Carmen

How can I watch it? saw it years back loved it and want to share

Carmen is one of the best known and widely loved of all operas. Some see opera as a rather distant and high-brow entertainment. This film is quite a different experience! The singing is sublime, the acting dramatic and filled with energy and enthusiasm. The location is grim and poor whilst brimming with life.

I look forward to the DVD where it would be possible to turn off the subtitles - they are well done, but it would be nice to watch it a second time without their intrusion.

It is remarkable how Xhosa lends itself to operatic singing - particularly with such gifted opera singers.

I'd recommend it to anybody who loves music, enjoys a spectacle or is interested in South Africa - well, Cape Town, or a part of Cape Town, at any rate!

Can anyone imagine the immortal Georges Bizet opera "Carmen" relocated to another continent? Well, that is exactly what the creators of this film decided to do. They moved the location from Seville to a South African township near Cape Town to set the action. The result is an interesting movie in which most of the opera sung in Xhosa.

This is not a typical adaptation of this work because it asks the viewer to make allowances for the way one conceived the classical work. By bringing it to a different geographical location, the characters take new meaning in the action. Carmen, the sultry cigarette factory worker is the object of desire from the good cop, Jongi, who reads the bible. Carmen lures him to work with an expatriate, who is the son of a slain anti apartheid legend.

This work was staged in South Africa and then made into this film. Mark Dornford-May who wrote and directed, probably wanted to present the work with a different point of view but keeping the core of the story and original songs. Pauline Malefane, who plays Carmen, worked in the translation from French into Xhosa with excellent results.

The South African cast does an excellent job in what Mr. Dornford-May set out to accomplish. The characters feel real in the context where they are situated, giving the film a great feeling for what unfolds on screen.

Call me a softy, or sentimental, but merging two ancient traditions to see it not only work but enforce each other is nothing short of a miracle. I think it's a victory for the human experience to discover that boundaries are artificial and should be disposed of. I think the clinking and clonking of the stairs and the passing trains during the final scene are plea for honesty and integrity in contemporary cinema. It also shows how stuck up we are in today's operatic environment. The ability to suggest leniency towards what is real in this movie is absolutely brilliant. Watching a movie like this one gives me hope that there are still people out there who believe movie making is a form of expression of what we believe freedom should feel like. Another encouraging element is the sense of community that this movie is exhaling without romanticizing the life of the poor; they're proud of their community, they're proud of their traditions and they love to show it (although no animals were harmed). The only problem I have is that I will never be able to see Carmen, the opera, in the traditional way again. On the other hand, think of the possibilities, Hamlet in the rain forest, Ibsen in Tehran, Brecht in Mumbai - thinks are looking up in the world.

This film, a remake of the opera Carmen set in a South African township and sung in Xhosa, is fantastic. Pauline Malefane was amazing in the role of Carmen. Director Dornford-May played on his experience as a theater director for some real strengths in this movie -- I liked the way he stuck to the Greek theatrical convention of bloodshed happening offstage throughout the film without shirking from the sense of violence underpinning both the original opera and this new setting. The ways in which he wove in quirkier elements from the opera Carmen were delightful (I thought: How on earth is he going to get a bullfighter in here?), and the interplay between the Carmen score and South African music was superb. I loved it.