The Phantom of the Opera
Confession: I’ve never seen nor heard the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Charles Hart musical brought to the screen here by director Joel Schumacher, save for the occasional concert band piece played or track heard one way or another. Well, it didn’t leave me comatose like Alan Parker’s cinematic rendering of “Evita” did (which was too stagey; this at least feels cinematic). It didn’t exactly blow me away, either. Perhaps that’s inevitable- could it be that Webber’s stage musicals- undoubtedly- just work better on the stage, without the confines of the celluloid- and specifically, the dreaded editing room- despite the cinema’s opportunity to open up such a broad story visually? This isn’t meant to discourage filmmakers from trying to bring other Webber musicals to the screen- just to caution them in doing it. Like adapting a novel, care must be shown in retaining the spirit of the original work, but fearlessness must be shown in reimagining the story for the screen. “Chicago” was a great example of this- the spirit of the original work was preserved, and writer Bill Condon brought a twist to it all by making the musical sequences fantasies Roxie is having as the story unfolds, resulting in a surprising flow to the story. But maybe that was an exception; maybe Webber’s works- undeniably epic in sweep and scope- are uniquely unsuited for the screen. Of course, people said the same about “The Lord of the Rings” before Peter Jackson came along. Maybe Schumacher- a drastically uneven filmmaker (“Phone Booth” and “The Client”- good; the last two “Batman” films- not so good)- just wasn’t the director for the job (though he certainly has the flair for it); wasn’t John Woo (“Face/Off,” “The Killer”) interested in doing “Phantom” at one point with John Travolta?
The story you likely know by now- a disformed composer (played here by Gerard Butler, who- though perfectly inhabiting Webber’s Phantom- is too dashing to be hideous- just one of the musical’s inherent flaws that doesn’t work onscreen, either) who inhabits the bowels of an opera house in Paris manipulates the proprieters into allowing his muse, a chorus girl named Christine (in the movie, Emmy Rossum- from “Mystic River” and “The Day After Tomorrow”- is a radiant and lovely presence), to be the lead in their latest production over the diva lead (Minnie Driver, hamming it up entertainingly). Webber’s interpretation of the source material (a novel by Gaston Leroux) is one of sweeping romanticism, a tale of romantic longing that’s fueled by music and lyrics that embody just about every possible cliche of both one can think of (the contemporary pop touches in songs like “The Phantom of the Opera” don’t help, either; they didn’t in “Evita,” either). That’s not to say I don’t enjoy it to a certain degree (the “Phantom” music (though not the song itself), “Think of Me,” and “That’s All I Ask of You” are my personal favorites of this composer/music lover), but there’s no power or energy to most of it (even the iconic “Music of the Night” and “Masquerade” felt boring to this listener). For musical romantic longing, no 20th Century composer- that I’ve heard- nailed it better than Bernard Herrmann with the haunting and hypnotic strains of his score for Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” and he didn’t need the banal lyrics Webber and Hart have come up with here. It doesn’t help that there’s a better version of the story out there in the 1925 silent film starring Lon Cheney as the Phantom (the Man of a Thousand Faces etches an indelibly chilling and disformed portrait of a tragic romantic Webber’s film doesn’t come close to matching) that tells the story as a Gothic horror story- not a glamourized romantic tragedy- and yet invests the story with that longing that’s both palpable and terrifying.
The strange part about all of this is that Schumacher- an ace visual stylist, even if he’s not a great storyteller- actually brings some of that Gothic mood and emotion the silent film has to his film version in the look of the production design and cinematography (the scene in the graveyard particularly exerts a dark hold, as do the images that go with Christine’s mother-figure’s tale of the Phantom’s origins) and lead performance by Rossum. For me, the film was better to look at then to listen to- for someone who feels music is one of the most important aspects to a film, this is not good. Ironic, isn’t it?
As a whole, Joel Schumacher’s version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” is worth watching for the visuals, for the lead performance by Rossum, and moments in the music, but unless you’re a die-hard fan of the musical or just a sucker for romantic cliches, you may want to seek out the Lon Cheney silent film to see a truly dramatic tale of doomed romantic longing between this beauty and the beast.
