BD-25 | 1080i/AVC MPEG-4 | 1.78:1 | 02:35:13 | 19.73 GB
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.0 (48 kHz / 3873 kbps / 24-bit), LPCM 2.0 (48 kHz / 1536 kbps / 16-bit)
What's Christmas without at least a smattering of Handel's Messiah? Major metropolises worldwide feature sing-along Messiahs where the unwashed (and vocally untrained) masses get to try their hand at the Hallelujah Chorus, among other delights.
Of course, Christmas and the holidays in general have also long been known as a time for increased depression for the lonely and bereaved. I'm not sure if that is part of the subtext of this frankly completely bizarre quasi-operatic staging of Messiah by Claus Guth, Konrad Kuhn and Christian Schmidt. You smarter than average readers (and I'm sure that's all of you) probably are thinking to yourselves, "Wait a minute—isn't Messiah an oratorio?" Why, yes, yes it is. But when has that ever stopped the artistically creative from realizing their "vision"? Here that vision involves a man who has committed suicide (we even get to see his slit wrists—several times in fact) and the consequences that action has on his distraught family.
This Messiah also includes some weird quasi-ASL (sign language) from what I can only guess is supposed to be a deaf mute girl, as well as a funeral we get to visit not once, but twice, and the almost Monty Python-esque Ministry of Silly Walks vision of our recently departed "hero" (for wont of a better term) doing one of the weirdest dances (if you can call it that) down one of the many hallways that fill this production's rather interesting scenic design. It's Christmastime, everybody!! Time to celebrate the good news!!
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