Toronto Review: Benjamin Millepied’s ‘Carmen’
deadline.comFor questionable reasons, some very talented people got it into their heads that it would be a great idea to redress Georges Bizet’s classic 1875 musical Carmen for the big screen by throwing out everything—the setting, the era and, most of all, the music—and replacing it with a misguided attempt at relevance by setting it on the contemporary U.S.
and Mexican border.It’s evident from the outset that nothing about this trendy approach works at all and it only gets worse as it goes along.
Perhaps some viewers will be sucked in by the enterprise’s devotion to its own relevance, but from almost any perspective—dramatic, cinematic, political or musical–this is a thoroughgoing wash-out.
It has no sense of cinema.Toronto Film Festival: Deadline’s Complete CoverageCelebrated choreographer Benjamin Millepied describes his undertaking as a “complete reimagining” of this time-tested war horse which, it’s worth noting, was not terribly well received at its Paris premiere in March, 1875.
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