The Phantom of the Opera

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is a hard movie to review. I mean, what do you focus on? The acting? That’s been influenced by years of stage and film actors’ interpretations. The music? Again, this film version is very close to Webber’s original score, used for years in the stage production. The sets and costumes? Sorry. My wife informs me that they look exactly as they looked when she saw the show on Broadway. The casting? Yeah, I guess . . . but why talk about any of that, which was all just as good, yet predictable, as you’d expect given the success of the musical, when you can talk about what’s really important here—when you can talk about what transcends the acting, the production details, even the music—the story. No, I will not here explain the plot, which most people know anyway, but I would like to look more deeply at the significance of the story itself.

Phantom is, like so many tales, about human needs and desires, and what we’ll do to fulfill them. The main character of the film, really, is the titular Phantom. His desires can seem complex, but really boil down to the need to love and be loved—all stemming from his facial disfigurement and resulting childhood abuse. Christine, around whom centers most of the Phantom’s attempts at happiness, first needs to make peace with her father’s death, and later wants to be rid of her “Angel of Music� (the Phantom), so she can be with Raoul. And Raoul—the third point of this classic love-triangle—very simply loves Christine and wants her for himself.

The fulfillment of these needs/desires, or lack thereof, is all initially due to the actions of the Phantom himself. It is he who secretly tutors Christine, perhaps hoping to vicariously win the opera’s love through her gift, and falling in love with her in the process. It is his unveiling of himself to Christine that proves that he is not the ghost of her father, and that starts her on the path to peace with his absence. It is the Phantom’s jealous pursuit that sparks Christine and Raoul’s clinging to each other, and his violence that forces her to choose between them. And at the end, when she is dead, he is still there—like a Phantom should be—loving her, and undoubtedly still regretting that his love was not reciprocated.

As I watched the film, reveling in the music, but also trying to put my finger on the spiritual implications of such a tangle of requited and unrequited desire, I found that my ideas didn’t solidify easily. I mean, surely this film has to do with good and evil, and life and death, and love and hate, and all these big spiritual themes—but I couldn’t wrap it up in a nice box. I’ve decided that it’s because I was trying (for some reason) to make the story be a perfect Christian allegory, which it’s not. It’s close: Christine is the everyperson/Eve figure, trying to fill the void left by her father. She is lured underground by the Phantom, to his personal hell of confinement, where he tempts her like the devil. Raoul, the Christ figure, whom Christine fell in love with on the roof of the opera house—suggestive of heaven, as opposed to the underground lair of the Phantom—then comes and rescues her, and they live happily ever after. But there are holes here, mainly having to do with Raoul not being a very developed character, and with the sympathetic presentation of the Phantom. So, instead of trying to simplify the story in this way, I’d like to just lay out some random thoughts on two things that this film does, spiritually speaking.

First, Phantom makes us consider the nature of good and evil. Like other stories in this vein—Paradise Lost, Jekyll and Hyde, and Prometheus Unbound come to mind—the Phantom is “the bad guy,� but because of the complexity, sympathetic presentation, and motivations of the character, the audience is forced to consider what it really means to be “the bad guy.� Do we root for the heroic, questing Christ figure, Raoul? Or do we root for the Phantom, whose downfalls seem forgivable, given what we know about him? Or is the Phantom himself the hero, the “good guy?� Does he, in some way, save Christine more than Raoul does? Does Christine even need to be saved from him? Or is he saved by her, and somehow redeemed by the end? All good questions, and all questions that don’t come up in stories with simpler presentations of heroes and villains.

Second, Phantom gives insight into what we all know about ourselves: we’re always striving for something, and we’ll go through a lot to get it. Our strivings are often very deep in our nature, and often have to do with father/mother issues, and with love. But as C.S. Lewis once suggested, if we have a desire, there must be a way to fulfill it—so perhaps there is a way to fulfill that need we all seem to have for a perfect parent-child relationship. Perhaps there is a way to love perfectly and be loved perfectly, unmarred by ulterior motives, or misperceptions, or miscommunications, or our past. And, as with the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul, perhaps our choices play a role in how these needs are met.

This, at the risk of simplifying again, may be the real strength of the story: it makes us seriously consider desire, proper action, motivation, consequences—in short, morality. The Phantom of the Opera is a modern-day morality play, hidden inside a love story, with big visuals and good music. It makes us think about our part in this big morality play called “our lives.� And, upon reflection, it will hopefully also make us think about the possibility of all our evils being understood and remedied, of all our desires being fulfilled, of all our needs being met. As such, Phantom truly is an “Angel of Music.�

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections