1987 "neurological opera" Rating: 11/20 (Jen: She didn't watch the movie but listened to the whole thing and seemed annoyed by it. She asked why I was watching so many stupid movies lately and gave it a rating of "one point five point five" and later tried to give it a zero.)
Plot: Title of the movie says it all actually. A music teacher suddenly loses his ability to recognize everyday things. That's called visual agnosia if you're keeping score at home. The story is about the man, his wife, and a psychologist named Oliver Sacks trying to figure out what is going on with the patient's brain. Something ain't right all up in there!
Well, this is an oddity. This really is a Michael Nyman penned opera based on a neurological case (really, a case of Alzheimer's), and although it's an interesting approach to a documentary subject (the opera is also broken up with interview segments of Oliver Sacks himself), the opera is really really boring. Extended scenes in the doctor's office and the patient's home would be dull as hell even if the characters were speaking. Since it was difficult to understand what they were singing (especially the wife), this was almost impossible to even want to follow. There was an uninterrupted fifteen minutes (I don't even think I'm exaggerating here) where the doctor would hold up an object (a rose, a picture, a shape) and sing, "What is this?" followed by the guy trying to figure out what it is. There's also a chess game played in which they sing out the moves. Gripping stuff! I had to give this bonus points simply for being the only neurological opera I'm likely to ever see.
Here I am probably not enjoying this in the least:
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