Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

Crappy film

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

"Parsifal" is a work by famous German composer Richard Wagner and as an anniversary tribute, North German filmmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg decided to film a more modern version of the material. The most important aspect first: This is more than 4 hours of people singing instead of talking as a way to communicate. This is absolutely not for everybody and I include myself with that description as you probably already guessed from my rating. I ended up not caring for the story and for the material and this was a most boring watch that dragged so much from start to finish. I am certainly biased as I am not an opera fan at all, but if I watch it, then I prefer to see it live and not on screen. I like musicals though, so this attitude is far from enough to enjoy this work we have here. But looking at Syberberg's other works ("Hitler"), I guess we can be glad that this "only" went on for 255 minutes. The female lead received some awards attention. Many of the actors in here are almost entirely unknown as they are stage actors and not film actors. This is a stage performance too, only difference is that it was filmed and I guess this is also the only reason why it exists on IMDb unlike many other theater plays. And Syberberg's name also helps probably. For me it was a dreadful watch and nobody other than the greatest opera and Wagner fans should go check it out.

I love Wagner a great deal, but boy don't his operas take a lot of stamina to perform and I would be lying if I said they were easy to direct too. Parsifal is difficult to pull off effectively, and while it is flawed this production does commendably.Where this Parsifal falls down is in the pacing. It is a lengthy opera, but in some ways the pace is very glacial here making the first act especially exhausting to watch on first viewing. Then there is some of the symbolism. I want to credit Syberberg for his work here, he is a clearly ambitious director and a lot of scenes are very well staged. This Parsifal is very visually striking too with wonderful costumes, sets and lighting particularly in Act 2 and there is some clever video directing, but as intriguing and as striking as the symbolism is, considering Parsifal is quite a symbolic work there were times when it got too much.The cast are mostly very good. I wasn't however taken with Michael Kutter's Parsifal 1, he seems uncomfortable here. Faring much better though is Karin Krick as Parsifal 2, who is extraordinarily good. Of the cast for me the standouts are Robert Lloyd's superb Gurnemanz and Aughe Haugland's truly excellent Klingsor. Also Edith Clever is a very effective Kundry.On a musical front I have nothing to fault this production. Then again, this is Wagner, all the haunting yet very beautiful motifs and lush orchestration are there. The orchestra perform this score wonderfully, and the conducting is adept without plodding too much.Overall, a flawed production, but a good and interesting one. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This very peculiar setting of Wagner's last opera definitely grew on me. When I first saw it, I was somewhat annoyed by many of the films surrealistic images, and felt that far too much was superimposed upon the story. However, if you can put up with a fair amount of rather recherché "gimmicks," I think you will find that the film DOES manage to capture the very strange, other-worldly atmosphere of the opera, and that there are moments which are particularly fine.Personally, I never really understood the role of Kundry until I saw how Edith Clever portrayed her. Her performance (a lip-synchronized mime of the singing voice of Yvonne Minton) is nothing short of dazzling, from end to end, and alone justifies the hours it takes to absorb the film.Another reason to delight in this film is that it captures the spectacular interpretation of Robert Lloyd of the crucial role of Gurnemanz, one which Lloyd has performed to a crisp at opera houses throughout the world. I have been privileged to enjoy him in the role of Gurnemanz on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera several times, and the lusciousness of his voice, and the warm, fatherliness of his interpretation of this noble character really needed to be preserved, as did his performance in the character's two major monologues, the Karfreitag scene and the recounting of the prophecy in Act 1.The version I have seen was a videotape made for America, and so there were subtitles which, alas, could not be done away with. This is especially unfortunate because the translation used is very inaccurate and forces an extremely Christian interpretation on a film which is already forcing layers of interpretation on the opera. This seemed to me to be quite contrary both to Wagner's clear AVOIDANCE of Christianity, and his very deliberate attempt to "generalize" the Christian elements of the story. (See footnote with spoiler at the end of this review.) I find it nearly impossible, when viewing a film with subtitles, to keep from absorbing them, and strongly recommend that, if in the DVD versions you have the ability to turn the subtitles off, you do so, and instead, if the opera is unfamiliar to you, that you read the libretto carefully beforehand.The bottom line is that there is much in the film which I dislike, and would just as soon have seen done differently...but it has risen steadily in my estimation over the years since I first saw it, and I find myself drawn to enjoy it again and again.__________________________________________________________________FOOTNOTE CONTAINING A SPOILER: A good example would be Kundry's famous line, "I saw him...him...and laughed." This gets translated, in the subtitles, for reasons which escape me, as "I saw the Savior's face." It is especially irritating to me, because throughout the libretto, Wagner very deliberately and carefully refers to this unseen character WHO NEED NOT BE THE BIBLICAL Jesus as "der Heiland," i.e., the German for "The Healer"--a reference to the wound of Amfortas, and to all wounds and maladies and the need for healing.

Back when I saw this film when it came out first run at the local art theater, it blew me away. When I tried to get into it again after locating a DVD copy, I couldn't sit through it. Most of the trappings of Syberburg's much-vaunted style have the feel of artsy gimmicks of his hot period, the late 70s and early 80s. The puppets, which are part of this scene, don't bother me half as much as the projection of images over everything on stage, and the shifting video slide show backgrounds. This technique seems to have been a solution that Syberburg believed in deeply-- and to feel he was leading the avant pack in using. But a solution to what, I'm not sure. To break up basically static tableau setups, yes. To speak to the wide-wandering emotional interior state of the films participants, certainly. But why make the film auditorium-bound in the first place if it's restless, ceaseless movement you crave? --Budget limitations? --Because you feel challenged or amused tinkering around with active/static dynamics? Either of these reasons is acceptable to me, but I don't find the fruit of this experimentation especially successful, or more, very durable.The music is great, and I DO yearn for something more eccentric or intense than the standard PBS/Met production with guys standing around bellowing in obvious crepe whiskers and stage dirt. But this film goes arty in a way that doesn't speak to many people any more, and as far as I'm concerned, it way overshoots the crazed artist mark. A little less please.