During World War I, in an unnamed country, a soldier named Tamino is sent by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the clutches of the supposedly evil Sarastro. But all is not as it seems.
Even though there were moments in The Magic Flute when I wondered if Branagh hadn't truly gone off his rocker, I found its audacity exhilarating.
– Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com,
20 Sep 2006
rotten:
Opera buffs shouldn't throw away their DVDs of Ingmar Bergman's 1975 TV movie.
– Derek Elley,
Variety,
23 Sep 2006
fresh:
Apart from a fascination with the hate-spitting mouth and throat of Lyubov Petrova's vocally pyrotechnic Queen of the Night, the visual gimmicks are individually tolerable. But they don't add up to anything particular.
– Martin Hoyle,
Time Out,
29 Nov 2007
fresh:
In the end, love triumphs. In this movie, the music triumphs, proving again that a true masterpiece can survive all kinds of meddling.
– John Terauds,
Toronto Star,
20 Mar 2009
fresh:
The results are often fascinating (I love the duet of the Armed Men, sung by a chorus of faces animated out of a wall of sandbags), sometimes ludicrous and never boring.