by No Single Name

Created on: April 23, 2009

When you get ready to watch an opera and realize that it is directed by the same man responsible for the Saw series, you tend to realize that, just perhaps, you're in for something a little different. And indeed, Repo! The Genetic Opera is more than just a little different; it's in a league all its own.

Taking place in a dystopian vision of 2056, the world of Repo! is one which has seen an unexplained epidemic of organ failures, drowning the world in anarchy until one man, Rotti Largo, creates the synthetic organ company GeneCo and builds an empire. The problem? Organs are expensive, and Largo enjoys his money; so much so, in fact, that he has a team of organ repo men for the instances in which customers can't make their payments.

If the opening song is any clue, this happens often.

Far more than just a fest of gore and anti-Capitalism themes, Repo! focuses on interlinked stories of seventeen-year-old Shilo Wallace; her father, Nathan; Rotti Largo; and the near-ethereal Blind Mag, a singer for the Genetic Opera played by the brilliant Sarah Brightman. Young Shilo suffers from a blood disease inherited by her late mother, Marni, and is isolated from the outside world by her protective, loving father; although viewers are quick to discover something twisted lying beneath Nathan's calm facade.

The story that entangles the main characters is as riveting as the soundtrack; Repo!'s music all has a certain industrial edge, but ranges from songs belonging in clubs ("Zydrate Anatomy") to arias seemingly wrenched from only the most classic of operas ("Chromaggia," delivered exquisitely by Brightman). A number of the songs ("Mark it Up," for example) come across as surprisingly funny, with a dark humor injected into every line like Zydrate into Amber Sweet's body (watch the film).

With environments rich and surreal, Repo! is portrayed as a world of non-reality: the sky is thick with pollution and electronics, from floating billboards advertising Mag's opera performances, to GeneCo towers that twist into the black sky like tainted trees. The inside environments serve as stark juxtapositions, the Wallace house being large, beautiful, and mostly classical in design, save for the holograms in memorial of Marni. Fetishistic wardrobes and implications of deviant behavior cap off a world so blind to its own plight that plastic surgery has become a fashion trend; changing a face is as easy as changing a hat.

Far more than the goth opera it was initially billed as, Repo! The Genetic Opera is a tale of the extremes to which mankind may go for the sake of money and power. It is also, at its core, a tale of crippling loneliness; each main character is isolated and lost, making the last twenty minutes of the film an avalanche of tragic beauty. Though not for fans of musical films, Repo! is a stupendous achievement that deserves all the attention it can get, and is sure to steal your heart.

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