Newest take on 'Carmen' never hits operatic heights
“Operatic” is often employed by critics, one of those lazy adjectives to explain when something is grand as well as romantic as well as tragic.
“You expected a happy ending?” retorts Elmer Fudd to the audience at the end of “What’s Opera, Doc?” Look, when it comes to knowledge in this corner of culture, Looney Tunes is the best I can do.
Operatic is a good — and literal — way to explain Benjamin Millepied’s ”Carmen,” which opens locally at Ragtag Cinema this weekend. It is based on the quite classic opera of the same name. The film’s use of music to punctuate its sad tale is provocative, and the lead performance is a stunner. Much of the rest of the film hits a flat note.
“Carmen,” the opera, is adapted from a more classic and familiar tale; set in Spain, it focuses on a soldier so entranced by a woman — a femme fatale, we would say in modern parlance — that he is driven to her cause and kills to fill his obsession. As I’ve never seen it in stage form, I rely on cursory research to discuss the plot.
This is a story we’ve seen over and over; a flawed man who cannot resist the temptation of a dangerous woman. Again, any production should not be judged by whether a story is familiar but how the telling of that story makes it feel unique.
The film moves the action to modern times. Carmen (Melissa Barrera) is fleeing a cartel in Mexico. She hires a coyote to get her across the border.
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In a parallel track, we have a sad-sacked vet named Aidan (Oscar nominee Paul Mescal) who strums his guitar to an empty lot. He is persuaded to join a volunteer group patrolling the border. Aidan is partnered with a guy with an itchy trigger finger and hate in his veins, and has to save Carmen before she gets in the path of a bullet.
What draws Aidan to great lengths to protect this woman he doesn’t know? Is he a good soul? Does he connect with her the moment they lay eyes on another? Is it the music in their hearts they immediately recognize? Take your pick — the film has little opinion to offer.
The action at the border puts them on the run. Towards Los Angeles. Despite the authorities being on their tale, this road picture takes its time. The cinematography by Jörg Widmer is beautifully sun-soaked and fixated on dust and flames to visualize the ferocity of the passion building between our two leads. (Widmer shot many of Terrance Malick’s films of the past 15 years, including “A Hidden Life” from 2019.) “Carmen” is a gorgeous film to watch.
We need the visuals because the performances are uneven. I’ve never seen Barrera before but found her to be a knockout, supplementing the sparse dialogue with a soulful, expressive face. She’s one to watch moving forward.
Mescal’s appeal, I will confess, eludes me. I saw “Aftersun” during its awards run and found it to be a well-done film while struggling to connect with it emotionally. Mescal lacks a presence in these alleged “breakout” roles. He’s handsome, but his face is contorted in a perpetual pout I am sure some describe as sexy indifference but comes across as flatly petulant.
The promotion for “Carmen” makes much of his head-scratching Oscar-nomination from last year, which makes sense from that perspective. But he is one of the weaker elements of this film.
We need two strong leads because we do not get much in terms of dialogue. It is not the point of the film, after all. However, the audience is subjected to oddball cliches and fortune-cookie missives. An example: the fugitive couple is dropped off by a taxi driver who parts by saying, “Often we are running towards what we are running from.”
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Huh? I can think of many stories where this might be true, but “Carmen” is not one of them. Given how the film doesn’t even bother to explain why the cartel wants to kill the main character, we don’t have enough context for something like this proclamation to make sense.
Dialogue is not the film’s strength. The use of music and choreography is where “Carmen” places its focus. Again, it’s beautifully done. Millepied — better known to many as Mr. Natalie Portman — is an accomplished dancer turned choreographer. (He met Portman working on “Black Swan.”)
He knows how to shoot a musical sequence, but doesn’t quite ever get the music to move the story. Which, after all, is how an opera is supposed to work. Simply stringing set pieces together with no dramatic flow makes for a good musical compilation but doesn’t work as narrative filmmaking.
“Carmen” is a mixed bag that I can recommend if you want to see a film that takes chances with its visuals and its use of music. That risk simply does not pay off in most instances. The film’s look and songs and lead actress bring a lot of passion deflated by a weak script and Mescal.
That’s a bit of a tragedy in and of itself.
James Owen is the Tribune’s film columnist. In real life, he is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. A graduate of Drury University and the University of Kansas, he created Filmsnobs.com, where he co-hosts a podcast. He enjoyed an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield, and now regularly guests on Columbia radio station KFRU.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Newest take on 'Carmen' never hits operatic heights
