar nominee John Mathieson), featuring a re-creation of vintage newsreel footage for segments from 1919 and full vivid color for 1870 sections, adds to the mesmerizing spectacle and the film’s changing moods.

Most of the music is rich, resonant, and delightfully bombastic. There are some other scenes where the actors talk-sing. These scenes don’t work particularly well musically. One of the scenes is the “note song” (many in the opera company have received darkly satiric warning notes from the yet unseen Phantom). The comic potential of this scene isn’t realized because the timing of the song’s changing singers is not staccato enough. Emmy Rossum is magnificent as Christine, the musical’s female lead caught betwixt the love of the obsessive Phantom and that of her childhood sweetie Raoul. She has a terrific voice, and when she sings, the movie absolutely soars. Unfortunately, neither the Phantom (Gerard Butler) nor Raoul (Patrick Wilson), who has grown up to be the Vicomte, matches Emmy Rossum’s vocal presence. While Emmy is a singer who can act, they are actors who can sing. For most musicals that would probably be more than enough but not for this musical. Butler is the better singer of the two, but he also has the more demanding role.

Wilson seems particularly weak as a romantic lead. He’s not unattractive, but with his overgrown pageboy haircut and raw-bone features, he falls short of dashing, handsome, and refined. Of more concern is that while most of the cast speaks with a posh English accent, Wilson speaks with a broad American accent. The combination of appearance and speech—rather than embodying European nobility—makes the filmgoer wonder if Wilson missed the Wild West Show train and got roped into masquerading as the Vicomte to get train fare. The film also does Wilson and itself no favors by omitting a key bridge scene (this is, unfortunately, part of a pattern). Christine and Raoul start as childhood friends getting reacquainted, and then we next learn that they are an engaged couple. The Vicomte never woos Christine nor, more importantly, the audience. Failure to do this means that the filmgoer is not committed to Christine and the Vicomte as a legitimate couple.

The Phantom also has more problems than a less-than-spectacular singing voice. He never truly engages our sympathy, and a tragic figure, as he is intended to be, must engage the audience’s sympathy. We never see him helping Christine develop as a singer. The first time we see him courting her, he has threateningly quasi-abducted her to his lair. Most disturbing of all, the audience sees him deliberately kill a stagehand. This killing lacks motivation and seems unnecessary to the story. Sparing the audience from witnessing the deliberate taking of a life—actually seeing it as opposed to seeing just the buildup and the result—would avoid inflaming the audience and preserve sympathy for the Phantom. Other Phantoms have only killed to avoid capture or out of jealousy, but this murder seems gratuitous. A late bid to engender sympathy for the Phantom by telling how he suffered a childhood of cruel abuse as a carnival sideshow freak is too little too late and fails to explain how he developed such an incredible aptitude for opera. The back story for the Phantom has, however, been altered in various ways for the multiple versions that have been produced for stage and screen.

The film features a high-quality British cast in the supporting roles. Unfortunately, these roles seem undernourished, allowing Simon Callow, Ciaran Hinds, Miranda Richardson, Jennifer Ellison, and Minnie Driver little opportunity to shine. Richardson does the best, capturing our compassion with a quiet wounded dignity from her deeply divided loyalties to the Phantom and to the rest of the company—particularly to Christine. Driver scores in the showy comic role as the haughty prima donna Carlotta.

Despite the flaws, the music and visuals combine to occasionally make the film soar through the stratosphere. Though it fails to sustain that glory, the more ordinary sections of the film are just disappointing—not aversive. One wishes those sections of the film were much better, but one does not wish to flee the theater. The film proceeds through some of the staple scenes of prior versions of the story—protests of undying love, sword fights, fires, and noble sacrifice. Even so, the resolution of The Phantom of the Opera is rather cryptic and not entirely satisfying. The Phantom has been portrayed as a man capable of any vicious act in support of his single-minded passion for Christine. Suddenly on the brink of destroying his rival, he mysteriously recognizes a Pyrrhic victory.  

 

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