Seven Veils

Bit of an arts buffet this, perhaps too much so.

Atom Egoyan takes the Biblical tale of Salome and John The Baptist, turned an Oscar Wilde play, turned a Richard Strauss opera, turned an Atom Egoyan staging of said opera, into a fictionalized staging of said opera in film form. Whew.

Amanda Seyfried, she of the crazy wide eyes, seems miscast as the dictatorial director. She looks young enough to play her daughter in some unsettling childhood flashbacks. A thing she does not do. Opera is not a young man's game, neither a young woman's, and though Seyfried handles this challenging role superbly, accepting her in the ruthless role is a stretch.

As usual, Egoyan weaves a tangled web of interleaved plotlines, some juicy, some not so much. Power dynamics, sex clashes, hidden histories, career manipulations, bubble up in the troubled staging of Salome. Lots of backstage drama, and plenty of on stage as well. Egoyan cranks out an excellent class in opera directing, and Seyfried shines in fighting to bring her unorthodox version to fruition. The opera looks great, especially the beautiful shadow sequences, and perhaps the stage should have been the focus rather than all the happenings behind the scenes.

Almost everything comes together in the end, but there are too many unresolved plot lines left for an audience to ponder over. A fine attempt, but when all is sung and done, it ends about as well as it did for John The Baptist.

• hipCRANK.

In dark-drama "Seven Veils" Amanda Seyfried (as strong as ever) directs a remounting of the opera 'Salome' that her now deceased mentor & lover originally directed. In rhythm with the production (involving the likes of Rebecca Liddiard (good), Lanette Ware, Vanessa Antoine, and actual opera stars Ambur Braid & Michael Kupfer-Radecky) Seyfried evokes emotions from her own childhood trauma and current troubled marriage. Experienced writer / director Atom Egoyan clearly immersed himself in Richard Strauss' opera (and Oscar Wilde's play it was based on) which fans of may really enjoy - but for others this may be too 'artsy' to entertain.

Telling an incredible story that merges beautiful scenes and a rich musical score through what appears to be a typically Egoyan disjointed narrative.

Egoyan's genius is his capacity to depict the brutality of human experiences with tenderness and compassion.

This movie is at par with the best of Hollywood and better still because of its intelligence and the timeliness of its message.

Amanda Steyfried's starring role as Jeanine is absolutely perfect along with a first class cast that will be sure to leave audiences satisfied.

Got to enjoy this movie before its public release and it was truly a treat.

I went through this pretty uncomfortable - sure it's about uncomfortable things, but the real reason for my uncomfortableness is just whole conception, approach of script and directing.

Surely opera fans will like it better. I don't need opera, bad things happen without musical background in real life. And even in some movies. Staged bad things ? Yeah, that's is what is big part in this, even aside from stage.

Acting was overall pretty good, however Amanda Bigeyeied did not seem as right for that part.

Was she (I mean character who played) watched with her daughter that bloody chopped head scene on TV near to end ?

Maybe director wanted that people think about it after watching :-)

Author/poet/playwright Oscar Wilde is widely renowned for his observation that "Life imitates art" (or, more precisely, as the full quote maintains, that "Life imitates art far more often than art imitates life"). But is that statement indeed true? In many ways, it seems that both propositions are just about equally valid these days. And that's a pervasive theme - from both perspectives - that runs through the latest feature from writer-director Atom Egoyan. The film tells the story of a theatrical director (Amanda Seyfried) who takes on the challenge of mounting a new production of the Richard Strauss opera Salome (a work ironically based on an Oscar Wilde play of the same name), a revival based on a previous version staged by her former mentor and now-deceased unrequited love. The opera, in turn, serves up a musical interpretation of the Biblical tale of prophet John the Baptist (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) and Judean Princess Salome (Ambur Braid), perhaps best known for her erotically charged "Dance of the Seven Veils" and who asks her stepfather, King Herod (Michael Schade), to present her with the holy man's head on a silver platter when he spurns her romantic advances. Ironically, the director's personal story uncannily parallels that of the operatic subject matter she's now in the process of staging, presenting her, as well as many other members of her cast and production team, with an opportunity to examine themselves, their circumstances and the ghosts of their long-ignored pasts. In a sense, this scenario thus provides all concerned with a chance to work through their respective long-unresolved (and often-interrelated) issues, a de facto form of art therapy not unlike that explored in films like "Black Swan" (2010). Unfortunately, the narrative is overloaded with story threads and at times becomes a little too intricate and cumbersome for its own good. What's more, after a while, the myriad connections linking these various subplots start to seem a tad convenient and contrived to be believable, regardless of how interesting they may each be in and of themselves. This tends to bog down the flow of the picture, which is unfortunate in light of the film's promising premise, intriguing production design, and fine performances by its ensemble cast, particularly Seyfried and Rebecca Liddiard as the production's property master. In all truthfulness, none of this is meant to suggest that this is an awful film; indeed, "Seven Veils" genuinely borders on being a truly engaging, memorable, well-crafted work. However, with so much going on, it tries to cover too much ground, which, if it had been judiciously pared down, could have made for an outstanding release. As it stands now, though, this is a case of an ambitious filmmaker not quite knowing when to quit trying so hard and not realizing that sometimes there's no need to go overboard in trying to impress viewers.