It's refreshing, and doesn't make his music any less powerful – the opposite, in fact.
He has a powerful scene opposite Liam Cunningham's tough but impotently disapproving priest, which plays out in one, austerely continuous shot of the two men facing each other in profile.
Those powerful and opposite poles, church and opera, monopolized choral writing for many years, and apart from isolated works of an occasional nature there is little in the truly secular field until Beethoven's Choral Fantasia (1808), an unusual work in nine movements, the first seven of which are a set of variations for piano and orchestra.
(Even Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth had to be fairly reticent, negotiating her screen presence opposite powerful males such as Tony Blair and Prince Philip).
Because the declared values of the Republican party, especially as voiced through the powerful Tea Party, are opposite to mine, I find it impossible to be friends with a Republican.
Those who argue that a president is all powerful make the opposite mistake of the economist stranded on the desert island who, faced with a can of soup having washed up from the sea, simply assumes the existence of a can opener.
While there were fears that Ukraine's war would immediately spawn an uncontrolled black market for all manner of powerful weapons, the opposite seems to have occurred, at least in the short term.
Mr. Lewis also offers complexity and powerful combinations of opposites: he is both a child throwing tantrums and an auteur creating a world of his own.
Lebanon's most powerful political factions back opposite sides in the Syrian conflict.
The reliance on melodramatic music and lurid — though not explicit — re-enactments does not seem to me to make the movie more powerful, but rather the opposite.
