And Peter Brook squished Carmen down to the runtime of a ’70s Made-For-TV movie. But Ken Russell brought us Tommy in under two hours, and managed to treat us to the aural joys of Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson singing like chain-smoking stegosauruses along the way. But we’ve paid it.Īnnette certainly isn’t without its faults. By implication, we’ve paid that price, too. How that person is perceived by the other characters in the film evolves in ways that conclude with the payment of a high and horrible price. Our perception of a protagonist in Annette changes dramatically by the film’s end. We’ll sing and die for you - yes, in minor keysĪnd if you want us to kill, too - we may agreeĪnd when it comes to how one of those four leads of Annette is perceived, by the characters in the film and by us, this invitation for viewers turns into an indictment. We’ve fashioned a world, a world - built just for you The lyrics to “May We Start?” lay this out: By singing and dancing through the diegetic barrier, the writers, lyricists, filmmaker, and cast demand that viewers take responsibility for what they see. Annette demands that its viewers be active. The opening shot and Overture and the song “May We Start?” tell us that the artists aren’t the only ones charged with getting this artistic enterprise started. They have complex and multi-layered interactions with us, with those who are viewing the film Annette.
And then there is the titular Annette herself, Ann and Henry’s daughter, played by a number of performers, whose relationship to her parents and her audience is… complicated, to say the least.Īll four of these characters engage in more than just complex and multi-layered interactions with their fictional audiences within the movie’s storylines. Simon Helberg is “The Conductor,” who tears out his still-beating heart and exposes his innermost feelings as he leads orchestras.
#ROCK OPERA DRIVER#
Adam Driver is Henry, Ann’s husband and a thoroughly douche-y and unfunny stand-up comic whose audience (whom he “kills”) delightedly eats up his contempt for them. Marion Cotillard plays Ann, an opera singer who figuratively “dies” for her audience each night. Each of the film’s four lead characters are artists. The song, “May We Start?” collects the writers, the directors, the cast, the backing vocalists, everybody as they ask permission to begin the film.Īnnette is a film about the relationship between performers and their audiences. And that Overture (albeit, a figurative one with lyrics) is filmed by Carax with stunning, gorgeous virtuosity, highlighted by a single tracking shot that’s gonna be taught in film schools side-by-side with Orson Welles’ opening tracking shot in Touch of Evil.Īnnette‘s beginning isn’t just an Overture. Like all good operas, Annette begins with an Overture. And that dialogue, like many of the exchanges between the story’s characters, takes on the form of the singing of a round… that eventually harmonizes the past and the present. The film is a beautifully crafted dialogue with opera’s past. Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Pinball Wizards may be awesome, but they don’t have antecedents from, or build upon, Carmen, Madame Butterfly, La Bohème and Otello (and a slew of others) the way that Annette does. But Annette accepts the challenge of grappling with the themes, motifs, and emotional hyperbole of classical opera. Yes, Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar and American Idiot and to a certain extent Quadrophenia are rock operas. Annette is an innovation among rock operas, because it has the bravery to go backward a century or two in order to go forward. I want to gird you, the reader, for the insanity and beauty of Annette (for which I was unprepared), and to not undermine that insanity and beauty.Īnnette is a rock opera, with songs and story written by the brothers Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks (profiled earlier this year in Edgar Wright’s documentary, The Sparks Brothers). So much so, that writing this review is a tightrope walk.
#ROCK OPERA MOVIE#
It’s hard, when your brain is starved for REM sleep, to process a movie brimming with dream-like images from the guy who brought us Holy Motors, especially when that movie clocks in at almost two and a half hours.īut I had an itch at the back of my head telling me I might be wrong, especially since that itch kept manifesting itself as scenes from the movie that I couldn’t stop thinking about. This last factor, especially, was a mistake. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard in Annette.įirst time I saw Leos Carax’s Annette, I went in cold, without even having seen the trailer. I want to gird you, readers, for the insanity and beauty of Annette.Īnnette, directed by Leos Carax.