Father knows best

Trollflöjten (The magic flute)

(1975)

OK, I'll readily acknowledge that I am a philistine, but doesn't this pretty much violate every rule of drama? Like, for example, that your protagonist should be kinda interesting, and that we should have some emotional investment in his quest? Like that you don't give away the whole mystery of who's good and who's evil less than halfway through? Like that big actions should have some sort of payoff (rather than, say, Monostatos's blackmail threat against Pamina going nowhere; or the Queen of the Night's massed army lasting more than five seconds against Sarastro's forces; or the climactic walk through hell [also about five seconds' worth] raising at least a frisson of fear)?

What did I like? Loved the Papageno/Papagena story--Håkan Hagegård, who plays the comic birdcatcher, put me in mind of Sean Astin's Samwise Gamgee--and all the really goofy parts, like the dragon, and the man-sized bat (isn't that another opera?), and the flute-enchanted animals. Liked the look of it and the sound of it--and I guess that's supposed to be more important than silly things like logic. Loved the through-the-fourth-wall stuff with the overture and the intermission--I'm sorry there's no commentary track or "making of" featurette for me to work out to so that I might find out how many cameras Bergman had to use during the overture for the wonderful shots of audience members, lingering on this one, then cutting rapidly (and in tempo) through a half-dozen. I found it interesting, too, in notoriously monochromatic Sweden, that Bergman makes a point of showing us a multiethnic Colors of Benetton audience.