Phantom of the Opera

[fajrdrako]

I saw The Phantom of the Opera today. The movie, not the stage production. I saw it on stage in Toronto years ago, and loved it for its sheer spectacle. The movie.... well, we're all used to spectacles in movies, so they had to compensate with dramatic images, and I liked that very much indeed.

I always like Gerard Butler and I certainly liked him here, though my friends were of mixed opinions as to whether he was a weak or strong character. In some scenes I thought he was mimicking Antonio Banderas. Oddly enough, I think the character I liked best was Andre - played by Simon Callow. Interesting costumes, on the whole, though not successful in evoking the time and place they were trying to evoke - somewhat more successful at just being weird or creepy or strange. I don't think I felt as much sympathy for Christine or Raoul as I should have. And I felt a lot of sympathy for the Phantom. Now that I have actually seen a production of Don Giovanni, the Phantom's opera and its imagery made a lot more sense to me than it did before.

I liked the image of the rose at the end of the movie.

And now I can't stop the music from replaying itself in my head.