Aria

Aria

No director chose to film their aria in a typical way. Bill Bryden comes close with a wraparound segment featuring John Hurt as a has-been virtuoso remembering his better days; his story continues between each of the other arias, and finally he stands alone on stage and sings “Il Pagliacci”’s famous aria about the man who discovered he could smile through his tears.

(Hurt does not sing for the film; he mimes Caruso, and all of the segments use prerecorded performances.) Of the 10 segments, Franc Roddam’s interpretation of Wagner’s “Liebestod” is my favorite. He uses Bridget Fonda and James Mathers as young lovers who come to Las Vegas, drive slowly (and sadly) down Glitter Gulch, check into a cheap hotel room, make love and kill themselves. The episode is remarkably touching in its portait of two ill-fated lovers despite or perhaps because of the unlikely setting.

Nicholas Roeg’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” with wife Theresa Russell made up as a man, is based on the attempted assassination of King Rog of Albania in 1931 (you see how fanciful they were allowed to become). Charles Sturridge begins Verdi’s “La Vergine Degli Angeli” from “La Forza del Destino” with three teenagers skipping school who end up in an accident.

Godard uses Lully’s “Armide” for a segment about body builders. Julien Temple shoots his illustration of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” starring Buck Henry as a movie producer sneaking away with Beverly D’Angelo to Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif., whereupon his wife also arrives at same hotel with her lover.

Robert Altman’s Rameau’s “Les Boreades” recreates opening night in 1734 at the Parisian Ranelagh Theater, where he imagined the audience as a raffish and perhaps diseased assortment of low-lifes and the decadent. Bruce Beresford recreates the apparently dead city of Bruges, Belgium, for Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt.” Ken Russell chooses Puccini’s “Turandot” and uses British pin-up model Linzi Drew as his subject; she imagines her body is being adorned by jewels but wakes up in an operating room where she is being treated for injuries suffered in a car crash.

The mixture is typical of Russell’s taste for exoticism and sensation.

Derek Jarman’s final segment shows an aging opera singer at her last performance, intercut by 8mm home movies of an early love affair.

At the end of “Aria,” I suppose, you have to decide what it all means. I’m not sure that any essential statement about opera has been made here, and purists will no doubt be offended by some images. But almost as a satire of itself the film is fun as a project in which the tension between directors and material allows them to have a little fun with their own styles and obsessions. You could almost call “Aria” the first MTV version of opera.

Watch Aria For Free On Gomovies.