Take Two: Viva Carmen

I capped off this year's edition of Animation is Film with Viva Carmen, which I reviewed earlier this year as part of my remote Annecy coverage. That review was nothing short of a rave. The movie hit me like a freight train. I was so swept up in the nifty spin on the opera (one I'm not personally familiar with) and the way it made a well-known story into something new, undercutting the dramatic irony. I'm sure many people going into the movie would know the story's tragic ending, but even those people would have to wonder if there's a little wiggle room with the new characters, the new narrative wrinkles.

I wasn't planning to watch the film again at the fest, but I gushed so much about it, my husband asked if we could catch the screening, and I was, of course, happy to. Just getting to see the gorgeous animation on the big screen was reason enough. And yeah, this movie is a looker. 

What surprised me, though, is how much less enchanted I was by the film on a second go-round. Some sort of diminishment is to be expected. Watching a movie you know the shape of, the beats of, usually won't be as exciting as discovering it for the first time. But still, it's been months since my first watch, and a story that hits should always hit, somewhat. But this time, I found Viva Carmen to be quite emotionally stilted, narratively inert. The characters are so thinly drawn, the central relationship between Carmen and José a wisp, flimsy. 

Now, operas aren't necessarily known for their complex plots and nuanced characters. When you read the synopsis of an act of opera, there's normally like, two things that happen, and then it takes an hour to watch it unfold. Opera isn't about the plot. And in Viva Carmen, I have to give kudos for the ways the filmmakers try to build the world out with additional characters, the prophecy, the war against fate. They do a great job at making the story shine in new ways, building in some fun comedic relief, making you wonder if it'll end the way you expect.

I think my new positive takeaway is reading the film as a comment on the challenges of adapting a Great Work, a piece of culture that is known and has been produced and adapted to death. How far can you go in another direction, how faithful do you have to be, how much can you change? Viewing the film from that angle gives it a bit more meat on its bones, I think.

This isn't to say that Viva Carmen is a bad movie in any way, or that you should skip seeing it if you get the chance. Some of the folks I follow on Letterboxd who caught it last night really loved it. I don't know why I felt so drastically different on my two viewings -- maybe I was just in the exact right head space when I watched it earlier this year -- but I thought it was interesting, as I don't normally shift so much from one viewing of a movie to the next. C'est la vie.