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Tag Archives: Anthony Hopkins

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #77: King Lear (2018)

11 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespeare, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent, Richard Eyre, William Shakespeare

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film

77. Richard Eyre’s King Lear (2018)

I basically hate Macbeth, and I like Lear even fucking less than that, sweet reader, but when the BBC released a film of the elderly tragedy starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, my hand was obviously forced into watching it.

King Lear poster

As I’ve said before, in Lear “There’s a lot of crying. …. A lot of screaming. Not a small amount of whining.” It’s a miserable marathon of operatic super-excess of hysterical emotion. Productions must approach this Olympiad of Blubbering with some wariness.

Hopkins does not blubber.

But more than that, Eyre’s film feels very much like a well-executed film. This is the best film of Lear, and is amongst the very best Shakespeare films of all time. The shots are well-planned, with significant depth of field and a layering of scenes so that the viewer leans into the storytelling, and forgets that the speeches might be deemed set pieces. The story moves so well that the running time, just under two hours, doesn’t feel rushed at all.

King Lear Hopkins

Hopkins understands that being still can sometimes convey anger and heartbreak more profoundly than raising one’s voice. (One is reminded of his brilliant turn as Titus Andronicus.) The result is that the emotions modulate on a comprehensible scale, and the story carries the momentum. One does not feel abandoned onto a wasteland with these characters.

Eyre chose a modern setting, and the wasteland is actually a train stop in England, with Lear, mad, pushing a shopping cart around as another homeless person.

King Lear Homeless

Emma Thompson is an astounding Goneril. In her middle age, she can be commanding, her voice and body able to assume such mightiness, and her hint of vulnerability with Hopkins makes the performance quite memorable.

King Lear Thompson

Emily Watson as Regan is a wonderful foil for both Hopkins and Thompson.

King Lear Blunt

Florence Pugh, as Cordelia, is a bit stoic, which is a great relief for this particular viewer, sweet readers.

King Lear Pugh

Veteran character actor Jim Broadbent is a scene stealer in this film as Gloucester, and he and Andrew Scott as Edgar manage to make their tragic subplot of a ruined family reunited more than tolerable, which is say quite a lot.

King Lear Broadbent

John Macmillan as the scheming bastard Edmund proves a delightful villain a la Richard III.

Richard Eyre directed the Henry IV parts of The Hollow Crown, which was the best part of season one, and his King Lear is superior to that. It’s a solid fucking movie. Anthony Hopkins. Emma Thompson. Superior cinematography. I am trying to avoid spoilers about how perfectly Eyre adapted the text. Just watch the movie. So says this rogue!


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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.

The Curator of Schlock #124: Magic

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

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Anthony Hopkins, Burgess Meredith, Magic

The Curator of Schlock #124 by Jeff Shuster

Magic

(Written for the screen by William Golding from the novel by William Golding. Oh wait! That’s William Goldman.)

Okay. You’re Curator of Schlock has a confession to make. I’m afraid of dolls. I’m not talking about Barbies or Cabbage Patch Kids, but those creepy porcelain things they used to give out to kids during the 1800s, the kind if you stare at them long enough, they stare back at you, the kind that rummage around in your attic when your trying to sleep. But the worst are the ventriloquist dummies because they have the tendency to KILL KILL KILL!

Magic1

Case in point, 1979’s Magic from director Richard Attenborough (the old man in Jurassic Park) and starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Charles “Corky” Withers. Corky is a squirrely little man who does card tricks for nightclub audiences, boring them to tears before screaming at them for ignoring his pathetic act. A year later, he pops back on the nightclub scene with a ventriloquist dummy named Fats and the crowd goes wild. Corky gets himself a talent agent by the name of Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith, obviously) and pretty soon he’s being booked on the Tonight Show and there’s even interest in developing a television pilot starring him and Fats.

Magic4

The trouble is the network needs him to go in for a medical exam before they can commence filming. Corky flips out and pays a cabbie to drive him out to the Catskills where he grew up. He books a room at Bed & Breakfast run by his high school crush, Peggy (Ann-Margret). One thing leads to another, and Corky and Peggy end up having a torrid affair. Peggy’s married ,so that may cause some issues when her husband gets back, but Corky has more important things to worry about.

Magic2

First, he gets into raging argument with Fats about when they’re going back to New York City. Ben Greene shows up at the cabin during their blow up and becomes concerned that Corky is losing his mind. He gives Corky an ultimatum: don’t operate Fats for five minutes or he’s getting the doctors from the funny farm. Corky makes it to four minutes before shoving his hand up Fats.

Magic3

His agent leaves to notify the authorities and Fats orders Corky to beat Ben Greene to death with him. I guess ventriloquist dummies make for swell murder weapons. Later that night, Corky tries to submerge the body of his agent in the middle of a lake, but Ben Greene regains consciousness so Corky now has to drown him. 

Peggy’s husband, Duke (Ed Lauter) shows up the next morning and Corky has to play it cool so Duke doesn’t suspect that he’s sleeping with his wife and murdering talent agents on his property. Do any of you think this is going to end well?

Magic5

Magic is a profound cautionary tale.

Five Things I Learned from Magic

  1. It is disconcerting to hear Burgess Meredith use the F word.
  2. Ventriloquist dummies make the best wingmen.
  3. If you’re going to murder your talent agent and dispose of the body, dispose of his Rolls Royce too. 
  4. Asparagus tips > French-cut green beans.
  5. Wood puns + sex jokes = comedy gold.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #2: Titus (1999)

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Anthony Hopkins, Julie Taymor, Titus Andronics

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 2

#2: Titus (1999)

If a postmodern, ahistorical approach to Shakespeare repulsed me in the hands of Baz Luhrmann, that aesthetic charms the shit out of me in the hands of Julie Taymor in her adaptation of the brutal, early Shakespeare play, Titus Andronicus.

Titus Poster

For example, the campaigning of those who would be emperor of Rome, as well as the victory party of the successful consul, is accompanied by the syncopated horns of swing jazz. The middle of the twentieth century (fascism, cars, music, technology) is conflated with the architecture, aesthetics, and technology of ancient Rome without any sense of self-congratulation (a la Baz Luhrmann). The viewer doesn’t get the sense that the director thinks all art is beautiful and crazy.

Titus 6

Rather, one gets the sense that the violence of antiquity and the present day are rooted in the continuous psychology of the human race.

Titus 4

The film begins with a little boy smashing a variety of his toys (fighter planes, Roman soldiers, wind-up robots) and desserts before a loud television in a rage of childish glee.

Titus 2

The building he is in is bombed as Titus Andronicus returns with the Roman army in a triumph that belies his weariness at having killed so many, at having lost so many, including his sons. The boy from the opening scene will turn out to be Lucius, Titus’s grandson.

The difference, of course, is that Julie Taymor imagines that art might matter, that the mad fugue of smashing that young Lucius undertakes is not, as Baz Luhrmann seems to think, the sum total of art itself, even if such anarchy might be a part of art, and a significant part of the human condition. We should not be content with that.

Titus 2

When you have a screenplay involving ritual slayings, dismemberment, and cannibalism, it helps if Anthony Hopkins is your lead actor; what makes Titus even more disturbing than The Silence of the Lambs, however, is that the story isn’t some vamp on abnormal psychology. The carnage and psychosis of Titus Andronicus is the entirely natural outgrowth of honor and tribalism and war. Clarice Starling represented us trying to see into the mind of madness; the characters of Titus probably are us.

Titus 1

Which is to say Anthony Hopkins is playing a much different character, and really one needs a man of almost unthinkable stature and humility to play this part of the general who does not want to rule Rome. The bombast of the role would sound absurd of a lesser actor. Somehow, Hopkins gives this character a scope one can, despite the odds, empathize with.

Titus 3

Jessica Lange, as Tamora, the vengeful, conquered queen of the Goths, is also deeply impressive, and holds her own against Anthony Hopkins.

Titus 5

Alan Cumming, as Saturninus, is a wonderfully campy tyrant–equal parts Marilyn Manson, Pee Wee Herman, and Hitler.

Titus 5

Harry Lennix, as Aaron, however, is what makes Titus the most sublime.

Titus 9

Aaron the Moor is Shakespeare’s other black part, except that Aaron is all Iago and not at all like Othello. He is Shakespeare’s greatest villain, and his malevolence is astounding. Yet we are given to know why he is willing to destroy so much, and like Richard III has decided to relish the villainous role that has been given to him.

The great strength of Shakespeare is in his characterization, the depth of his understanding of human psychology centuries before this was a mode of human inquiry. We are still learning from him what it means to be human.

We don’t need Shakespeare to seem dusty, or appropriately Elizabethan or medieval or ancient or purely historically accurate (although a thoughtless carelessness with historical setting is disappointing). We don’t need Shakespeare to be acted by the English. We just need good actors, and a director who understands the poetry and the psychology of the words. With Titus, the cast and director Julie Taymor would have pleased Shakespeare immensely, although he would, of course, be impatient for his royalties, should he have lived so long.

_______

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John King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.

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