Topsy-Turvy- - - - This is a very quiet movie. I can hardly think of a theatrical movie with less plot and less drama. Practically nothing happens. It's Seinfeldian: a show about nothing. I sat gaping in amazement, just marvelling at how little was going on. The dramatic climax of the movie is a decision to cut or not to cut a song from The Mikado. That's about the most heart-pounding moment. And the movie is two hours and forty minutes long! But although it's very unexciting, it's not boring. There's something compelling about this mundane slice of life, these nineteenth-century people and their little relationships and struggles and addictions, which are just glimpsed and then dropped and not developed or explained at all. It's a lot like a Frontline documentary without the voiceover. "Next time, on Frontline: Frontline's cameras spent 14 months behind the scenes at the Savoy Theater in London. You'll see the librettist, the composer, the producer, the musicians, and the actors, as they struggle through the process of creating a popular entertainment. That's: OPERETTA... next time on Frontline." If Mike Leigh intended to make a conventional sort of theatrical movie and he produced this, then he's the worst movie maker in the world. But it's not possible that he could make a movie this slow by accident, so it's really sort of interesting. |