You will be disappointed because the music is not kept entirely the way it should be. Some passages are cut off, like the Ocean and the Desert Choruses, and the Hagar Chorus has been replaced by some TV presentation that is not in the line of the original opera since it introduces Isaac in a chorus – which is not a chorus anymore – that was exclusively centered on Hagar and Ishmael. This does not balance the tale. This betrays the tale as we are going to see. The worst adaptation/distortion is the use of plain spoken words and sentences instead of the sung equivalent. These sections that are no longer sung are just not in the line of the opera which was sung from beginning to end, even if with some sections sounding more like a dirge with a recitative feel, but it was entirely sung.
The second remark is that to add pictures to the music, pictures that are not the direct stage work of the singers, makes the film very difficult to understand. A film of that type is visual first of all and since we are visual dominant we see these added images first and they dominate the rest, the music, the words and the real setting. The film is thus overloaded with news reels about the Shoah, the deportation and extermination of Jews by the Nazis; with visions of the Jews arriving in Palestine and hunting the Palestinians out and banishing them brutally out of their villages and houses that are taken over buy the thousands of arriving Jews in their mass exodus to the Israel of the old times, and in such scene of appropriation of what is not theirs, of homes that belonged to other families the sex sequence in the bed of those expelled Palestinians of a survivor of a Nazi death camp identified by his number on his arm and the whipping scars on his back is a real mental crime against the Palestinians and against the Jews, a desecration of this bed and house. [ ] An eye for an eye, but on a third party collateral victim. [ ]
In the same way the very graphic images of the expulsion of the Palestinians, of the colonial control and exploitation of the Palestinians, of the horrific life and also death of the Palestinians in the various refugee camps that we can imagine are Sabra and Shatila give the other side of this arrival of the Jews in Palestine based on the Balfour declaration that suggested the parting of Palestine to give a section of this region to the Jews to create a state of their own,. The worst part of this image accompaniment of the text is that the images are often in contradiction with the text. When the Jewish lot is evoked by the text it is illustrated with graphic images of the Palestinian fate, and vice versa. This gives to the Jewish suffering before, in Europe, in the hands of the Europeans, a weight and value that is a lot more important than what it was in the original opera. At the same time the similar providing of graphic images of the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews in Palestine emphasizes this suffering that had been kept under control in the libretto. [ ]
But I want to insist on the cutting of the two choruses: the Ocean Chorus and the Desert Chorus. The first one was going back to the very genesis of humanity in the primeval water expanse in total darkness before creation, the creation of Adam and Eve, of one source for humanity that is then constantly shown in the opera as divided in two as a decision of God himself who seems to have wanted a dual or bipolar world that is easier to control. Originally the whole humanity was one and that was the vision of the opera modulated later by the Hagar Chorus into two and yet centered only on one: Hagar and the Arabs. Yet thanks to the Hagar Chorus and its being replaced by a news report or news commentary on some TV set on the ship in front of the passengers and the hijackers explaining the two sons and the fate of Hagar and her son banished as soon as Abraham's wife was able to bear a child in her old age, te whole shebang is purely flown into smoke. They even go as far as recalling the fact that the slave Hagar was given to Abraham by his wife because she could not bear children. And the two sons are only presented as the founders of two religions. The original opera only insists on Hagar, on God's project concerning her son, to create another religion, and the cruel decision of Abraham banishing her and her child, just like the arriving Jews banished the Palestinians from Palestine. In the film the Hagar distorted tale is there to call for love between the two communities in the name of the fact they are cousins. The meaning of the Hagar Chorus has thus been changed completely and that is a shame.
The absence of the Desert Chorus is also regrettable. [ ]
[ ], before dying Mr. Klinghoffer is able to meet his wife, or his wife is authorized to rejoin her husband for the second part of his soliloquy during which she has nothing to say since originally she did not join him then. What is for him in the original opera a soothing recollection of the past becomes then by being addressed to the wife present in the film a sort of solace for the wife and no longer for the husband. He is trying to make it easier for her to survive instead of making it easier for himself to die.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The second remark is that to add pictures to the music, pictures that are not the direct stage work of the singers, makes the film very difficult to understand. A film of that type is visual first of all and since we are visual dominant we see these added images first and they dominate the rest, the music, the words and the real setting. The film is thus overloaded with news reels about the Shoah, the deportation and extermination of Jews by the Nazis; with visions of the Jews arriving in Palestine and hunting the Palestinians out and banishing them brutally out of their villages and houses that are taken over buy the thousands of arriving Jews in their mass exodus to the Israel of the old times, and in such scene of appropriation of what is not theirs, of homes that belonged to other families the sex sequence in the bed of those expelled Palestinians of a survivor of a Nazi death camp identified by his number on his arm and the whipping scars on his back is a real mental crime against the Palestinians and against the Jews, a desecration of this bed and house. [ ] An eye for an eye, but on a third party collateral victim. [ ]
In the same way the very graphic images of the expulsion of the Palestinians, of the colonial control and exploitation of the Palestinians, of the horrific life and also death of the Palestinians in the various refugee camps that we can imagine are Sabra and Shatila give the other side of this arrival of the Jews in Palestine based on the Balfour declaration that suggested the parting of Palestine to give a section of this region to the Jews to create a state of their own,. The worst part of this image accompaniment of the text is that the images are often in contradiction with the text. When the Jewish lot is evoked by the text it is illustrated with graphic images of the Palestinian fate, and vice versa. This gives to the Jewish suffering before, in Europe, in the hands of the Europeans, a weight and value that is a lot more important than what it was in the original opera. At the same time the similar providing of graphic images of the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews in Palestine emphasizes this suffering that had been kept under control in the libretto. [ ]
But I want to insist on the cutting of the two choruses: the Ocean Chorus and the Desert Chorus. The first one was going back to the very genesis of humanity in the primeval water expanse in total darkness before creation, the creation of Adam and Eve, of one source for humanity that is then constantly shown in the opera as divided in two as a decision of God himself who seems to have wanted a dual or bipolar world that is easier to control. Originally the whole humanity was one and that was the vision of the opera modulated later by the Hagar Chorus into two and yet centered only on one: Hagar and the Arabs. Yet thanks to the Hagar Chorus and its being replaced by a news report or news commentary on some TV set on the ship in front of the passengers and the hijackers explaining the two sons and the fate of Hagar and her son banished as soon as Abraham's wife was able to bear a child in her old age, te whole shebang is purely flown into smoke. They even go as far as recalling the fact that the slave Hagar was given to Abraham by his wife because she could not bear children. And the two sons are only presented as the founders of two religions. The original opera only insists on Hagar, on God's project concerning her son, to create another religion, and the cruel decision of Abraham banishing her and her child, just like the arriving Jews banished the Palestinians from Palestine. In the film the Hagar distorted tale is there to call for love between the two communities in the name of the fact they are cousins. The meaning of the Hagar Chorus has thus been changed completely and that is a shame.
The absence of the Desert Chorus is also regrettable. [ ]
[ ], before dying Mr. Klinghoffer is able to meet his wife, or his wife is authorized to rejoin her husband for the second part of his soliloquy during which she has nothing to say since originally she did not join him then. What is for him in the original opera a soothing recollection of the past becomes then by being addressed to the wife present in the film a sort of solace for the wife and no longer for the husband. He is trying to make it easier for her to survive instead of making it easier for himself to die.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU