The Death of Klinghoffer (2003) User Reviews

Propulsive Screen Adaptation of a Politically Charged Opera With Multiple Agendas

[EUyeshima · 7/10 · 11 July 2006]

Director Penny Woolcock deserves an immense amount of credit for providing a vibrant, emotionally expansive if not altogether dramatically effective 2003 screen translation of what was likely the last decade's most controversial opera. What began as an elaborate oratorio in 1991 was renowned composer John Adams' highly emotional "The Death of Klinghoffer", a controversial work with even greater political and emotional resonance post-9/11. The story concerns itself with the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front. It is related in a series of arias and recitatives by critical participants in the situation - the ship's captain and first officer; the four terrorists; and key passengers who were held captive over three days, in particular, the Klinghoffers who were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary.

Adams' familiar post-minimalist music turns out to be surprisingly compatible with the true-life story, as the propulsive vocal parts blend well with Alice Goodman's politically charged libretto. Sung off-screen to vivid montages, the beautiful choruses provide effective bridges and a broader context to the immediate drama of the opera, an aspect that was likely left quite abstract when sung onstage. The other powerful dimension Woolcock brings to this adaptation is the use of real locations and archived footage to make relevant the opera's overall abstraction to the viewer. This is a brave move since the political situation suddenly becomes actualized with the film. As it turns out, it is a dramatically smart move given that Woolcock has a strong cinematic sense of the story, for instance, she apparently cut twenty minutes of the music to make the story flow better, repositions powerful solo arias to enhance the characters' interactions, and adds often traumatizing historical footage and faux-news reports to give the story even greater realism. Solely from that standpoint, this may be the best screen adaptation of a major opera I have ever seen.

The biggest challenge of this production, however, is Goodman's libretto, which seems intent on supporting both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance, the opera takes the bold step of putting Israelis and Nazis on the same plain by comparing images of a post-Holocaust concentration camp with those of a mass grave from the 1982 slaughter at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. In making such an exerted effort to share the motivation of the terrorists as well as the suffering of the crew and passengers, the drama becomes somewhat diluted by the multiple perspectives. By contrast, look at Paul Greengrass' recent "United 93" for a successful example of shifting varying viewpoints without losing the overall dramatic momentum. Some contend that the opera takes discernible political sides, though I think it's a mistake to brand the work as purely pro-Palestinian since the Klinghoffers are portrayed sympathetically if rather one-dimensionally as people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In particular, the execution of husband Leon, paralyzed from a stroke and wheelchair-bound, is shown shockingly as the act of a thug more than that of a political terrorist.

Fortunately, Woolcock has recruited world-class singers who are able to tone down their singing for the cameras. The standouts are baritone Christopher Maltman as the conflicted captain; fellow baritone Leigh Melrose, who makes the macho posturing of the aptly named terrorist, "Rambo", feel palpable; and in the film's only comic moment, soprano Kirsten Blasé, who makes her cowering showgirl a convincing media whore. Surprisingly, the Klinghoffers are not given arias to sing until near the end, but mezzo-soprano Yvonne Howard is dynamic as Marilyn especially as she confronts the captain. Baritone Sanford Sylvan, a familiar Adams regular who played Chou En-Lai in "Nixon in China", has one powerful aria sung as a voice-over to an extended, haunting image of his dead body sinking deeper into the ocean. In another interesting voice-over done to accommodate the original opera's doubling of roles, a non-singing actor, Emil Marwa, plays the most vulnerable terrorist, Omar, while mezzo Susan Bickley sings his inner thoughts. The 2003 DVD has a surprising number of extras for an opera production, including a commentary track from Woolcock and various cast members. The best extra is an interesting making-of documentary, "Filming 'The Death of Klinghoffer'", which includes tandem interviews with Adams and Woolcock and goes into the major aspects of putting the challenging production together.

opera close up

[ldecola · 8/10 · 25 November 2005]

Although I have enjoyed the few live and movie productions I have attended, I am not an opera fan, but as a musician I can appreciate its place as ultimate theater/music/art. As such, most operas - even made into movies - tend to feel like distant spectacles; we are the audience, perhaps invited on the stage, but still as spectators. This movie, however, offers us an opportunity to live within the action, even feeling part of the drama. The music is easy to listen to, the settings are realistic, and the singers are obviously masters of their craft; so whatever you feel about the plot or its treatment of the events/issues, I think you will get something positive from spending 2 hours on the Achille Lauro.

Low IMDb rating not due to merit of film, but to obstinacy of its opponents.

[mperry374 · 8/10 · 24 October 2014]

I finished this movie feeling I had just watched a fine, if not exhilarating production. I expected an overall IMDb score in the range of 7.5-8.0, and found instead a score of 6.7. I then checked out the breakdown of the reviews, and found that a whopping 12.4% of reviewers gave this movie a rating of 1.0. Anyone familiar the history of Klinghoffer the opera will know that every time it premiers for a new season, it is met with fanatical protests, and epithets such as "anti-semite" and "terrorist sympathizer" are attached to the creators. It is this group that keeps the rating down.

I can tell you two things that aren't in this film: an anti-semitic agenda, and terrorist sympathizing. The hijackers are indeed "humanized" in the sense that they are given the complexity that a good story requires. Villains too are allowed to have some sophistication, and having a killer that isn't a ruthless barbarian from cradle to grave is not the same as sympathizing with his actions. The Palestinian terrorists are not the heroes of the story.

The film had the vibe of an indie flick. The production was not as technically elite as a higher- budget film would be, but it nevertheless kept a level of suspense and intrigue for the entirety of the film, thanks in large part to Adams' music and to additional location scenes in the West Bank depicting life in 1948, 1985, 2001, and 2003, news reports on the hijacking, shots of worried loved ones in America, and footage of the Nazi Holocaust and of Jewish refugees from post-war Europe.

It has come up in the user reviews that the Nazi treatment of European Jews is placed as an equal to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Again, this is a fabrication, and there was no such suggestion in the film. For many, the achilles heel for this film will be that it simply cannot be removed from the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and conversation and criticism about it is doomed to repeat the same slogans of the real-life conflict.

Some may find that it is too broad in scope. I appreciated the historical context, but I would understand if others thought that it bloated the story. I think this criticism would be fair. But then, the film does not purport to be a documentary. Flashbacks, histories, and fictional elements of the character's personal lives are fair game, and in the end they probably give the film more depth than if all two hours had taken place on the Achille Lauro.

It seemed that the lead actors/singers were not film actors, but they do a good job anyway. The leading hijacker is particularly compelling. Leon Klinghoffer was also great. I felt heart- wrenching pity in many of his appearances. His character is done justice.

There were moments that were cinematically intriguing, but I wouldn't laud it for cinematography. Ultimately I would describe Klinghoffer as a political, suspenseful, thought- provoking, musical, and ultimately a unique move-watching experience.

I was enthralled for the entirety of this innovative film/opera

[huffjasont · 10/10 · 24 January 2003]

I just saw the premiere at Sundance 1/23/2003. This film is an adaptation of Adams' wonderful opera of the same name about the 1985 takeover of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and the death of one of the passengers. The film's music is exceptional as conducted by the composer with the London Symphony Orchestra. The singers are more than adequate in this difficult score and the character of the singing is revelatory as most of it was recorded live on a cruise ship. The choruses were particularly moving.

The action was not filmed on stage, but on a real cruise ship and the suspension of disbelief is remarkable. The acting is in large part astounding as events and arias pass and the interactions between characters are completely believable, despite that they are singing--it's as if this is a view into an alternate world, where music and song are ubiquitous and this is a document--a profound documentary at that--of those few days aboard the ship. Beyond that, director Woolcock uses flashbacks, flashforwards, and archival footage of Palestinian and Zionist history in the years after World War II to create a truly epic and humane account of the tragic events that could lead two peoples to initiate such acts of hatred and violence against each other.

The film is an amazing adaptation of an opera that everyone should see if they are a lover of music and life--Adams and Woolcock have done a beautiful thing in making this work (hopefully) more accessible to everyone. In the program for the film it said something like, 'the film is sure to stir up heated discussion'--I believe the film will do something far more important: it will put to rest some of the questions and misunderstandings most of us have of the world and her peoples.

More balanced version of opera of Achille Lauro highjacking

[maurice_yacowar · 7/10 · 2 December 2014]

Penny Woolcock's inventive film adaptation corrects some of the anti-Israel bias of Alice Goodman's libretto about the 1985 Achille Lauro highjacking. From the title onward -- the crippled American Jew didn't die, he was murdered -- I found the libretto biased against the Jews and whitewashing the terrorists. Woolcock makes enough attempts at balance that the Palestinian Film Festival rejected the film for being pro-Israel. Of course, it's not that simple.

Woolcock strips away the heroism of Goodman's terrorists. A pre-title sequence shows the beaten quartet arrested, defeated, woebegone, confronted by the widowed Mrs. Klinghoffer. In the epilogue the four "heroes" are again diminished. Leader Molqi has grown into a pampered big shot, chauffeured into the village in a Mercedes limo The idealistic Mamoud is a broken man, led away from a chance meeting with his damaged old girlfriend. His friend Omar has an arm in a sling, another emblem of reduction. This inflection may have disturbed Palestinian audiences because those terrorists — like their descendants — are national heroes.

The narrative opens with black and white footage of May 15, 1948, the day after Israel's creation as a state. Woolcock often intercuts the black and white (pseudo- documentary) past with the colour present, an emblem of the past as a persistent ghostly presence. In her choice of how to define that source of the conflict, Woolcock stays within Goodman's blinkers. She takes the Palestinian perspective — that the birth (and the continuing existence) of Israel was a disaster to the Arabs.

Woolcock begins with a specific incident where a young Israeli, a concentration camp survivor,whipped and tattoed, leads a raid which expels the Arab family from which Mamoud descends. That Israeli and his wife are among the hostages on the Achille Laura. Unlike the libretto Woolcock includes several obvious Jews among the hostages in addition to the Klinghoffers. As the other Jews are not per se singled out for abuse the implicit effect is to exempt the terrorists from anti-semitism, beyond Rambo's rhetoric. Klinghoffer becomes "the chosen" victim not because he exposes the terrorists' false-idealist bloodlust but because Rambo drew his passport at random from a passenger's bag. Finally, the presence on board of Mamoud's nemesis might be taken to justify the attack. In sum, the film like the libretto whitewashes the terrorists' anti-semitism. Hamas, of course, is constitutionally pledged to annihilate all the Jews, not just the Israelis.

Woolcock dramatizes the four terrorists' radicalizing. Mamoud, his beautiful girlfriend and three buddies witness Israeli soldiers knocking over a fruit stand and killing the merchant. A spray of pamphlets introduce them to the radical cause and the men lock hands over the Koran. A title — "Islamic fundamentalism flourishes in a climate of despair" — introduces Woolcock's most dramatic addition. Our four heroes are in the mob that stones his girlfriend for not wearing a hijab in public. When we later see her her face is still badly burned and bruised and she hides behind the cover.

If both Klinghoffers seemed burdened with bathos and the Jewish comic stereotype in the libretto, the performance elevates them both. Klinghoffer is made likable and brave. He poses comically for a passenger's camera. His diminishing, silly soliloquy ("I should have worn a hat") is made touching and emotional when he delivers it in close-up to assure his cuddling wife. As Rambo coldly watches the loving couple the murder seems to grow out of his envy. She watches two terrorists cruelly toy with her crippled husband below and sleeps through the sound of his shooting (which we see here, but only heard about in the libretto). After the murder, into the unawares Mrs Klinghoffer's face Rambo sings of having taken the Jew's filthy money. His callousness and her dignity correct the values in the libretto.

Mamoud is moved by Mrs Klinghoffer's first aria. Her finale segues through three settings. In the first her rage shrinks the captain. In the second two women passengers change her clothing to disembark. In the third she sings her memories of her husband to the passengers and reporters gathered on the pier. Her dignity, impassioned singing and emotional force gain majesty from the respectful faces of the listeners. The film makes her the clear hero and the dominant spirit, in contrast to her fatuous stereotyping in the libretto.

Real Stinker

[athrottlejockey · 27 May 2004]

Bad script, bad music and really bad acting. I could not stop watching this movie, because it was so bad. A movie adaptation of an opera about the terrorist take-over of the Achille Lauro was a really stupid idea in the first place. This movie rates in my all-time worst movies ever made. 1. The Thing With Two Heads 2. The Death of Klinghoffer 3. Showgirls 4. Mailman etc. What really amazes me, is that this movie was ever made. What were the producers thinking? The sequence of the murdered man sinking was comical, at best. I will put this on my Net Flix list so that I can have some friends over to watch this awful movie and relish it's absolute stupidity.

Interesting but not opera

[rps-2 · 6/10 · 19 January 2004]

Channel 4 in the UK does some gutsy stuff and this certainly qualifies, inflaming Jews, Palestinians and Americans all in one film. It is a powerful document but I don't think it contributes anything musically. The lyrics are ponderous and pretentious. The music is banal and without emotion. But the story is well told and the film creatively, expansively (and expensively) done. But as an opera... Well, Puccinni would have done much better...

The opera is in a way betrayed unto confused agitprop

[Dr_Coulardeau · 7/10 · 26 September 2014]

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

Intriguing but also somewhat of a challenge

[TheLittleSongbird · 5/10 · 22 May 2016]

It is easy to see why 'The Death of Klinghoffer' will be riveting and powerful to viewers. It is also easy to see why others will be alienated by it. With me, it's somewhere in the middle.

The good things here are numerous and undeniable but it wasn't quite my cup of tea, there are better opera films out there that are more accessibly done and of operas that are much more familiar. Let's start with the good things, shall we? The orchestra have much beauty, fire, dramatic intensity and nuance in their playing, the chorus transports one to heaven with their music and singing (which for me the choral parts are the highlights of the score) and none other than John Adams conducts and does so with authority yet sincerity.

'The Death of Klinghoffer' is beautifully and cleverly filmed too, and with strikingly atmospheric use of locations and lighting. There are some dramatically gripping and poignant moments here, and that there were some cuts did help making the storytelling slightly tighter and less rambling and without being too incoherent (which has happened several times from experience in opera performance with cuts). The performances are uniformly good, with wonderful all round singing and the ability to bring layers to even the least interesting of roles. Really also have to take issue with the criticism of the acting being bad and that's what to be expected in opera, generally actually- speaking as somebody who listens to opera, watches opera and has performed in opera for well over a decade- acting in opera has come on a long way so I consider the statement completely untrue on the whole. It was schlocky at times when opera started getting filmed for television and film but there is generally more individuality and more direction of the singers, even the admittedly many badly done concept/non-traditional productions have moments of these.

Particularly good are Christopher Maltman whose performance is poignantly conflicted and mellifluously sung, Leigh Melrose who is menacing but never stock, Tom Randle who brings many layers to his role and a sonorous voice and Kirsten Blase's passionately engaged soprano. Sanford Sylvan is devastatingly moving and dignified also in the title role, and he sings beautifully and sensitively. Yvonne Howard sings with a lot of warmth and appropriate sympathy but also bitterness, the confrontation with the captain is hair-raising. Susan Bickley is dependably very good too.

For all those great things too, for me 'The Death of Klinghoffer' doesn't come off completely successfully and as an overall film is quite difficult to rate. A lot of the problem is that the opera itself is not quite to my taste (much prefer 'Doctor Atomic' and 'Nixon in China' as far as John Adams operas go), there are some undeniably beautiful parts in the music, especially in the choral sections, and the story does grip and move in the right places and generally is handled tastefully, but even for minimalist music (where continuous obbligato and repetition is a chief characteristic) the music too often feels too repetitive and pedestrian, parts did start to feel like a dirge. With the story, these dramatically gripping and emotional moments don't come over completely consistently, there are a lot of points of view and the story is never sure what is the most valid one while the characters, despite the very good acting, are handled one-dimensionally (both in the opera and the film).

While there is some bold use of archived footage, pictures and such that gives the story more context to anybody unfamiliar to the story, it does get too much and in places where they weren't needed and only there to bloat the running time. It also makes the storytelling not as easy to follow as it should have been, there are parts where it is very easy to lose concentration and find that there's too much to absorb. Some of the images are genuinely harrowing, in other parts and too frequently it feels overdone with the shock value and it over-complicates the story.

All in all, intriguing but also challenging. 5/10 Bethany Cox

annoying music, and very bad historical portrayal

[micol · 1/10 · 27 March 2004]

The fact that I did not like the music is a very personal opinion, the historical innacuracies are not. I do realize that it is an opera and not a documentary, but some important aspects are missing, especiallly if other people comment falsely because of it.

Abbu Abas was the mastermind of this operation, which was staged and reorganized due to discovery on board the shiph, in order to free 50 terrorists from Israeli prisons, one of which was Samir Kuntar, a heinous terrorist whose story you can find by searching for "klinghoffer samir kuntar" on google. Abbu Abbas was responsible for many other terrorist operations, even if he never set foot on the Achile Lauro. Ben Laden never set foot on the planes that hit the WTC, did he?

*** possible spoilers ***

The movie almost excuses the terrorists' actions and reactions because of horrors they might have lived, always accentuating and exaggerating how much the Israeli's have done to hurt them. However, they never portray the hurt that the Palestinians have ever caused to the Israelis. The movie uses (quite horrid!!!) images from the Sabra and Chatila horror, and nothing is said, understating the general belief that it was Israel who was responsible, without ever mentioning that it was a Syrian-les Lebanese army who conducted the massacre.

The acting was generally very bad, but I guess that's what can be expected from opera singers?

On another note I am shocked at how a person can excuse terrorists killing a hostage because the hostage tried to stir the 400 innocent hostages against the armed terrorists, and add that the person should not be considered sympathetic because he is a supporter of zionism. Imagine how unsympathetic his wife was, spitting on the terrorists who shot her husband and threw his body into the sea. I hope no one in the world is as cruel as she is(wink wink)

Palestinian terrorist kills elderly, helpless, disabled Jew

[jaimegonzales210 · 1/10 · 20 October 2014]

The premise that an elderly, disabled Jew could somehow be the "enemy" of the Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro is such a ridiculous justification that it is insulting to humanity. If that premise can be true and accepted then why lock up people like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy? They had their "reasons" for what they did, too. Where's that musical, the one about how serial killers are justified in their killing? How anyone could view such an occurrence as anything other than what it was, a hate crime, a murder, in every sense of the expression, is beyond me. This "show" was just terrible, an almost comical representation of a reprehensible act. Terrorism, in all its forms, should be condemned. Trying to make terrorism "understandable" and easy to swallow is silly on any level,much less as "entertainment". Terrible premise, terrible execution. Les Miserables this is not. The show should have been called the Murder of Klinghoffer because that is what happened, he was murdered, and not in a sing-song manner.