84. Phyllidia Lloyd’s Julius Caesar (Part 1 of The Donmar Warehouse’s All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy), 2018

Last time I discussed Phyllidia Lloyd’s Tempest, and I am glad I watched these out of sequence. This all-woman cast of Caesar isn’t a bad Caesar—but I do think that Caesar is not an especially strong play. Brutus is such a wet blanket, even when portrayed by Harriet Walter. There are no compelling villains or heroes in this play, with the possible exception of Marc Antony (played wonderfully by Jade Anouka), but apart from one soliloquy and of course Caesar’s funeral oration, Marc Antony doesn’t have much to do.

In my last post, I discussed the oddness of the setting of Lloyd’s Tempest—the play is set in a prison, but in a reality that bleeds in and out of that incarcerated reality. Caesar is more securely set as a prison production. The disruptions of the prison setting can be jarring, in ways that are mostly good for the play. For Shakespeare fiends who’ve seen too many productions, The Donmar Trilogy refreshes the plays that would be deleterious for newcomers.

The prison setting works well for the politics of Caesar, this closed-system of power dynamics. Truth be told, the production is merely all right until Caesar is killed around the middle of the play. The political rationale for the assassination does not diminish its brutality, each senator approaching the dictator for a stab or two to drive the body upward. And as prisoners might, they made Caesar drink bleach. (Noble Brutus doesn’t seem to notice.)

The second half is much better, since it has the Marc Antony bits, plus Brutus must confront the reality of what he has wrought in the only scenes in which the character becomes sublime. The haunting by Caesar is especially memorable. The battle scenes are rendered as a something like a heavy metal video, conceptualizing Rome’s civil war in a facile way that moves the story along and doesn’t draw attention to the limitations of the stage, or the gym where this was performed.

Of course, Shakespeare was faced with how to end a play about the limits of ethos and power, and old as I am I wasn’t at the original production. The Donmar Trilogy ending, though, finds a delightful, painful way to undermine the ascension of Caesar’s heir, Augustus.

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

82. Grigori Mikhaylovich Kozintsev and Iosef Shapiro’s Hamlet

I am not sure why I enjoyed this Russian Hamlet so much. Jaded churl that I’ve become. I have had a surfeit of Hamlet (this is my eighth for this blog), and I don’t see that Kozintsev and Shapiro’s’s gorgeous, yet understated presentation is breathtakingly original.

I have no right to judge the Boris Patsernak translation, as the subtitles are those of the bard (“Nyet, m’lord”).

The acting isn’t bad. Mikhail Nazvanovas Claudius seems interesting, and Anastasiya Vertinskaya as Ophelia is arresting.

Innokenty Smoktunovsky is completely adequate as Hamlet—it should be telling that he’s not the first actor I want to discuss in this film. His legs are really skinny, which look pigeon-like in his tights.

But he avoids Orsinoesque levels of angst. The whole cast seems to have a stoic approach, and I must confess I am unfamiliar with Russian film of this period to see a clear cultural rule in the performances. 1964 was eleven years after the death of Stalin.

I suppose I feel about this Hamlet something like what I felt about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It was competent enough, and felt both superior-looking and familiar. Few complaints. Pass the Grey Goose.

The lived-in sensibility of this Denmark encompasses the additions Kozintsev, Shapiro, and Pasternak have added. The extras react in surprising ways to the action, which lets the political aspect of the story to feel immediate. Claudius’sopening monologue is repeated like gossip in the court, as if by an anxious chorus. Later, the courtiers try to keep up when Claudius applauds “The Murder of Gonzago.” They falter instantly when the king cannot maintain the charade.

An insensate Ophelia is dressed in mourning clothes by servants. Laertes is shown fetching his ancestral sword before confronting the royal family for his father’s murder. The visual language of cinema enhances the story, letting the plot emerge rather than racing to squeeze a tragedy into two hours. (The running time is 2 hours and 20 minutes, but doesn’t feel that long.)

This is what I think people mean when they say setting is a character. A well-established setting can make the fiction seem more real–the setting of a story is as important as characters. (This does not mean that might heart and brain are interchangeable; the setting-is-character theory seems really lazy to me.)

The crisp cinematography by Jonas Gritsius shows off the ancient castle with regal, Renaissance pomp, and the lives lived within such beautiful cages, too. The depth of field and painterly composition of shots makes the viewer, or this rogue at least, become absorbed. This is the best-looking Hamlet I have seen, a world above the gauzy haze of Olivier’s 1948 version.

One of the highlights of this Hamlet is its cinematic ghost, with a gothic cape perpetually unfurling behind it in slow motion. It’s difficult to convey a Renaissance sense of dread over hauntings, but this film’s apparition makes an impact.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s music splits the difference between modern orchestration and classical brutalist music, but also conveys court music with a light touch. This is a soundtrack I would gladly own. At times, music and action sans dialogue carry this film. If you don’t love Shostakovich, stop reading this blog right now. Or give him a listen while you read.

Solomon Virsaladze’s costumes are outstanding. The Renaissance wardrobe looks authentic without looking ridiculous.

Gertrude appears at the start of the play in mourning clothes, including black chiffon gloves that look too dainty and sexy for mourning (or maybe just Byronic in taste). Gertrude’s vanity is especially apparent in this version. When Hamlet looks what’s he’s killed behind the arras, there were royal dresses adoring headless mannequins.

Okay, I officially like this Hamlet more than The Rise of Skywalker, but less the than the nearly perfect Zeffirelli version. If this 1964 Hamlet ever comes out in blu ray format, or whatever high-resolution format comes next, I recommend picking this one up.

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

78. Tim Blake Nelson’s O [Othello] (2001)

This nugget of a film fell between the cracks of the art house crowd and the teenagers who went to see Save the Last Dance, The Princess Diaries, and Final Destination.

Admittedly, the premise didn’t seem promising: set Othello in a prep school with the tragic hero being not a military leader, but instead the best player on the school’s basketball team. Shakespeare’s story, but not language, is used.

Brad Kaaya’s script, though, more than redeems the premise.

The racial dynamics of Othellocannot seem contemporary if one uses a contemporary setting, as too much of the antiquated Venetian court politics will make the story seem really strained, as was borne out by a 2009 stage production I attended, directed by Peter Sellars and starring John Ortiz as Othello, Jessica Chastain as Desdemona, and Philip Seymore Hoffman as Iago. That production was more interesting than … good.

Maybe my standards for a teenage version of Othello without the bard’s words are lowered, but O has an organic intensity that works like any strong film. The screenplay creates as much as it adapts, replacing Shakespeare’s beats with equally powerful moments of its own. Those familiar with the play will recognize that half of the dialogue is merely a modernized rewording of Shakespeare’s text. This is Kayaa’s only feature script, but the movie is an extraordinary telling of Othello, daring in its vision, but intelligently true to Shakespeare’s own conception of the tragedy.

Russel Lee Fine’s cinematography and Kate Sanford’s editing make  a strong film visually, which makes the tragic plot come alive rather than plod along.

If I am writing in generalizations, I don’t want to spoil this film for you, sweet reader.

The acting is top notch. Desi (Desdemona) is played by Julia Stiles, who conveys both a charming innocence and an adult sense of responsibility. The previous year, Stiles was Ophelia opposite—alas and fuck—a hat that was wearing Ethan Hawke, but in O she is opposite Mekhi Phifer as Odin (Othello), and the passion of these two is remarkable.

Our Iago is Hugo Goulding, son of the basketball coach, played to handsomely devilish by Josh Hartnett. And a West Wing-era Martin Sheen plays Coach Duke Goulding.

In 2000, Tim Blake Nelson portrayed Delmar in O, Brother, Where Are Thou?, the Cohen brothers’ adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey. In 2001, he directed this overlooked gem of an adaptation of William Shakespeare. It’s not better than Oliver Parker’s Othello, which should be your go-to for a classic adaptation, but O is very, very, very good.

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

75. Robin Lough’s National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015)

My recent thesis, that successful stage productions should just be filmed rather than adapted for a purely cinematic version, isn’t being born out as well as I had hoped, even if The National Theatre Live’s 2015 version of Hamlet sparkles with greatness.

“If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not,” the ghost of Hamlet’s father will implore him. The play has so much to do with this Cartesian split of the mind and the body, the spirit and nature, which is why it is notable that The National Theatre’s filmed stage production of the tragedy begins with Benedict Cumberbatch, as the Danish prince, listening to a record of the slightly obscure jazz standard, “Nature Boy.”

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.

That Hamlet would obsess over this song is intriguing, framing the play with a mid-twentieth century sense of existential charm. One implication of the lyrics is this Byronic wanderer is encouraging the listener to fall in love, but not with him. But the lyrics also hint at the cruelty of love, how to love someone who will love you in return is a rather difficult thing. Hamlet has to wonder if his mother actually even loved his father, considering how quickly she took up with Claudius after her husband under mysterious circumstances (those damned serpents of Denmark).

And Hamlet must be wondering if Ophelia—whose affections seemgenuine, whose love helps to create his character—can love him any better than his mother.

The melody is haunting, too.

Another nice touch is how director Robin Lough re-arranged the text to de-familiarize us with the most often performed play in the world.

“Who’s there?” asks Hamlet into the darkness, as if ready to be haunted by his father. (The line textually belongs to Bernardo, of the night watch.) After a curdling silence, Horatio (Leo Bill) enters the room (instead of Francisco).

Despite this re-arranging, this production is something close to the whole Hamlet, which means that there is an awful lot to try to de-familiarize us with. The solution to that problem—how long will viewers need to keep their asses in their seats—seems to have been to speed up the performances. The royal court of Denmark is a bit manic, though with Benedict Cumberbatch and Ciarán Hinds (as Claudius), the effect isn’t all bad. But sometimes one wonders whether the ideal audience of this production might be a flock of hummingbirds.

This production’s Ophelia, played by Sian Brooke, is a bit older. Her bangs made her face seem so vulnerable, no place to hide. When she appears mad, a bald patch mars her head.

The textual nature of Ophelia’s love, trying to write her reality around the margins of acceptable speech, gets woven into the play. When Hamlet is berating her, Ophelia attempts to write him a note, to warn him, but he is too self-absorbed to notice. In a scene change, her privacy is violated when Polonius sends a servant to search her letters for something of Hamlet’s to share with the king. When she goes mad, she recites his love letter to her amongst the garbled songs.

The set design of the Barbican Theater is amongst the best I’ve ever seen, almost operatic, but not quite overblown. After the intermission, there is dirt strewn across the floor of this palace chamber, as if Ophelia’s grave belonged to all of Denmark.

Scene changes feature slow, spooky music with sped up action that includes changes to the set as well as dumb shows that deepen the story (as in Polonius stealing Hamlet’s letters to Ophelia).

The sound engineering of the play is also extraordinary, part posh luxurious romanticism, part David Lynch nightmare. The recording is pristine, making one feel like one is sitting in the Barbican Theater, which despite this psilocybin I took probably wasn’t the case.

I am not sure I have ever seen a Hamlet with quite so many original, surprising, and smart interpretations of the text, and Benedict Cumberbatch is Benedict Cumberbatch. And yet I cannot quite elude the feeling that this version falls short of its exquisite promise—too much rushing the text, which makes Cumberbatch explode like champagne. It’s good stuff, but too good to be drunk quickly.

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.