Little White Lies magazine

It’s rare to spend 130 minutes in the cinema and not experience a single emotion. Indeed, so apathy inducing is director Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of the popular Mozart opera that it’s even difficult to rouse yourself to leave. Branagh and librettist Stephen Fry have transposed the action to World War One’s battlefields, borrowing a look from kitschy photographer duo Pierre & Gilles’ ’80s work: shimmery, bathed in a translucent sheen and, frankly, rather stagey. Supported by the Peter Moores Foundation, whose mission is to open opera up to a wider audience, The Magic Flute is a tedious effort that has probably set the project back at least 50 years.