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Aria (1987)

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Art is always challenging!, 12 March 2006

Author: L. Denis Brown (bbhlthph@shaw.ca) from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

I have long wanted to comment on this film but have found doing so extremely difficult. When released it was promoted as a major work of art, whereas in practice it is a hodge podge of short sequences, unrelated in either style or content, so why bother with it? By its nature it could never have been a great film. Think of any film that you personally regard as a great work of art and imagine what it would have been like if it had been divided into ten segments, each created by a different Director commissioned to portray a different but fundamental aspect of human existence................

Aria "bombed" badly when it was first released - I left the cinema feeling that, despite many interesting sequences, I would not want to see it again. But some sequences proved very seductive, and I rented a tape to re-watch them a few months later. After this happened a second time I knew I must have my own copy; this has since become one of the most frequently viewed tapes in my private collection. The film comprises a collection of short segments, each presented against the background of a well known operatic aria, but illustrating or featuring some vital aspect of life as we live it. We can quickly decide which of the various segments mean most to us, but we need much longer to decide why and in what ways the others are less satisfactory. Such thoughts keep returning even when we believe we have basically forgotten the film, and ultimately make it virtually unforgettable. Clearly, even though we are not dealing with a great film, it is a very important one.

The only link between the ten segments of this film is the fact that each is presented against the background of a well known operatic aria. I would have expected opera buffs, who are totally familiar with each of the arias (and their context in the opera concerned), to have been much less enthusiastic about the very different and individualistic interpretations created by the selected directors than other viewers who are not really familiar with opera as an art form, and who accepted the aria concerned simply as background music. But from comments already recorded in the IMDb database this does not seem to be the case. Opera buffs as described above mostly seem to be significantly more appreciative of the various segments of this film than other viewers. This suggests both that the main appeal of opera lies in the music rather than the libretto; and that opera lovers are more ready to associate the arias with the emotions which the individual film directors are attempting to arouse, even when these are not those of the original opera.

Ultimately we are left with ten short films by leading directors, each visually creating an emotional experience associated with ordinary life. Inevitably each viewer will find that some segments will appeal whilst others do not. For each viewer the segments which appeal most will depend upon their individual character and life experiences. There are no rights and wrongs in this respect; and reviews of this film which suggest that segments A, B and C are excellent, whilst X, Y and Z are failures, are of very little value. A more helpful approach seems to be listing those aspects of life that the ten directors felt were brought to the forefront of their attention when they first studied their aria, and subsequently attempted to interpret visually in their segments. Not surprisingly love seems to be the most important of these, it is featured in half of the ten segments. One shows the love between a newly married couple; a second shows a not much older couple who have retained their love but have become disillusioned by the life they have lived, have few expectations for the future, and are prepared to end their lives together; a third shows the pain of unrequited love; a fourth the faded love between a married couple who are cheating; and a fifth the obverse side of love, obsessive hatred that has festered to the point where one human being is driven to plan the final destruction of another. These segments (as well as some of the others) feature extensive nudity and have led to comments that the film is little more than soft porn. This seems unfair - nudity still has a strong emotional impact and is therefore a useful tool for a director faced with creating imagery that effectively conveys the message he intends within a very brief ten minute film sequence.

Another universal aspect of human life is death, not surprisingly this is also recognised in several of the segments, Other emotions featured in these ten segments include humour and pathos, the subconscious urge felt even by the most beautiful women to adorn themselves, and the tranquility that old age can bring to those who feel they have done the best they can with their lives. An interesting challenge for those who do not know this film but are familiar with other works by the directors involved would be to watch these various segments and then try to identify the director responsible. Overall, it would be hard for anyone to watch this film without experiencing a strong emotional reaction to one of more of these segments; and it would be almost impossible for any individual review to do this film justice even if IMDb relaxed their length restriction on comments. This above all is a film where I would have expected that the opportunity to exchange comments about the various segments on the IMDb message board would have appealed to all those who have viewed it. For some reason this does not seem to have been the case.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Much better than I was lead to believe, 20 July 2001

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

Sure, it has its pretentious moments, it plays like art-house, live-action Fantasia, but it also has moments of deep beauty and humor. Omnibus films are always a problem, but I have always had a keen interest in them. I will now rate the segments individually.

Nicolas Roeg - "Un ballo in maschera" - This segment may very well spoil the film for some people, because it is absolutely the worst of the whole bunch. It is difficult to follow, mostly because it tries to adhere to a clear plot (a hackneyed one, at that). The photography is unaccomplished. The best thing about it is the bit of Lesbian homoerotica that it never does enough with. This segment made me VERY nervous about continuing. 2/10.

Charles Sturridge - "La virgine degli angeli" - an unclear segment, but it hardly matters. The film has the best cinematography of the bunch, mainly because it is in a stunning black and white. The segment is dreamlike and beautiful. 7/10.

Jean-Luc Godard - "Armide" - I chose to brave this much-maligned film for the Godard and Altman segments. With Godard, I was much more impressed than I thought I would be. I can't claim to have seen all that many of his films since he made so many that almost no one has seen, but, judging from what I have seen, this may be his best work since the 60s. It is the funniest segment in this film, and the most artistically accomplished. Bravo, Jean-Luc! 9/10.

Julien Temple - "Rigoletto" - a very funny segment, it is also quite predictable. Still, this story about a husband and wife who are cheating on each other at the same resort is wonderfully filmed with long, complex tracking shots that depend on precisely timed choreography from the actors. It also has a great self-referencing joke about omnibus films themselves. The final scene is very weak. 7/10.

Bruce Beresford - "Die tote Stadt" - this short segment involves too lovers in (I think) Venice. It is pretty, with some nice shots of doves flying about the city. It is slight, but nice. 7/10.

Robert Altman - "Les Boréades" - not one of the better segments, unfortunately, this is more of a music video than a concept short film. It involves the occupants of an insane asylum attending a theatrical performance. The music and images work well together, so at least I can give it credit for being a good music video. 7/10

Franc Roddam - "Liebestod" - somewhat unfortunate for Beresford's segment, this segment is very similar to it. As you might assume from my phrasing, this one struck me much more. It is about a young man and his girl going to Las Vegas on a fatalistic voyage. 8/10.

Ken Russell - "Nessun dorma" - maybe the most visually striking segment, it plays in a fantasy world more than in reality. It is a beautiful tale of a fallen angel. 8/10.

Derek Jarman - "Depuis le jour" - I have heard a lot about Jarman, and this is the first piece of filmmaking I have seen from him. Hopefully, I'll see more in the future. This one is also music-videoish, but it is better than Altman's segement. It mainly concerns an old woman remembering her younger days. The editing and the use of different film stocks to represent both time and emotion are very beautiful. 8/10.

Bill Bryden - "I pagliacci" - the sad clown, possibly one of the most famous arias (particularly memorable from an episode of Seinfeld), this serves as the material separating each segement and the finale. It is simple and effective. 7/10.

Overall, I give it a solid 7/10. It isn't anywhere near as bad as you've heard.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
erotic tension, great arias, 2 August 2003

Author: Judy Craft (jkcraft) from Houston, TX

I'm an opera buff, and operas are full of sex, blood and death. It may help to know the librettos of the operas the arias are from to really appreciate this film -- my mileage is very different than Tug-3. I am a classical music lover, and I liked this film.

I loved Ken Russell's "Nessun Dorma" segment, and would actually like to see him produce Turandot, because opera is supposed to be overwhelming, truly multi-media experience , but then I loved Lisztomania. I love *Turandot* and knowing the libretto so well may be why I don't find this segment the travesty that Tug-3 did.

The Buck Henry/ Rigoletto segment is probably the most approachable for the average viewer -- they are likely to recognize the tunes, and its a classic bedroom farce. I like bedroom farces, so the silliness didn't upset me.

The "Liebestod" segment is so outstanding that I recommend people watch this for that piece alone. "Depuis la Jour" was, for me, beautifully spiritual. And the Caruso recording of "Vesti la Giubba" (aka I Pagliacci) with John Hurt as the clown was wonderful. But people just wanting naked women may feel there is too much music and not enough bare flesh and sex.

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Uneven, but worth seeing, 23 September 2002

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

10 respected directors each shot a short film with operatic arias as the inspiration (and music). I'll do each one separately:

Nicolas Roeg (dir)--Giuseppe Verdi (music). A story about an assassination attempt in 1931 Vienna. Theresa Russell (Roegs wife) plays a man! Not bad--very beautiful and exotic. Russell is great.

Charles Sturridge--Verdi. No story but there is some haunting black and white imagery that fits perfectly with the music.

Jean-Luc Godard--Jean Baptiste Lully. Horrendous. Pointless, boring, no plot, no nothing. Filled with gratuitous female nudity. The worst!

Julien Temple--Verdi. Buck Henry, Beverly D'Angelo and Anita Morris star in this funny, if obvious, story about a cheating couple. Pretty good.

Bruce Beresford--Erich Korngold. Short, lush and romantic. Very good.

Robert Altman--Jean-Philippe Rameau. Dull. A yawner.

Fran Roddam--Richard Wagner. This has Bridget Fonda in her film debut. Beautifully done love story with a fairly explicit sex scene.

Ken Russell--Giacomo Puccini. Really strange but OK.

Derek Jarman--Gustave Chapentier. Lyrical look at youth and old age. Very sweet.

The last is by Bill Bryden doing "I Pagliacci". He has John Hurt (!) dressed as a clown lip-syncing to Caruso (!!!).

When this came out it almost got an X rating (for the abundant nudity and the sex scene). It was given an R with a strict warning attached saying the R rating would be heavily enforced. After the film bombed that warning disappeared.

The idea isn't bad and 6 out of the 10 segments were worthwhile. Worth seeing even if you don't like opera. Just avoid the Godard segment. I'm giving it an 8.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
TEN arias, TEN directors - a FEAST!, 30 March 2001
Author: (adew@hotbot.com) from Sydney Australia

If you like Opera, all the arias will be familiar. The treatments the ten directors give to one aria each, are totally removed from their original context. Nessun Dorma from Turandot becomes the vision of a girl in a near-fatality - gripping imagery culminates in the final VINCERO! of her survival . . .John Hurt lip-synching Vesti la Giubba from I Pagliacci is perhaps the low-point, but the madly bawdy Robert Altmann scene fails too - the rest is a lavish treat! The tragedy of children dying is captured in gritty black and white to the serene melody of Verdi's La Vergine Dell' Angeli, the remarkable outcome of an assasination attempt at a King's life is done brilliantly to the backing of La Sua Parole from A Masked Ball . . . with totally different ending to the one in the Opera! See this, then view it again; you will be amazed and enriched - if you like Opera, that is. If you do not, and have no desire to, then please: go back to the usual fare - this will have very little to offer you - enjoy your Stallone and van Damme.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
What art is about--challenging the viewer, 25 August 2002

Author: rlcsljo from Hollywood, ca

Robert Altman, Nicolas Roeg, John-Luc Goddard--you were expecting a fun film the entire family could enjoy? These and other directors were obviously chosen because they have not followed the mainstream, but created it. For those that complain that they did not adhere to the original story of the opera--How often does the music in a film directly relate to what is going on in the film? It is the mood that counts. This is what I believe the directors of these movies were doing: creating a contemporary mood for old operas. For the most part they succeed wonderfully. With all these operas, who is going to like them all. We could have used more Beverly Sills.

Finally, what is art (even opera) without a few naked women?

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
10 Segments -- Brilliant to Fair, 30 November 2002

Author: gleng1 from Narrowsburg, NY

Definitely worth watching.

Ten different directors each present a segment based on their favorite opera aria. You don't need to be an opera lover to watch this film. (Although, of course, if you hate opera, you're really going to have a bad time with this!)

Not surprisingly the segments range from brilliant to only fair. Most of the fuss seems to be over Godard's contribution -- whether you think he's brilliant or pretentious, his segment won't change your mind.

Some of the pieces have a clear narrative; others are more a montage of connected images.

None of the pieces is more than 10 minutes or so; if you're not happy with what's on the screen, wait for the next segment, and think about how much culture you're soaking up.

Keep your eyes open for performances by Buck Henry, Beverly D'Angelo, Elizabeth Hurley, Briget Fonda, Tilda Swinton, and John Hurt. (The Buck Henry segment alone is worth the price of admission).

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6 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Some of it is extraordinary, some of it is awful, 25 December 2003
Author: squeezebox from United States

It's interesting to see what different directors will do when they are told, "make a short film based upon a famous opera." It's like looking through someone's garbage...you really get a sense for who they are.

Based upon what I've seen here, here's what I think about each director and their segment:

Nicolas Roeg - Always an experimental guy, but, by nature, experiments often fail. Such is the case with Roeg's segment, which perplexingly casts his wife Thresa Russell as a (male) fascist ruler about to be assassinated. I have no idea what he was thinking, but the segment doesn't work at all.

Charles Sturridge - This guy must have major skeletons in his closet. It's the story of three children, sadly watching a replay of themselves being killed in a car accident on TV, the result of taking their parents' car out for an ill-advised drive. It's a beautiful, intensely sad sequence, one of the best in the movie.

Jean-Luc Godard - Never known for being subtle. This is the WORST of the movies. If you can't figure out that it's about sexual frustration, go live in a cave. It takes something truly special to make two gorgeous women parading around naked to be so mind-numbingly boring.

Julien Temple - Mainstream director somehow having backed into the arthouse scene. This entertaining bit of absurdity plays like an elaborate Saturday Night Live sketch, with a husband and wife out cheating on each other at the same hotel. It's funny and sexy, and surprisingly at home with the more cerebral segments.

Bruce Beresford - Great respect of love, sex and sensuality. Pleasant enough, basically the story of a woman (Elizabeth Hurley) giving herself to her lover for the first time. Nice buns on Elizabeth, but it's a wonderful little sequence regardless. Gorgous photograaphy.

Robert Altman - Tell this guy to do whatever he wants, and he'll be at a loss as to what he wants to do. Utterly pointless, boring and irritating short about the inmates of an asylum sitting in a theatre awaiting the night's performance. Nothing but a series of swooping camera shots and people acting crazy. Really bad.

Franc Roddam - Pessimistic and cynical, especially when it comes to love. Beautifully shot sequence about two young lovers who travel to Las Vegas to have one last night together before committing suicide. Subtly gives us hints as to why they do what they do (life is a pointless series of tragedies which leads up to old age), which makes the sequence all the more heart-breaking. Bridget Fonda's film debut, and it seems she was pretty enthusiastic about taking off her clothes right off the bat. Nothing wrong with that!

Ken Russell - Seems to have known most segments would be deadly serious and pretentious, so decided just to goof off. Russell fans will love this sequence, others will probably just be bewildered. Nothing to read into here, a woman is on the operating table after being in a car accident, and has hallucinations about being adorned with jewels as opposed to being stitched back together. Well shot and genuinely imaginative.

Derek Jarman - Simplicity is the key. An old woman thanks happy thoughts of her younger days as an actress. That's it. Simple, charming, moving.

Bill Bryden - Let's hear it for the has-been. A dying actor (John Hurt) performs the famous opera from Pagliacci (the sad clown) to an empty theater, after which he drops dead. It's a brutally sad sequence about the devastation a performer feels after they have been forgotten by the public.

Overall, it's an interesting movie. The girls' bare bottoms and guys' ripped pecs of Godard's sequence will help both men and women get through it, but Roeg's and Altman's misfires will have you reaching for the fast-forward button.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Suffers the Fate of Most Compilation Films, 28 May 2008

Author: brocksilvey from United States

"Aria" as a whole is a pretty underwhelming experience, as most compilation films are. No one segment is very long, so the whole thing is painless to sit through, but I can't really bring myself to recommend it to anyone.

The standout segment for me was Ken Russell's, which depicts a woman hallucinating while on the operating table after a terrible car accident. It helps that the segment is set to "Nessum dorma," one of my favorite opera pieces -- I would find a filmed toaster glorious as long as it was set to that particular piece of music. Franc Roddam's segment is pretty decent, and features Bridget Fonda in her film debut. I liked Jean-Luc Godard's segment, which is set in a gym and features a bunch of body builders completely oblivious of the naked women dancing around them -- perhaps a comment on male narcissism? Robert Altman's segment, which is primarily the reason I wanted to see this movie at all, is utterly forgettable -- the only notable thing about it is that you can tell he was filming "Beyond Therapy" at the same time, as many of the same actors are in both. Nicholas Roeg's segment, which opens the film, is pretty bad, as is Julien Temple's painfully unfunny contribution (though it features a smokin' Beverly D'Angelo), while Bruce Beresford's is just boring. Watch Derek Jarman's segment for a glimpse of a very young and pretty Tilda Swinton.

There's not much to say about films like this. Some portions are better than others; none of them are masterpieces.

Grade: B-

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Great Fun, IF.........., 27 November 2006

Author: fiorerr from New Hampshire

Guess a few upscale film directors were sitting around sipping their absinthe, grappa, aramangac or jungle juice some night in the 80's during the Cannes or other film festival and one said "Hey, guys let's do a movie where each of us creates a segment around a world class aria." Welllll...it kind of sort of worked. Clearly someone was smart enough to select some of the best recordings of the arias chosen, for example Bjoreling's Nessun Dorma, so if you were blind and lying on the floor just listening to the DVD you got more than your money's worth. Not every director succeeded but more did than not and the flick seems to improve with each viewing over the years. My favorite is the eerily beautiful love duet from Die Todt Statd; okay a young naked Elizabeth Hurley is eye candy but her husband singing to her, his wife's ghost, is incredibly beautiful with the love music second only to Otello and Desdemona's "Gia nella Notte Densa" in all the operatic repertoire. Could the flick been better, sure, what couldn't not have been but it's well worth a view especially of you're in a hyper-romantic mood.

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