Opera (1987)

You know that dream where everything is finally going right, and then…BAM!…you’re falling into a black pit, sinking deeper and deeper while racing into the unknown, and, just before you splat into a mess on the ground below…you wake up? The visceral experience is so real that you jerk awake drenched in sweat, screaming, or just terrified. Every muscle in your body tenses up, and breathing becomes akin to having a boulder set atop your chest. The crushing sensation of a nightmare is something that rarely translates to screen. Most directors try, and fail miserably at bringing true terror to the form of film, but Dario Argento achieves this brilliantly in Opera.

Rating:

Opera is, on the surface, a film about a woman being stalked and made to watch the horrible murders committed to people she cares about and, if that’s what you see when you watch this film, that’s fine. Hell, Opera is an excellent stalker/giallo film. But, what makes this film work is what’s going on underneath the mayhem and carnage (which there’s plenty of). The killer makes Betty (played by a beautiful, Cristina Marsillach) watch as he horribly mutilates people around her. I won’t say how he makes her watch, but it’s very, very unnerving. It seems as though Argento is making a play on horror fans in general. No matter what “We can’t look away”. He nails it home. but, the great thing is, it’s not overdone, ala Michael Bay. Rather, we tend to focus on what we’re seeing in front of us as the subliminal undertones are driven home by whatever weapon the killer decides to use.

One of Argento’s well-rounded skills lays in the camera and lighting departments. The cinematography is top-notch, and the camera becomes another character, often representing a figure moving through the crowd, a heart beating or blurry eyes. The power of the camera is that the audience becomes an active participant in whatever scene we are in (butchery, stalking, sulking, what have you), and it makes whatever happens that much more enjoyable/disgusting. Some of the most breath-taking shots are staged in the most confined spaces with very brutal death sequences. The viewers want to turn away, but just like Betty, we can’t. The camera-work is only heightened by fantastic(al) lighting throughout. Reds, blues, yellows, and greens cast ominous shadows on the cast as they try to piece together whom the murderer is before it’s too late. The red carpet of the opera house seems even more brilliant than normal as a precursor to the blood that is to come, and the green light used (in a breathtaking scene of terror involving Betty, her friend and the killer that may, or may not be in the apartment with them) represents the full extent of the killers envy.

With a name like Opera, you’d expect, at least some music, and it rapidly becomes one of the films core-components. It’s one of the reasons that Betty is being stalked, it’s the cause of death to several victims in the film, and Betty also uses it for other means. The music sets the mood and changes quickly when a murder is about to take place, or it can drop all together, leaving the viewer to sit in uncomfortable silence, not knowing what will happen next.

The staples of horror are all included. The gore is wicked when it happens (The Prowler comes to mind), but it doesn’t happen all that much. Death is spread out throughout the film, but it doesn’t come at a break-neck pace, rather it flows with the story, heightening the dread as the killer gets closer to his ultimate goal. The viewer can’t help but tremble, wondering if Betty will be killed-off “this time”. I say that, because the killer seems to have bigger plans for Betty, but the killer seems just “off” enough that he might slip up. Gore hounds will delight in the gore when it happens. The blood feels vibrant and unnatural, making it that much more unsettling as it slides down victims bodies and surges onto the floor.

Argento, as with every other director, is not without his weaknesses. The dialogue is decent but the overall story leaves much to be desired, as the reasoning for the killers motives are, passing at best. The acting, while sometimes decent, never ascends to Roman Polanski levels, and the ending many viewers will find unsatisfying, as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and drags the film out of the tension that was built competently beforehand.

Many consider Opera to be the end of Argento’s golden years (to be followed by some horrible films: Trauma, The Card Player, Phantom of the Opera), and that may very well be. Was the ending of Opera a precursor to Dario’s future films? You decide. But, we’ll always have Opera, as well as his other masterpieces (Suspiria, Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, etc.). With a catalog as wide spread as Dario Argento’s, a safe bet when delving into his filmography would be Opera. Overall, Opera is a solid film, which putters out in the last five minutes, but everything beforehand is so well done that the ending can be forgiven, because it’s one heck of a ride up until then.

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