CARMEN (1984)

It can be hard to turn a musical play into a movie. You have to keep the play's elements but you also can't make a movie that feels staged. Regardless of the problems, you can always count on the spectacle of the singing and dancing. It's even harder to turn an opera into a movie. The actors usually don't dance and always sing all of their dialogue. CARMEN is the best possible movie that can be adaptated from any opera... which isn't saying much. It doesn't feel staged thanks to a good portion of (beautiful) wide shots and new spoken dialogue in some scenes, but it still has a lot of problems. To be fair though, the main problem originated in operas. No matter how good the music is (I can't think of an opera with better music than this one), sung-through dialogue is monotonous. There have also been many examples throughout history of operas and sung-through musicals of dramatic scenes that lose their impact when: A) the way the lines are said match the rhythm of the music but not the emotions that the character is feeling. B) the character can't take their time to mentally process something that has happened, because the song hasn't finished. The specific problems in this plot are that it loses steam during the last part (despite starting with solid drama) and that the subplot involving MICAELA (a village maiden) feels unnecessary.

6/10
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