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.

73. Trevor Nunn’s King Lear (2008)

I’ve taken a few months off my Shakespeariation, dear readers. I presume if you are reading this blog, you want to know which films to seek out, which to avoid due to being fatally boring, and which ones are weird enough to huff some glue to watch. Well, the winter of my discontent has lasted longer than normal—chronic pain, and marathoning one’s way through tragedies gets on one’s nerves—but I think I have the equanimity to offer some rulings once again.

King Lear? Damn it. I recently interviewed the poet Gerald Stern, who prefers Lear, and I wish I had more time with him to get to the bottom of this. I suspect the adoration comes as a reader more than as a viewer, though I do not dare speak for Mr. Stern.

There’s a lot of crying in Lear. A lot of screaming. Not a small amount of whining.

Photo & cocktail (The Vile Jelly) by Susan Lilley.

In his autobiography, Mark Twain wrote,“I have seen and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; after two acts I have gone away physically exhausted.” That’s how I feel about Lear, or Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But as I grow older, your rogue tries to be humble, and remain open to the possibility that maybe Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he wrote Lear.

Trevor Nunn can be a fine director, as shown in his unparalleled Twelfth Night. And Ian McKellan is an extraordinary actor. If you’re not a Shakespeare addict, then you probably have seen him as Gandolf or Magneto. If Ian McKellan played Village Idiot #17 in a film called The Fart in the Heart of the Screaming Hole, I would watch it once. At least once.

The plot of King Lear is that the titular king plans to divide his kingdom between his three daughters so he could retire to his dotage and let them rule securely. Before distributing the rule of these lands, he holds a flattery contest, and the youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to play, understanding the deconstructionist principle that what we say bears no essential relationship to what is. She is banished, yet is swooped up in marriage with the king of France. Her older two sisters demonstrate to their father that he is no longer king, and he goes insane. Then the sisters plot against one another while defending their kingdom from France. I am missing a subplot about the bastard Edmund and his machinations to usurp his brother’s noble place in society.

One of my contentions that I made when speaking to Gerald Stern was that the clown in King Lear is not funny. Sylvester McCoy proves me wrong. He has a funny, yet intelligent face, and he is stuck in the dialectic of despairing at Lear’s decisions and delighting at the comic opportunities such wild behavior offers him.

Speaking of the clown, one fascinating choice made with the script was to address one of the ambiguities of the play: when was the fool hung? Lear announces that his clown was hung in Act V, sort of like the proclamation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s death at the end of Hamlet—but the character disappears from the play, and the announcement seems tacked on considering how important the fool is to this play. So Nunn has the clown hung in Act III, and McCoy delivers his soliloquy from III.2 as the soldiers prepare the noose:

This is a brave night to cool a courtezan.
I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;
When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
When usurers tell their gold i’ the field;
And bawds and whores do churches build;
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion:
Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,
That going shall be used with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

Directors, please hire Sylvester McCoy to do more work!

Ian McKellan’s performance modulates well between Lear’s self-indulgent nobility and his deteriorating mental state when confronted by the stressors of becoming disowned and homeless and betrayed. At times, he speechifies beneath a bare tree, which reminds one of Waiting for Godot. McKellan is so alive with the role.

Lear: “Ay, every inch a king.”

One interesting wrinkle comes from Frances Barbera’s Goneril, who weeps when Lear rails against her when exiling himself from her portion of the kingdom. The lust for power and psychodynamics of the play are not completely straightforward.

Of course, the behavior of Lear’s oldest daughters probably has some origin in knowing Cordelia, the youngest, was his favorite (“our joy”). The queen is never mentioned. Lear was probably desperatefor a male heir. Lear is really only an interesting play if we see that some of the terrible things that happen in the play were a long time coming—that what the play, as long as it is, represents is the tipping point for a wounded family.

Romola Garai shines as Cordelia, which is to say, she manages not to seem to Pollyannaesque. When she refuses her father’s demand for blandishments, she seems tough enough to face her father, yet frightened enough once his wrath is awakened.

The costumes for this production are adequate, but Cordelia’s dress in Act 1 is tremendous: a cream-colored, corseted gown. With her chignon and necklace strands, Garai looks simultaneously regal and vulnerable. I don’t know if Andrew Joslin, Lorna Carmichael, or Rachel Farrimond was responsible for the dress.

I am not a cross-dresser, but I make no case for it.

However, this is still King Lear. Our clown is hung in Act III, which makes the last two acts a grind, as the two sisters plot against one another, and Edmund plots against the entire world, it seems.

This was a film adaptation of a stage version mounted by the Royal Shakespeare Company. From the cheap-looking sets and occasionally awkward cinematography, this Lear probably should have been a film of the theatrical performance instead. Is it cheating to just watch the first three acts? Can Mark Twain give us absolution?

The BBC will release a film version with Anthony Hopkins soon. I am not sure how many Lears I can stomach. At least one more, I am sure.

If you think you see what I am missing in Lear, please do try to correct me below.

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.

69. Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996)

Songs in Shakespeare can be a tricky thing since his texts share lyrics, but not melodies. The normal theatrical approach to these songs is to keep them brief, and not to commit to melodies that are catchy or especially even musical, which kind of defeats the presumed delightful fucking purpose of songs to Shakespearean dramaturgy. Musical creativity is not generally a priority for most troupes, since few could have a budget for commissioning a composer.

That’s only one reason why Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night is thrilling: Ben Kingsley sings!

Trevor Nunn is one of those rare figures in Shakespearean adaptations: someone who belongs to both the Shakespeare and musical theater communities. This may be why Shaun Davey was enlisted to compose music that could creatively compete (and so complement) the poetry and prose of Shakespeare’s text.

This is crucial for Twelfth Night, whose very first lines begin with an emo complaint from poor, love-stricken Orsino:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Another reason why music is crucial to the spirit of Twelfth Night: the play was written to be performed as a revel for an actual Twelfth Night (AKA, the twelfth day of Christmas–seriously).

I leave it to you, gentle reader, if you wish to look for the semiotic/symbolic traces of the holy associations with Twelfth Night in the play. (Please leave your analyses below in the comments. Remember that the play begins with shipwreck.)

The elevation of the music of the play coincides with the elevation of Feste, the clown, in this adaptation, with Ben Kinglsey playing the part. Feste is interpreted as not only as a sardonic commenter about the society he lives in, using his wit and lowly status to convey more truth than is otherwise socially tolerable—this Feste is also like a chorus and the conscience of the play.

The song with which the play closes—a lilting meditation on the role of entertainment in the meaning of our lives—becomes a framing device for the whole story in this film:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Without imagination, we would not be able to endure life. Shaun Davey’s undulating melody works as a leitmotif with enough theme and variations that the film gels miraculously.

As the other song in the middle of the film will demonstrate, music can also articulate our sorrows, which is also a consolation, if temporary, and helps us to understand ourselves. Orsino, in particular, is looking for answers.

The cast is stunning. Helena Bonham-Carter plays Olivia. Nigel Hawthorne plays Malvolio. Sir Toby Belch, one of Shakespeare’s greatest drunkards, is played by Mel Smith, who you may remember as the torturer’s assistant in The Princess Bride.

Richard E. Grant plays that caricature of an upper-class twit, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, with delicious abandon, as if to put such a typecasting of himself away for good. Imogen Stubbs manages her Viola to gender-bending poignancy. Imelda Staunton plays Maria to matronly perfection. Toby Stephens actually makes Orsino compelling despite the character being something of a High Romantic tool.

As I have said too often in these reviews, Shakespearean comedy resembles Shakespearean tragedy with the exception of the pile of corpses that ends a tragedy. This film works wonders with that dialectic. It can save your life.

Imogen Stubbs, Helena Bonham Carter.

But this play, and this version of this play, are wickedly funny. Shakespeare’s critique of gender, social class, and the social norms by which we express our emotional lives is more contemporary than ever.

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.