While traditionally Cinema and Opera are seen as two completely separate medias, Madame Butterfly superbly transcends conventional thinking and delivers a work of art pleasing to the eye, the ear and the heart. It is only fitting that Madame Butterfly returns to its Melodramatic roots that were common during the 16th-18th centuries as a spectacular staging of the struggle between love and death, the Opera.
An innocent girl, Cio-Cio San, is leased by an American Captain and emerges from her cocoon to become Madame Butterfly personal trophy. Captain Pinkerton uses her, leaves her and inevitably kills her, although the death could have been looked at as a release from the death she had been living after Pinkerton left.
Not even the bond between two people who have a child together could keep this marriage together. Even when she has chances to get out and move on, she refuses. She cries out, to anyone who will listen, that she is American and that she has not been betrayed. The truly sad part is she is the only person who doesn’t realize the position she is in.
This movie best portrays what could happen if you use people and discard them like they don’t have feelings. I am sure almost everyone can be empathetic towards Butterfly if even in some remote way. You can’t be a complete person without having lost something or someone along the way, and that’s how she felt, but she would rather have not gone on than to live a life in shame and embarrassment. She had to regain her family’s honor, or that’s likely how she saw it. Clashes of cultures are potential breeding grounds for Melodramatic moments.
Butterfly was devoted to Pinkerton’s whole life. At the first chance she gave up her family, he country and her religion for her new American husband, but when she didn’t have him she fell back to her culture’s practices and what she was brought up on. It’s too bad she didn’t turn back to her Japanese culture any sooner than the very end for her.
It was until that time that he had his power over her. She was living under his thumb because of the money he provided for her to live in that house. He portrayed a stereotypical male using money and power for a sexual relationship. Once he was done with the intimacy he was done with her. He essentially polluted the beautiful scenery by throwing her away like garbage.
It was the scenery that caught my eye. The whole story unfolds at the same place, which just gives us a better perspective of the one person (Butterfly) who we are studying. It’s her entire world, so it should be ours too. We are not able to cheat like in other films and know what is happening with the other side of the story so we are left completely vulnerable to all the actions that lead to Butterfly’s demise.
We are lead to believe since the beginning that these two will not end up together, but even for the audience the prospect of Pinkerton returning to their home brings in further hope that it might end up on a positive note. It’s unfortunate that it’s nothing more than an additional tug at the heartstrings before finally cutting the cord and letting it all unwind.
The occasional glimmer of hope and happiness was the only thing to separate the cruelty of the universe that Butterfly lived in. The ship came in, we felt like things might get better. Could a reunion be in the works for this couple? Well, if not that, surely a son would change things, right? Guess not, and by the end we could see that in the climate change.
The universe that Butterfly lived in was her house. That was her entire existence, her reason for living. It was great to leave us only there for the entire film. When everything went dark, and became stormy, we knew the relationship was over, and so was Butterfly, or Mrs. Pinkerton, I am not quite sure who she was at that point. Cio-Cio perhaps?
The death of Mrs. Pinkerton symbolically, the taking of her son and the new wife, left the protagonist to return to the only thing she knew anymore. She reverted back to Cio-Cio and knew she had done nothing other than tarnish the family’s name, so she commits hari-kari to restore that honor. The colonizer came in and violated the surroundings and left it in worse condition that it began, hmm, sound familiar?