Synopsis
During World War I, in an unnamed country, a soldier named Tamino is sent by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the clutches of the supposedly evil Sarastro. But all is not as it seems.
2006 Directed by Kenneth Branagh
During World War I, in an unnamed country, a soldier named Tamino is sent by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the clutches of the supposedly evil Sarastro. But all is not as it seems.
Joseph Kaiser Amy Carson Ben Davis Silvia Moi René Pape Lyubov Petrova Tom Randle Liz Smith Teuta Koço Louise Callinan Kim-Marie Woodhouse William Dutton Luke Lampard Jamie Manton Rodney Clarke Charne Rochford Peter Wedd Keel Watson Jonathan Broadbent Paul Dinnen Mark Hayden Paul Chequer Adam Shipley Christopher Wren Jimmy Yuill Adrian Preater Robert Barton Ed Marsden James Thorne Show All…
La flûte Enchantée, La flauta mágica de Kenneth Branagh, Tryllefløyten, Il flauto magico, La flauta mágica, La flûte enchantée, Trollflöjten, Волшебная флейта, חליל הקסם, A varázsfuvola, Вълшебната флейта, A Flauta Mágica, 魔笛, Die Zauberflöte
Kenneth Branagh is no Ingmar Bergman, hardly needs stating, but even more so when it comes to adapting The Magic Flute.
Mozart with added cleavage. That is his approach.
It is admirably adventurous, set during a CGI-heavy World War One battlefield, with a libretto in English by noted bore Stephen Fry, but it doesn't really hang together. Branagh directs the hell out of the sequences, but it does little to hide the limitations of his cast.
The film does the unforgivable thing of dragging, unforgivable when you have music this kinetic and perfect. However, you find yourself by the hour mark keening for the end.
Even the cleavage wasn't enough and if you follow my reviews you know that it usually is.
The Magic Flute is one of my favorite operas and I have seen it performed at the Metropolitan Opera several times. I also like Ingmar Bergman's filmed version from the 1970s.
Branagh's version is a mixed bag. The singing is excellent, the acting not bad for opera singers, and Mozart's glorious music is intact. Branagh's concept is interesting, at times effective, but much of it is silly or over the top.
So, two stars for Mozart, another star for the singing, and 1/2 star for the production and direction.
Kenneth Branagh, my closest frenemy
A really bizarre little experiment, but also strangely delightfully. Branagh takes an already-bonkers story and makes it all the more bonkers, by putting it on film, and using osme of the most ridiculous CGI I've ever seen.
It makes a nice companion piece with Branagh’s ”Love’s Labours’ Lost” - both are musical comedies that use comedy as a foil to the pain of wartimes; one setting during World War I, the other during World War II.
It’s pretty charming, and well-sung. It has a very stage-y feel to it, which makes the experience all more strange. It also makes for a perfectly solid show-case of the original material; he captures the comedic sensibilities of “The Magic Flute,," while putting his own spin on it.
This is a huge mess but I love the ambition of it. A lot of fun, unexpected moments along with stretches that don't work at all. It's really trying to do something.
I think it helps that this is one of my favorite operas and I know it inside and out. I'm intrigued at what somebody would think if this was their first experience with The Magic Flute.
Well, I liked it - nay, loved it. I have the good fortune to not be an opera aficionado, and I have very low tolerance for 'don't mess with a classic' purism. Mozart didn't write the libretto anyway, and it was intended as escapist theatre in the first place - if anything setting it in the confines of WWI reflects a peculiar British obsession and creates an urgency that probably wasn't there in the original. Is Stephen Fry's English libretto as good as the original? Is it faithful to the original? Don't know. Don't care. There are some wonderful bits of absurdist phrasing that are more Gilbert & Sullivan than Mozart - I especially liked “I can end the pain I'm…
So joyfully bonkers (the Queen of the Night rolls up on a tank), the sets and lighting are gorgeous and some of the tracking shots are insane.
watched in music classes (german equivalent of AP) in school. interesting adaption, but i think i preferred the opera performance we've attended.
So is this the Kenneth movie nobody talks about, the flash in the pan, the chimera, the collective hallucination, that "did it really happen?" I must said that I really respect how he believes in his ideas but in the end Im also wtf mood. I wonder how it came to his mind something like this and yet I am so surprised each time by this man's mind. He has a fairytale mind, I love him. Centuries ago not only in Shakespeare's audience but he must have been a fairystoryteller too for sure.
The fact that this movie exists at all, that someone pitched this Kenneth Branagh lavish film production of not only an opera, but a very strange opera indeed, and that producers decided this was a good investment of their 27million dollars is nothing short of miraculous. The fact that I never hear anyone talking about this is also crazy!
The movie itself is gorgeous and bizarre and surreal. I love the WWI setting! The storyline is super weird, but The Magic Flute has always been weird. There are at least four songs where characters threaten to commit suicide, and all for the love of people they’ve seen for five minutes tops. No one’s motivations ever really make sense in anything, but…
An uncut classic opera, put in the setting of word war one, opening with a 7 minute long one-take of a battlefield that can seriously compete with 1917.
Can't believe how expensive this movie looks and how many months must have been spent on the CGI that honestly looks very good for 2006. The film is well directed, shot, sung and extraordinarily well choreographed and I seriously don't get why no one knows of the existence of this film.
To be honest, the movie stretches too much, after a while the almost never stopping music becomes annoying, Papageno's chemistry with Tamina is a little too overdone and the film gets very schmaltzy at many times.
But till more people have to see this!