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Reviews
Asylum (2005)
A thunderbolt
Anyone calling Natasha Richardson's Stella Rafael a "sexually bored housewife" is Not Paying Attention. What happens to her and to Marton Csokas' Edgar is a thunderbolt--a life changing charge that flashes through them both and changes them forever. They have much more in common with Heathcliff and Cathy (of "Wuthering Heights") than any other lovers I've seen on screen in the 21st century: consumed, obsessed to the point of (and beyond) madness in one another, not out of selfishness but out of a cosmic passion that takes them both utterly by surprise. Certainly, Edgar is a pathologically jealous man: mad, bad and dangerous to know. But madmen can fall in love, too, and he is taken entirely unawares by his passion for the icy, closed-off Stella. What seems on the surface to be a re-enactment of "Lady Chatterly's Lover" turns into the darkest of passion plays. Neither the writer nor the director succumbed to the temptation to make this a sentimental romance or a soap opera; these are dangerous people making dangerous choices, and sometimes dangerous, even tragic mistakes. Like Heathcliff and Cathy, there is no way this story is going to have a happy ending, or these people anything but a tortured denouement. But they are fascinating to watch while they do it.
Marton Csokas absolutely burns through the screen, all fire and smoky, mad eyes to counter Richardson's ice cool yet profoundly moved Stella. Together they heat up to the boiling point and spill over into an explosive combination of lust, love, and tragedy. Ian McKellan's smirking Peter the Freudian is wonderful as the manipulative puppet-master who is not really as clever as he thinks he is. Alas, Hugh Bonneville plays Stella's husband as a one-dimensional cartoon. It's only partly his fault, the character is written that way, but he brings neither subtlety nor nuance to the role. The movie might have been better if McKellan had been cast as the husband, and Bonneville as the shrink. Neither of these characters, however, can hold the screen against the incandescent Edgar and Stella, right up to a surprising and inevitable ending. Even if you condemn them for the disaster they create, you know why they create it. Excellent and disturbing. Highly recommended.
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
An undying ache
The Phantom of the Opera works, in the movie incarnation anyway, because the Phantom is the soul of unrequited love. Since there are darn few of us on this planet who haven't experienced this, the character is bound to appeal to a whole lotta folks. Butler's earthy rasp is a perfect embodiment of a tortured soul haunting an underground world; an operatic tenor with a finely honed voice would have been completely wrong for the film. The music of the night deserves a powerful voice that strains now and then. Rossum's light soprano has all the fragile-as-glass delicacy that the role of Christine deserves; what an astonishingly fresh performance from this young actress. Patrick Wilson cannot be blamed if the role of Raoul pales in comparison to the Phantom's; it's hard to imagine what character could hold its own against the Angel of Music. He does the best he can: Raoul is no effete and milquetoast aristocrat, but a young buck who drives his horses chariot-style and swings a sword as well as Errol Flynn.
And since this is an opera, it really doesn't matter how much of the plot holds together. Opera is all about the music, not the plot, and the lush, romantic music of "Phantom" does exactly what it is supposed to do: tell an emotional story of love, loss, and undying ache. Movies are all about the pictures, and "Phantom" is about as lush a production as anything I've seen on screen since "Moulin Rouge". The art direction manages to convey the frenetic, drunken menage of backstage life without descending into visual chaos. A feast for the eyes from start to finish, a story bound to touch anyone who survived high school crushes, and music that you can't get out of your head--could mortals ask for more? Bravo, bravissimo.