Thoughts On The Phantom of the Opera

January 2, 2009

I’ve always been curious about The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Weber. When I finally finished downloading it, I sat down to watch with only the most minimal of expectations since the movie received generally bad reviews. First of all, it’s true that the visuals were very breath-taking. The gothic atmosphere was perfectly and faithfully rendered with the tall brass candelabras, ornate upholstery, carved metal chairs and bedframes, Renaissance sculptures and intricate gowns and dress suits worn by the actors.

 

Emmy Rossum was very beautiful as Christine, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about her—she was very beautiful. She acts like a wooden statue most of the time, eyes wide and mouth agape with dumb bewilderment. All she does is sing, sit/stand, and watch. She just looks pretty and empty. Raoul, the pretty count, is her knight in shining armor. He has no depth at all and is just The Man Dumb With Love. In fact, the only real person in that movie is The Phantom, Erik. He’s the only one who actually does something, who feels a whole range of complex human emotions which apparently are beyond Christine and Raoul.

 

The movie failed to capture the moving tragedy and desperation of the Phantom’s love for Christine. There was no sense of suspense in the fight scenes nor a sense of horror and disgust for the deformed stalker. Sigh. The concept is so good but so badly executed. I’d really love to see “The Phantom of the Opera” on stage someday.

 

I like the movie, but I replay it only to the parts where there’s Erik. My favorite songs are “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Music of the Night”.

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I read the book by Gaston Leroux, “The Phantom of the Opera” right after I watched the movie. It was published around the early 1900’s, eighty years before Weber created his famous musical. In the book, Christine and Raoul had more life. Christine is portrayed as a rather simple but talented girl, torn by her sadness at her father’s death. She is easily deceived and more easily frightened. Raoul is a young man of twenty, madly in love with his childhood sweetheart. He is weak and not so brave, but he tries to be.

 

And of course, Erik. In the book, Erik is a well-traveled man who has been to India and Persia (in the play/movie, he was just a child picked up by Mme. Girey from a Gypsy travelling freak show). He is a genius in architecture, art, music, and pretty much everything else. He worked as an assassin for several Asian governments where he used the Punjab Lasso, a deadly killing technique (”keep your hands to the level of your eyes”). He fell in love with the beautiful Christine and kills himself in the end after he set the lovers free although in the movie he’s still alive 48 years after the curious events at the Opera. I like that ending better.

 

Last note: he is uglier in the novel. He has no nose and he only black pits for eyes, eyes that you can see only when they glow yellow in the dark. On the other hand, he looks very human in the 2004 film version with only half his face deformed. In the last part, he tells Christine that he just wants to live like a normal man. He has invented a mask to make him look like everybody else. And this, I think, is where the plot hole lies. Erik is a genius; he was an inventor of secret trap doors, subterranean houses, torture chambers and tons of other things. If he’s so smart then he should have just made a convincing mask from the start and saved himself the trouble of scaring Christine away and sending gigantic chandeliers crashing over people’s heads.