The Magic Flute (1975)

G, which I would have agreed with if the last scene didn't exist.  The finale of The Magic Flute involves the protagonists to make their way through the depths or underworld.  Now, while you don't see any real nudity, there are scores of people wearing flesh bodysuits to make it look like they are simultaneously in agony and nude.  It's a lot.  Like, it's one of those situations where you feel like this is somehow offensive and also acknowledging that you aren't really seeing anything. Also, there are multiple discussions about suicide.  Remember, I'm trying to say that this movie deserves to be G rated, but it also has a Blackface character who tries to rape the female lead. Still, I'm glad to have a G-rated blog amongst the wealth of filthy films.

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

This is what I've always kind of wanted.  

As a theatre kid, I honestly nerd out about live theatre.  I like musicals.  I love drama.  But I've always felt like a litle bit of a fraud when it comes to opera or ballet.  There are times where there are Fathom Events at my local movie theater where they have live broadcasts of the MET.  But I don't even know where to start.  Part of what is driving me is snobbery.  Another part is a Faustian (Oh, I'm aware) obsession with consuming all art before I die.  But maybe the biggest part of what makes me want to watch opera is that my dad was smarter and classier than I am and there's an unhealthy need for his approval, despite the fact that he died decades ago.  

Still, the notion that Ingmar Bergman filmed The Magic Flute, keeping it mostly tied to its operatic roots is exactly what I wanted.  I've been burned out on Bergman lately.  I've been watching movie after movie where he talks about the cruelty of love and I just can't keep watching this same stuff.  But I've always been in the camp that Bergman, for the most part, knows how to tell a story that's visually compelling.  If you are going to appeal to an ignorant audience, it's probably through something like this.  The odd thing --and I genuinely applaud Bergman for this --is that Bergman seems to have a seemingly paradoxical appreciation for both the world of the stage and the language of film.  The beginning of the film starts with Mozart's overture...you know, the beginning?  But during this, Bergman makes a point of showing various audience members (including at least one member of his troupe), consumed by rapture as they stare at an empty stage.  Once the opera starts, the film jumps back and forth between what is clearly a traditional proscenium stage and what could only be a film set.  And it's cool?  Like, so much of this is Bergman stressing what he's great at.  He knows how to make things look pretty and immersive while reminding us that this isn't a competition between two media.  He then blends the two artforms, and lets us imagine that these characters live lives as actors in their own stories.  Like, our introduction to Papageno is him waking up behind stage in character realizing that he almost missed his own entrance.  I love it so much.

If you've been reading my Bergman blogs, you've probably noticed that I'm mildly annoyed by Bergman. It's such a weird thing to try to take down one of the greatest directors that the world has ever known.  It's not on purpose. It's just that I have to say things that come to my noggin and not all of them are flattering.  Much of it probably spirals out of ignorance.  Again, the point of watching these movies, for me, is to learn.  It feels pretty bad to comment on Bergman.  It feels even worse to comment on Mozart, especially from a perspective of a film viewer.  Narratively, The Magic Flute is baffling.  From what I understand, many operas are adaptations of stories that already exist.  Maybe I'm commenting on mythology more than I'm commenting on Mozart.  But I find The Magic Flute to be something that I should have predicted, but I had no idea that it was like this.

Before I proceed, I have to establish that I needed a little Wikipedia help.  The very notion that this movie exists begged for context.  From that article, I discovered that Sarastro is not actually Pamina's father in the initial story.  So many of my thoughts about the story stemmed out of the fact that Sarastro is actually a heroic character as a father and the Queen of the Night, who is Pamina's mother, is actually the villain of the piece.  So I have to realize that I'm commenting more on this specific production than I am on Mozart's work as a whole.

So much of the story is defiance of expectation.  Tamino is rescued by the Three Ladies on behalf of the Queen of the Night.  Because the story begins in media res, we have to assume that Tamino is actually a noble knight who actually might be good at fighting things like dragons.  Because I'm so wired for archetypes, I treat Tamino as a hero who is deserving to be the protagonist of this story.  After all, the Queen of the Night picked Tamino to rescue her daughter for a reason.  But as the story progresses, I don't know if Tamino is all that good of a hero.  Sure, a lot of my takes on Tamino come from the fact that I love Papageno way too much and find his story way too compelling.  But Tamino is treated as the protagonist of this story and has a rep that may not be earned.  Tamino is serious as get out.  He follows all the rules.  He is willing to subject himself to trials.  But Tamino only barely passes the trials and doesn't really consider a lot of the consequences of his actions as he undertakes these trials.  

It makes me think why we're supposed to be bonded to Tamino.  Tamino can't beat a dragon by himself.  He gets frustrated by Papageno, who is appropriately a loving-but-bumbling oaf.   But Pagageno seems to be --and this is probably a bigger commentary on me --the more heroic of the two?  Papageno finds Pamina first.  He helps her escape.  And, yeah, he's kind of dumb.  He keeps failing these trials and keeps getting punished in weird ways for failing these trials.  But he also in unabashedly himself.  He seems to be wildly aware that the very nature of these trials is kind of dumb.  Again, he's insanely dumb.  He blames his talking during the silence test on "forgetting that he was not allowed to talk", despite being constantly reminded that talking is no bueno.  Still, I want to look at the consequences of Papageno's actions versus the consequences of Tamino's actions.

Papageno talks all throughout the silence test.  The test, being what it is, is meant to present a bunch of disruptions, shows Papageno a hideous version of the girl of his dreams.  But it is because he is a bumbling oaf (which is why he's talking) that we see that Papageno is as morally a good guy as can be.  He is unmoved by Papagena's false ugly visage.  If anything, he seems enamored by her overall and her ugliness doesn't even move him a little.  They laugh and flirt and it's kind of romantic as heck.  But when he isn't shocked by her looks, he's rewarded by having her true beauty revealed.  Ultimately, in this scene, he's punished for talking all throughout the silence test by having Papagena disappear.  It is only during his suicide attempt, which becomes wildly metatextual, that he remembers that he can be soothed by his bells.  The bells brings him his Papagena and the two sing about the insane amount of children that the two simple folk will have.  It's great.  I love that story.

But if we contrast this to Tamino and Pamina's story, Tamino and Pamina seem to almost miss the point.  Papageno talked all through the silence test.  Papageno couldn't imagine hurting Papagena.  He saw the present as this wonderful opportunity to get to know someone and he eventually gets his happy ending.  But Tamino refuses to talk to Pamina, who is confused by Tamino's cruelty.  When she goes to kill herself, it is far more serious than Papageno's foolish attempt at getting affirmation.  She almost does had it not been for supernatural intervention.  So much of this makes me wonder what the point of the tests are.  In my head, I have to assume that the tests should mirror traits that would be good in a marriage.  After all, the point of the tests are to see if Tamino and Papageno would make good husbands.  So what is the point of the silence test?  Is the notion that sometimes we have to do things that hurt our spouses that are good for them?  Because the story doesn't support that logic.  That silence almost gets Pamina killed.  Papageno, on the other hand, with his defiance of any rules, builds Papagena up and leads her to want to marry Papageno for who he is, not because he fits some kind of archetype.

The part that blows my mind is the fact that the Queen of the Night is the bad guy of the story.  Like, we get very little about the Queen of the Night.  She is Pamina's mother, but it's really bizarre that Sarastro is a noble ruler.  And the Queen of the Night?  She tortures Pamina for most of the second act.  It's really bizarre.  I mean, I like it.  I do think it is underdeveloped.  But I also know that it made the movie far more watchable because it meant that so much of the story was somewhat unpredictable.

As a close, I do have to acknowledge that opera might be a little boring.  I liked this, mostly a lot.  But it is funny how it takes forever to get anything done in an opera when the story could be far more briskly paced. Still, this is exactly what I wanted it to be.