A tragic painting in music and shadows

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2007)

I saw this yesterday. I'm a HUGE fan of the stage musical. I was a little worried that the brilliant score would be shoved back for the shock effect of gore and outrageousness . Oh. My. God. I have never seen such a perfect translation of a stage musical to film. It flowed seamlessly. Every person was perfectly cast. It was a visual feast. It was stylized, keeping the "melodrama" aspect, but still managing to paint an emotional, poignant portrait of people so broken by circumstance that you know they cannot be fixed and yet you follow willingly into their insane world. I could have sat and watched it over again immediately. I will definitely be seeing it again, probably at least twice before it leaves the big screen. Hopefully your theater has state of the art sound, because every bit of this should be heard. If you are familiar with the musical, you do have to accept that The Ballad is there only musically, because it's purpose is as a device for theater, and, IMO also to in some ways alleviate the horror of the story. Here, you don't have that, nor do you need it. It's unapologetic in any way about the tale being told. But it is not unsympathetic, which is the brilliance of this musical in any form and I think heightened in the film. Unlike the stage play, the humor is not there to break the tension, but unfolds naturally to underscore the madness. If you can accept that this is a painting, of a tragic story, in music and shadows, you will be in for a real experience, not just a movie.