PARSIFAL, (1982) dir Hans Jurgen Syberberg
Parisfal, (1982) dir Hans Jurgen Syberberg
It’s difficult to believe that this film is now 25 years old, since it feels so modern, so contemporary when most other film on offer is dim, clichéd re-tread. Syberberg has dared to re-interprete Wagner’s last, most brilliant opera Parsifal, offering us a cinematic, poetic delicacy served up together with Wagner’s incredible music. There’s a whole range of reference to art history, the history of Germany and the history of Wagner’s era that is impossible to sum up at one viewing. The only thing that seems dated is the heavy-handed Freudian phallic object/castration symbolism that does seem very, very 80s, old-fashioned, ridiculous, bizarre even. Instead of allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions from Wagner’s text, Syberberg once again imposes his own interpretation, as with his docu-film interview with Winifred Wagner. The imposition seems violent, but it can also be revealing and refreshing. Like Syberberg’s Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King (Ludwig– Ein requiem für einen jungfräulichen König), Parsifal is shot entirely in studio, the film has an artificiality which is often distracting, but removes many of the difficulties of location shooting, offering the director the chance to focus on the text and its interpretation. Fair enough. But the interiority also focuses the spectator’s attention on Syberberg’s interpretation, often distracting attention away from the beauty of the original text. Syberberg views Parsifal as a poetic text set to music. The music is merely a booming, thunderous backdrop to the action, to the mystery of the poetic, cinematic tropes paraded for the viewer’s attention. The mix of puppets (synonymous with Munich and central Europe) and masks with operatic action is very carefully crafted, but the work is often lacking in terms of simplicity and spontaneity.
But this is opera at its most baroque, complex, as if Syberberg is creating a bizarre soup out of all the elements of history that have collided with Wagner’s text, both before and after its creation.
This is the opera that Nietzsche rejected in favour of Bizet's opera Carmen, because of the obvious Christian symbolism inherent in Parsifal. Nietzsche believed that Wagner had betrayed everything they had shared, in their views on philosophy, on music, on Germany and on human destiny. Wagner reasserts (for he was not a philosopher but an artist) the centrality of his art to the continuation of the Christian tradition and therefore indicates that he is the heir of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Because art is firmly interconnected with morality and religion, art being one of those things at least that makes us different from the animals. Wagnerian morality (because who could say that Wagner the philanderer and serial debtor had them?) is a morality variously connected to religious orthodoxy. If Wagner demonstrates that he is ultimately an orthodox Christian, part of the orthodox tradition of Christian music in Europe, Nietzsche bifurcates from this, finding something finally and obviously repugnant in Wagner's approach. But its hard to see how anyone might see Parsifal as repugnant, unless they view it as a vile, racist myth. There is an undeniable spirituality in the music. Although some might deny that this spirituality is connected to religious feeling, asserting that it is instead a neurosis, and that the roots of art and of religion reside in neurosis, then this seems to be a necessary and unavoidable neurosis, really very much more interesting than everything that is supposedly normal.
Wagner left behind orthodox views on religion and morality in order to become a creator, but ultimately returned to assert the centrality of his art to the Christian tradition. In this way, Wagner defies critics who depict him as a proto-Nazi (although he was a virulent anti-semite). Nietzsche objected to Parsifal: but Hitler and Goebbels banned it in 1939, probably because they wished to see Wagner and Nietzsche as part of the discontinuity with orthodox, conservative religion and morality that they had made. But it seems fallacious to think that both Wagner and Nietzsche were proto-Nazis.
Syberberg began his career working in the shadow of Fassbinder or with the ensemble created by Fassbinder, but Parsifal adumbrates a definite, personal style, finding a cinematic voice by closely trailing, possibly even imitating, the work and art of Richard Wagner. This is a very good idea indeed, although the director has latterly begun to sound like Wagner in other ways (I’m referring to his political statements that have been interpreted as naïve and anti-semitic). Fassbinder was a very different kind of director, in fact a polar opposite from Syberberg in his style and artistic intention. Fassbinder was interested in everything that was direct, immediate, accessible and contemporary. Sometimes this is not the best approach. Syberberg’s more oblique development appears more interesting, more permanent than Fassbinder’s attachment to topicality. Films like Parsifal remain in the background for a very long time, never very popular but always watchable, always with a certain audience, whereas some Fassbinder, becomes increasingly unwatchable, increasingly dated, attached only to the topicality of a certain moment that soon fades.
Parsifal is a very rich work that requires re-watching. Incidentally, the NFT has decided to guide our viewing by providing one of its fact sheets and commentaries (this time by Thomas Elsaesser). The original work is obviously felt to be in need of interpretation, which perhaps echoes the requisite Left-Wing paternalism, so typical of the era (and drifting on into our own). However, the NFT’s extra-guidance is a little intrusive, reminding us of how deeply this paternalism goes especially in film critical circles replete with its ‘experts’.
Paul Murphy, National Film Theatre, London
It’s difficult to believe that this film is now 25 years old, since it feels so modern, so contemporary when most other film on offer is dim, clichéd re-tread. Syberberg has dared to re-interprete Wagner’s last, most brilliant opera Parsifal, offering us a cinematic, poetic delicacy served up together with Wagner’s incredible music. There’s a whole range of reference to art history, the history of Germany and the history of Wagner’s era that is impossible to sum up at one viewing. The only thing that seems dated is the heavy-handed Freudian phallic object/castration symbolism that does seem very, very 80s, old-fashioned, ridiculous, bizarre even. Instead of allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions from Wagner’s text, Syberberg once again imposes his own interpretation, as with his docu-film interview with Winifred Wagner. The imposition seems violent, but it can also be revealing and refreshing. Like Syberberg’s Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King (Ludwig– Ein requiem für einen jungfräulichen König), Parsifal is shot entirely in studio, the film has an artificiality which is often distracting, but removes many of the difficulties of location shooting, offering the director the chance to focus on the text and its interpretation. Fair enough. But the interiority also focuses the spectator’s attention on Syberberg’s interpretation, often distracting attention away from the beauty of the original text. Syberberg views Parsifal as a poetic text set to music. The music is merely a booming, thunderous backdrop to the action, to the mystery of the poetic, cinematic tropes paraded for the viewer’s attention. The mix of puppets (synonymous with Munich and central Europe) and masks with operatic action is very carefully crafted, but the work is often lacking in terms of simplicity and spontaneity.
But this is opera at its most baroque, complex, as if Syberberg is creating a bizarre soup out of all the elements of history that have collided with Wagner’s text, both before and after its creation.
This is the opera that Nietzsche rejected in favour of Bizet's opera Carmen, because of the obvious Christian symbolism inherent in Parsifal. Nietzsche believed that Wagner had betrayed everything they had shared, in their views on philosophy, on music, on Germany and on human destiny. Wagner reasserts (for he was not a philosopher but an artist) the centrality of his art to the continuation of the Christian tradition and therefore indicates that he is the heir of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Because art is firmly interconnected with morality and religion, art being one of those things at least that makes us different from the animals. Wagnerian morality (because who could say that Wagner the philanderer and serial debtor had them?) is a morality variously connected to religious orthodoxy. If Wagner demonstrates that he is ultimately an orthodox Christian, part of the orthodox tradition of Christian music in Europe, Nietzsche bifurcates from this, finding something finally and obviously repugnant in Wagner's approach. But its hard to see how anyone might see Parsifal as repugnant, unless they view it as a vile, racist myth. There is an undeniable spirituality in the music. Although some might deny that this spirituality is connected to religious feeling, asserting that it is instead a neurosis, and that the roots of art and of religion reside in neurosis, then this seems to be a necessary and unavoidable neurosis, really very much more interesting than everything that is supposedly normal.
Wagner left behind orthodox views on religion and morality in order to become a creator, but ultimately returned to assert the centrality of his art to the Christian tradition. In this way, Wagner defies critics who depict him as a proto-Nazi (although he was a virulent anti-semite). Nietzsche objected to Parsifal: but Hitler and Goebbels banned it in 1939, probably because they wished to see Wagner and Nietzsche as part of the discontinuity with orthodox, conservative religion and morality that they had made. But it seems fallacious to think that both Wagner and Nietzsche were proto-Nazis.
Syberberg began his career working in the shadow of Fassbinder or with the ensemble created by Fassbinder, but Parsifal adumbrates a definite, personal style, finding a cinematic voice by closely trailing, possibly even imitating, the work and art of Richard Wagner. This is a very good idea indeed, although the director has latterly begun to sound like Wagner in other ways (I’m referring to his political statements that have been interpreted as naïve and anti-semitic). Fassbinder was a very different kind of director, in fact a polar opposite from Syberberg in his style and artistic intention. Fassbinder was interested in everything that was direct, immediate, accessible and contemporary. Sometimes this is not the best approach. Syberberg’s more oblique development appears more interesting, more permanent than Fassbinder’s attachment to topicality. Films like Parsifal remain in the background for a very long time, never very popular but always watchable, always with a certain audience, whereas some Fassbinder, becomes increasingly unwatchable, increasingly dated, attached only to the topicality of a certain moment that soon fades.
Parsifal is a very rich work that requires re-watching. Incidentally, the NFT has decided to guide our viewing by providing one of its fact sheets and commentaries (this time by Thomas Elsaesser). The original work is obviously felt to be in need of interpretation, which perhaps echoes the requisite Left-Wing paternalism, so typical of the era (and drifting on into our own). However, the NFT’s extra-guidance is a little intrusive, reminding us of how deeply this paternalism goes especially in film critical circles replete with its ‘experts’.
Paul Murphy, National Film Theatre, London
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