Rating: 
Summary: very engrossing
Review: I found this film to be stimulating and inventive.
I thought the cinematic treatment really brought Parsifal to life, and I think all Wagner's music dramas would lend themselves to this kind of film technique.
The film is very rich visually: beautiful actors miming to wonderful singers--I thought that worked perfectly--the emotion comes through clearly, and for once Wagnerian characters actually look the parts they play (I thought adding a second, female, Parsifal was an interesting touch and dramatized the transformation of the character).
Great use of huge Wagner deathmasks as an integral part of the scenery.
Interesting textures and lighting.
Wonderful slow pans over the set and over the actors' faces--a huge relief from the typical American attention deficit editing technique.
Nice use of puppets to tell the backstory during the Act I Prelude; I found it added another dimension (puppets aren't just for children--they're for anyone with imagination).
Another puppet was acting out a famous caricature of Wagner puncturing the eardrum of the world--a nice touch: it shows the director has a sense of humor, and that he also knows his subject. Some cons:
1. The orchestra sometimes has intonation issues, esp. in the brass section.
2. The lengthy credits come before the music drama, due to the constrains of video, I suppose (Act I on tape 1, Acts II & III on tape 2).
3. I was irritated by the inclusion of a swastika, among other standards, as Parsifal and Gurnemanz make their way to dinner in the Act I transformation scene. However, I suppose its not a bad thing to be reminded how the Nazis perverted Wagner's art (and everything else).
Rating:
Summary: melancholy...
Review: I have both the Met version and Syberbern version. After a while I tend to come back to see Syberberg's parsifal more than the other. The Met version isn't bad visually especialy the conflict with Klinsor and the magnificent ending, but, I still like the melancholy I find in Syberberg a lot from the very start to the ending. It stays close to my heart. Musically this version is much better and can't be compared to the spiritless rendition of Levine. I don't know why some people are offended by the nazi flag. There is only one you see among hundred other flags. Maybe it symbolizes that Nazi surrendered under the power of mighty God since the story seems to take place in the future in this film (the ruin of the cathedral, NYC underwater, colapsed Statue of Liberty and so on...) It's up to your imagination, too. Whatever it is, I didn't find it anit-semitism or anything like that. Purely Parsifal!
What I dislike about the Met version is the musical interpretation and the acting. The overture is just awful. Bad acting in Act 1, till Kundry appears. Then Jerusalem, he just can't act and his voice doesn't really suit the role.
Anyway, Syberberg's Parsfal is so much better done overall.
Rating:
Summary: very good indeed
Review: I hesitated to get this disc because I read some horrible reviews on this film. I'm glad I just followed the good reviews. I thought it was really well done. The puppets are well suited to the presentation and the olde English subtitle is very appropriate. The sound quality is excellent, though, the video quality is somehow grainy. The subtitle is fixed and you can't even switch it off. But all is pardonned. It's really great. The musical performance is sublime. Syberberg well realized this misty world of Parsifal. The ambiance is very proper, even the grainy video transfer is somehow justified and seems like it contributes to the mythic atmosphere extraordinarily.
Rating:
Summary: Syberberg's Parsifal
Review: If Claudio Monteverdi's "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" could be said to be the first opera, then Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" is the last. If, as an article in The New Yorker would have it, it was Adolf Hitler's inspiration, then no other work of art has had such a profound effect on history. That article described the hypnotic power that Wagner's music had over the young men of the time, and Hitler was one such. "Parsifal" would thus be also the most sublime work of art: profound beauty permeated by hatred and enkindling radical evil. A contemporary critic said that Wagner had reached the limit of emotional intensity in music and no one else would be able to surpass him: opera had attained its final goal of maximum passionate expression. Director Hans Syberberg chose a surreal presentation of "Parsifal" for his interpretation of the opera. He filmed it completely on a sound-stage and based the craggy, rocky set upon the composer's death mask. Wagner's skull splits open to reveal the interior of the castle at Montsalvat and Klingsor's castle; his upper lip is Gurnemanz's herb garden; his eye socket is the sacred lake. Syberberg also plays around with the appearance of the characters: Parsifal changes sex in mid-aria, Gurnemanz is an ageless young man, Kundry has naked hairy breasts in the first act. The set is littered with artifacts from history. The overture opens with a destroyed miniature reproduction of Montsalvat as it appeared in the first performance at Bayreuth. Parsifal approaches Klingsor's castle and passes by Soviet-style monuments and gigantic broken stone phalluses from a Greek temple. The chair that appears in various scenes is Charlemagne's throne from the cathedral at Aachen. Some of the elements of the set seem to be taken from Hieronymous Bosch. Syberberg seems to have scattered all these bits and pieces throughout the film with no overall interpretive purpose and left the audience to sort out the meanings. But perhaps Syberberg intended to overthrow Wagner's unsavory themes - the anti-Semitism and the misogyny - and allow the beauty of the music to triumph by making the sub-meanings of the drama reflect this beauty less contradictorily This seems to hinge upon the changing of the boy Parsifal into the girl Parsifal. The frustrated heterosexual encounter in the second act forms a fulcrum upon which Syberberg balances a homoerotic relation between the boy Parsifal and Gurnemanz in the first act and between Kundry and the girl Parsifal in the third. Parsifal changes sex at the moment he experiences and understands the same pain and longing that crippled Amfortas. Apparently, Syberberg is making a Platonic assertion that sexual desire is an obstacle to true spiritual love, and that this love cannot be experienced between the sexes. This is also to some degree part of Christian theology, and what has been called "a black Mass on stage" the director may have attempted to reconvert into a true Mass. Except for Gurnemanz and Klingsor, Syberberg used non-singing actors for all the roles. The trouble with this is that lip-sync seems to be non-existent, and it takes some time to become accustomed to it. Also, the recording is unevenly mixed. On the plus side, the acting is very good. Amfortas looks like he's really suffering, and Edith Clever is an angry and desperate Kundry. This movie is purposely full of cognitive dissonances, but the one that stands out is the powerful tenor coming out of the mouths of both Parsifals. The conductor moves the music along more briskly than usual, and this is quite refreshing. During the overture, Syberberg uses marionettes, among other things, to relate the story that precedes the first act. Like any great work of art, "Parsifal" can bear many different and contradictory interpretations; Syberberg's is the most fascinating I've seen.
Rating:
Summary: Transcends dogma
Review: In a previous review, the reviewer mentioned Syberberg's attempts to get past the "mysogyny and anti-Semitism" of Parsifal. If, indeed, Syberberg was attempting this, he succeeded wildly. I had never seen any production of Parsifal before this, though I've heard many, and am (or so I thought) well acquainted with the libretto. But this is the first time it was brought home to me that "the Redeemer" isn't of necessity Jesus. In fact, Jesus is never mentioned by name, and is only directly referred to in Gurnemanz' third act "Good Friday" lecture. In Syberberg's production, "the Redeemer" is mentioned in scenes and times when he could clearly be Parsifal, but he could also be Amfortas whom we see fighting down his pain to perform the Office of the Grail Mass that keeps his father (and the rest of the knights) alive, and even, perhaps, the swan. Syberberg turns the swan which Parsifal shoots in the first act into an icon of everyone wounded in the opera -- Amfortas with the spear wound; Klingsor with his self-inflicted emasculation; Kundry who can find release from suffering only in her death-like sleep; Parsifal with the most subtle wound of all, that of his empathy and compassion. Hearing the tenor voice come out of the mouth of a slender girl was indeed a shock, but I found it a shock that sent my thoughts into new arenas. And quite frankly, the Kundry performance was so powerful that the lip-sync didn't matter in the least. And yes, there were puppets and masks. But the puppetry was absolutely outstanding technically -- the symbolism and power of Japanese bunraku came immediately to my mind. (Did any of the reviewers mention that the puppets were all designed from photographs of the first Bayreuth production?) Everything in the film added to the sense of watching a dream, or being in one. Everyone in the Grail realm seems to be sleepwalking; Parsifal never looks anyone in the eye but is always looking off at something we can't see; the ruins and filmic backgrounds, the prints of the original Bayreuth scenery, the puppet interludes, the languid camera work, all contribute to the surreal, almost hallucinatory sensation. If you want to see an opera-house production of Parsifal, this is not the one to get. But if you're willing to have your eyes opened by a powerful, unique, and above all mythic vision of Parsifal, I can't recommend this film highly enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Did Nothing For Me!
Review: OK. I recently purchased Syberberg's Parsifal, and to be frank, I really WANTED to like it. I had read previous reviews which ranged from all the way from glowing to dreadful. So, keeping an open mind to new experiences, I took the plunge. I have now watched it twice, and have come to realize that the discs would be better used as coasters or small frisbees! Rather than spending the money to take the plunge, I should have bought a plunger to flush this over-hyped piece of drivel down the drain. The Nazi allusions, the boy-woman Parsifal, the lack of even an attempt at the "spear trick", the Marx, Wagner, et al busts, the giant Wagner death mask set --- geez, it is as if Syberberg was either on some heavy duty medication, or had recently OD'ed on the writings of Freud and Jung. I won't even go into the horrendously bad (and often badly spelled) subtitles, nor the miserable timing of the lip-syncing. The one positive for me was Kundry. This was the only performance that exuded depth and passion. This was my reason for giving it even one star. I'll take the Met's version anyday.
Rating:
Summary: THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARD FOR WORST OPERA MOVIE GOES TO.....
Review: Ok.....as you see by the title of this review, i didn't like it. I am a professional musician, I have played in two uncut Parsifal productions and I was interested in seeing this movie. I can't believe it: honestly, the production values put me in mind of a grade school play. You know: "Oh, Mrs. Jones, if we put a brown sheet on your desk it can be a BIG rock then, and if we put a gold curtain on Jimmie and tie it around his waist then he will look REAL IMPORTANT...and let's show a movie in the background on a sheet with lights shining off it....oh boy: this is a GREAT OPERA to play with....let's put a punch and judy show in it too...." You get my drift; now, if you really want to laugh at a pretentious operatic film, this is it. This is not the Bergman Magic Flute: this is TRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Not That Difficult
Review: Some of the comments in other reviews can make this wonderful film seem a little daunting. Sure, it has a remarkable depth of allusion, but the key to enjoying "Parsifal" is to sit back and let it wash over you. Wagner, for all his flaws, had a real vision of art as democracy: he filled his operas with crowd pleasing spectacle and magick. You don't need any special knowledge or education: you only need an open mind and a sense of wonder. No poem, after all, relies solely on footnotes and explanations. The power of the music, the fluid camera work and the sheer audacity of the imagery will very quickly involve and move you. Once you've experienced the power of the work, you may well feel motivated to look more deeply into it (and the depth is certainly there), but you may not. Such is the poetry of this film that you may be satisfied to have experienced a very powerful marriage of sound and vision.
Rating:
Summary: An ineffable experience of a work of genius
Review: Syberberg does with visual imagery what Wagner does with leitmotivs. The result is a work of genius twice blest. Syberberg takes us inside the mind of Wagner and places his Christian-Buddhist Shopenhauerian masterpiece Parsifal in the context of Western political and intellectual history. The use of actors properly cast for their pasts avoids the often odd visual effect of a singer who does not look at all like the role he or she is playing. Sometimes the lip-synch is out-of-synch, and there are occasional vocal lapses in the singing, which is generally excellent. The sound quality of this 1982 movie is quite good and well reproduced on the DVD. Wagner's message of compassionate wisdom as the basis of morality comes clearly through. One can see why the Nazi hierarcy banned this opera from being performed in Hitler's Germany, since Wagner's championing of the Buddhist idea of compassion for all is so extremely at odds with the Nazi worldview. This is a wonderful movie whose powerful images, both visual and musical, will stir the deepest human emotions. Anyone who loves Wagner's music and enjoys great cinema will want to view this movie. It is one of the great artistic achievements of the past few decades.
Rating:
Summary: An ineffable experience of a work of genius
Review: Syberberg does with visual imagery what Wagner does with leitmotivs. The result is a work of genius twice blest. Syberberg takes us inside the mind of Wagner and places his Christian-Buddhist Shopenhauerian masterpiece Parsifal in the context of Western political and intellectual history. The use of actors properly cast for their pasts avoids the often odd visual effect of a singer who does not look at all like the role he or she is playing. Sometimes the lip-synch is out-of-synch, and there are occasional vocal lapses in the singing, which is generally excellent. The sound quality of this 1982 movie is quite good and well reproduced on the DVD. Wagner's message of compassionate wisdom as the basis of morality comes clearly through. One can see why the Nazi hierarcy banned this opera from being performed in Hitler's Germany, since Wagner's championing of the Buddhist idea of compassion for all is so extremely at odds with the Nazi worldview. This is a wonderful movie whose powerful images, both visual and musical, will stir the deepest human emotions. Anyone who loves Wagner's music and enjoys great cinema will want to view this movie. It is one of the great artistic achievements of the past few decades.
| 
