The 2004 movie of The Phantom of the Opera has its warts, so I thought the book must be better. Right?
…
Right?
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE. IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE STORY, THIS POST ISN’T GONNA MAKE SENSE.
I expected a very similar plot to what I saw in the movie and some of the crust is in the text, but this book is so crazy, so over-the-top, so absolutely ridiculous, I almost quit reading. But its ludicrousness, and my curiosity over what else the movie completely changed, is what kept me going.
The first thing that threw me off is that the author, Gaston Leroux, treats the story like it’s found footage. He compiled all these firsthand accounts and is more or less saying that they’re true, the opera ghost existed and here’s how it all went down. That doesn’t work for me because these characters/situations are way too unrealistic to be believable. But I probably could’ve waved this issue aside if not for Gaston’s incessant need to remind me that he found all this information and this is what he thinks about it. Stop ruining my immersion! He can do it in the prologue and he can do it in the epilogue, but he really didn’t need to keep interrupting.
Christine is not the main character. Not a single part of the book is from her perspective. It’s an odd choice, since nothing would’ve happened if not for her existence. Gaston didn’t want to write from a woman’s point of view, but I feel like this is where creativity comes into play and maybe he should’ve set aside his journalistic hat and gone full speculative, because boy oh boy, could this book have used some alteration.
The problem with Christine’s lack of page time is that I really don’t care what happens to her. She’s subjected to untold (literally) horrors, she is the prime person through which to see the Phantom, and yet we get nothing. All we see is her crying, singing, and making stupid choices. Or maybe they wouldn’t be so stupid if I saw her predicament firsthand.
But you know who we do get to see firsthand? Raoul! Oh joy. In the movie he’s vanilla and the nice option when compared to the Phantom, but he’s still pretty boring—murderous Gerard Butler is clearly the better choice. And then I saw what he’s like in the book.
Let’s play Two Truths and a Lie. In the story, Christine goes to visit her father’s grave and Raoul is worried about her. Does he:
ride bareback on a white horse, duel with the Phantom, whoop his butt, and then ride off with Christine.
get lost, conveniently stumble upon the right cemetery, fight with the Phantom, dislocate his shoulder and get knocked out.
get summoned by Christine, have a lame conversation with her, sneakily follow her to the cemetery, confront the Phantom and upon seeing his face, faint.
Do you have your answer? Okay then. ‘A’ is what happens in the movie and in retrospect, it makes Raoul look pretty good. ‘B’ is my off the cuff imagination. And ‘C’ is book Raoul. But it gets even better! Raoul sees Christine leave, he starts to follow her and then it jumps ahead to say he was found half frozen at the altar of the church and the rest of the information is relayed via an interview Raoul had with the police. So not only is it a lame encounter, we don’t even get to see it happen in real time. I would like to apologize for every disparaging thing I ever thought/said about movie Raoul; he’s a good guy. Whereas book Raoul is worthless, weepy, and cringey. He’s not a man or even a brave boy. He’s a crybaby. And I do not support crybabies as romantic leads, which is why…
The Phantom is just as bad. In the movie it’s kinda implied that he just needs a hug and some love, and maybe a Snickers. Yes, he’s still a murderous creepy stalker, but it’s Gerard Butler, so I’ll cut him some slack. But book Phantom is a murderous, weepy, crazy, kidnapping, butt ugly creep. There is no “I feel sorry for him.” There is no “Maybe he’s misunderstood.” He almost makes Heathcliff look somewhat salvageable. Almost. All the allure, mystery, pity, and even some of the danger, are gone. I don’t fear him, or respect him, because like all the characters, he is outrageously emotional to the point of being laughable. I challenge anyone to read this book and take these characters seriously. I thought Wuthering Heights (my review) and The Brothers Karamazov were overly emotional, but I think this one is worse.
And it’s a real shame because I know what this story is capable of and the introduction (written by Anne Perry) lays it out:
The ghost is the best and the worst in all of us, he is all of us who have ever walked alone, and hated themselves, and longed for redemption.
Great. Where was that in the book? Everything is so caught up in being sensational that it forgot to be grounded and empathetic.
But one of the more interesting aspects of the Phantom is his past life, where he learned to become a magician, ventriloquist, architect, and builder of automata, trap doors, and secret hiding places. And of course he sang. Before he helped build parts of the opera house, he also found himself in Constantinople and Persia.
[The Persian] brought him to Persia, where for some months [the Phantom’s] will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire.
That information is in the epilogue and it feels a bit pointless. Like Gaston is backpedaling by assuring us that although the Phantom’s dead, he did a lot of cool stuff outside of this story. Can I have that book instead?
Now let’s turn to The Persian, a.k.a. the Persian ex-chief of police. How and why is the Persian former chief of police in the Paris opera house? If this wasn’t a “true” story I’d say it’s because Raoul needs help from an unexpected source. But it is a “true” story, so Raoul luckily got some help from an unexpected source. It’s so outta left field though; the guy doesn’t say a word until 60% of the way through, after which he hijacks the story until almost the end.
Aren’t those chapters just a rare old treat though. Christine disappears during a performance, so the Persian and Raoul search for her. They take a whistle stop tour of the opera’s multi-level basement and secret passages, a journey which includes, but is not limited to, a rat catcher and a siren, and ends with the two trapped in the Phantom’s torture chamber made of mirrors. The mirrors become super heated and there’s an iron tree in the chamber that they’re supposed to hang themselves from when the torture becomes unbearable. Do you see what I mean about this whole story being a touch unbelievable?
But it’s not over yet. Of course Raoul succumbs to the mental torture instantly and though I don’t think it says he cries, he may as well be crying for all the help he is. The Persian, used to the Phantom’s tricks, searches the mirrors for the tiny spot where the trigger for the door is so they can escape, and after hallucinations and hearing the roar of a lion, they escape. Sorta.
Then it turns out there are numerous barrels of gunpowder under the opera house—Guy Fawkes would be so proud—and Christine must choose one of two bronze figurines, either the scorpion (she will marry the Phantom) or the grasshopper (everyone dies). She turns the scorpion and water comes in to douse the gunpowder, and Raoul and the Persian almost drown. Christine stops the drowning by saying she’ll willingly marry the Phantom if Raoul can live and the Phantom is completely overcome with emotion and lets them both go. The book ends with the Phantom dying and Christine puts the ring he gave her on his corpse, and there’s weeping and maybe some gnashing of teeth, and…and…
And that’s not even all the bananagans. There’s also the two opera managers who spend a couple chapters trying to figure out how the Phantom gets the money they leave for him. Because we need to know that. Of course. Why not?
If I were to boil down this disaster of a story into one problem, I think it is Gaston was so focused on being true to his sources, he completely forsook presenting his tale in a clean, sharp way, and he made these people come across as caricatures of stereotypes. Things would’ve gone so much better if he’d taken his newfound knowledge, ripped it to shreds, and reassembled it into something cohesive. Or gone full journalistic and have the whole story as journal entries, interviews and memoirs, similar to Dracula. As it stands, everything is so haphazardly put together and bizarre and silly and stupid and…I don’t know…uncouth.
Andrew Lloyd Webber and all the other people involved in bringing the stage production to life, are visionary geniuses. The 2004 movie has its flaws, but after seeing what it had to separate from, all is forgiven.
In Paris, our lives are one masked ball…
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Wow. Nice picture. I think I actually heard the organ music intensify. Dahh...da da da da daahhhhhh.
Guess that's another book I don't have to read.