The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #15: Othello (1995)

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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

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Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film

#15. Othello (1995)

Othello poster

If we can agree, dear readers, that Olivier’s Richard III (1955) is both perfect and, in its own way, a bit old-fashioned, Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995) manages to treat the tragedy realistically, with some degree of historical accuracy and dramatic poignancy, so that the story seems timeless, which is a feeble word we use to describe work that feels simultaneously old and terribly relevant.

Othello 2

Let’s begin by talking about the casting of the ever-underrated Laurence Fishburne as the title character (five years before his first turn as Morpheus in The Matrix). Parker’s Othello is now 21 years old, so it bears observing that this was the first time that a black actor was cast as Othello in a prominent feature film. We were spared the grotesque spectacle of seeing a white actor such as Orson Welles (1952) or Laurence Olivier (1965) in blackface.

othello 4

Visually, Fishburne offers a legitimate case for why Desdemona would fall in love with him despite the absolute opprobrium of her father.

Othello 3

As a Hollywood film actor, he manages the difficulty of the text perfectly, and makes the play the sublime experience it is meant to be.

Othello is a Moor, and since we don’t quite know exactly what a Moorish accent sounds like, Fishburne goes with a somewhat eloquent Caribbean voice, with some Arabic accents added, so that on a linguistic level, his cultural otherness is expressed by his very voice. The court of Venice spoke with believable Italian accents (not to be confused with whatever Paul Sorvino was doing in Romeo + Juliet). The courtiers and soldiers speak with English accents. By having his actors make such precise choices with some logic to them, Oliver Parker’s version of the play has a vocal texture that seems intoxicatingly real, unlike the motley casting in the Shakespeare films Branagh has directed since Henry V.

Iago

And if we are spared Branagh the director, we are treated to Branagh the actor, one of the best actors in the history of cinema, giving perhaps his best performance as the tortured Machiavellian officer Iago. It’s hard not to root for Iago, who takes such pleasure in his evil schemes, in his own thoughtful soliloquies, in his insults. (Othello has Shakespeare’s sharpest insult, by the way: “You are a Senator!”) Branagh gives him the occasional mugging for the camera, as if we are confederates for this virtuoso performance.

Othello 7.png

As the plot promises to grow more bloody, Iago, like any great liar, appears to believe in his own lies. Perhaps he does.

For writers, Othello is a remarkable study in the craft of characterization. What makes this play the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies–in your rogue’s infallible opinion–is how much we understand and care about all of the characters, including Iago, despite the fact that he will not explain himself for his crimes. This story shows us how frightening it is to define ourselves as others see us, when others overlook us, and how love is, for so many people, the most destructive force in the world.

Othello1

Certainly, these themes appear in Macbeth and Richard III, but the naivety and stupidity of many of those characters make me less filled with dread in the watching. The tragedies in those two plays seem too inevitable, people functioning themselves and one another to death. Macbeth in particular I have to be tricked into liking.

Even Desdemona, Job-like in her willingness to suffer, enters into the final night of her life with open eyes. She would rather risk whatever violence he intends than dishonor her love for him. By strangling her, Othello knows on some level he is destroying himself, too. This is the metaphysics of love–we overlap into another person, and sacrifice part of ourselves to it. Of course this could seem like average codependence, too, if you are cynical.

Oliver Parker’s Othello is a masterpiece. It is fun and heartbreaking. As compelling as a devouring rose.

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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 Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #13: A Midwinter’s Tale

20 Sunday Dec 2015

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

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A Midwinter's Tale, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Maloney, Richard Briars

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 3

#13: A Midwinter’s Tale (1996)

If Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is a luxury train under the blithe control of an engineer who’s uninterested in whether his cargo stays on board while shooting through an icy landscape, then the engineer of A Midwinter’s Tale cares not only about his passengers, but their baggage as well.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Oh, in England A Midwinter’s Tale (1996) was called In the Bleak Midwinter (1995).

Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed this film about a troubled production of Hamlet just before he filmed his own adaptation of Hamlet, and both films came out in the U.S.A. in 1996, not that both films received the same amount of attention. Few people know about A Midwinter’s Tale. It is one of Branagh’s truly fine works despite his not appearing in front of the camera.

A Midwinters Tale

At 33 years old, Joe Harper (Michael Maloney) is nearing the end of his vital years as an actor without having the ability to find any acting jobs, despite the best efforts of his indulgent shark of an agent Margaretta (Joan Collins). Joe’s sister Molly is trying to raise funds to save an old church in the tiny village of Hope, Darbyshire. His solution to both problems is to mount a production of Hamlet in the church on Christmas Eve, with him as director and, obviously, also playing the lead role. The cast and crew are comprised of people even more desperate and dysfunctional than he is.

A Midwinters Tale 5

As I said in #12, this is Branagh’s good Hamlet. It would be another eleven years before Branagh would direct another worthy Shakespeare film (As You Like It, 2006).

A Midwinter’s Tale is just over an hour and a half. It’s shot in black-and-white, which makes it not resemble Love, Actually at all.

A Midwinters Tale

The ensemble cast is a marvel. Richard Briars, who has played in all of Branagh’s Shakespeare films, plays a veteran actor who bullies his way into this wayward production because he yearns to perform in Shakespeare just once. He is rather surprised in the read-through at the start of rehearsals to discover that Gertrude will be played by a man in drag. Julia Sawalha (who played Fiona in Ab Fab) plays Nina, who will be a nearsighted Ophelia whose emotions run high. Michael Maloney (who would go on to portray Lartes in Branagh’s Hamlet) is a wonder, and reminds us that gifted actors are ignored every day.

A Midwinters Tale 1

There’s a light, old-timey nightclub song called “Why Must the Show Go On?” that is heard twice in the film.

Branagh’s actual film of Hamlet doesn’t seem to have the answer, or to have even asked the question, or perhaps he answered the question to well with A Midwinter’s Tale.

A Midwinters Tale 4

In this modest comedy, a variety of British actors play actors playing in Hamlet, and Branagh’s writing is so deft here. There is obtuse slapstick mixed with speedy, dry wit, and the story manages some dramatic, emotional moments about life’s great disappointments from people who understand their disappointment and are trying, urgently, to transcend it. In this meta-context, Hamlet is a tragedy that these actors can tap into, and the connections are surprising. By contrast, Branagh’s Hamlet is affected, too composed, too in love with its own decoration.

A Midwinter’s Tale is a wonderful Christmas film, and happens to be my 3rd-favorite favorite Hamlet of all time (after the Zeffirelli and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead).

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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 Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #12: Hamlet (1996)

06 Sunday Dec 2015

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

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Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh, Shakespeare

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film

#12: Hamlet (1996)

Hamlet poster

With his Hamlet (1996), the gulf between Kenneth Branagh’s acting and that of his Hollywood peers widens. In the early going of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Denzel Washington doesn’t quite know what to do. In the early going of Hamlet, Jack Lemmon (like Washington, one of the finest actors Hollywood has made use of) is not quite in the same movie as the other actors. It’s like watching a painting created by artists from different schools (Realist, pointillist, surrealist, cubist), if they don’t quite realize they are from different schools.

Hamlet Jack Lemmon

It’s not that Jack Lemmon does a bad job, per se. Charlton Heston gives one of the last great performances of his career as Player #1, and it is an impressive set piece (likely written to honor one of the elder actors of Shakespeare’s troupe).

Hamlet Heston

Robin Williams plays the unctuous Osiric with a peculiar, self-satisfied glee that reminds me of Claire Danes’s performance in Romeo + Juliet, although Osiric is, in Robin William’s defence, a comic character.

Hamlet Robin Williams

Oh, right. Osiric is in this Hamlet because one of the novelties of this adaptation is that Branagh did the full Hamlet. Normally, Osiric is cut or minimized, since the tedious fact of setting up the duel between Laertes and Hamlet doesn’t seem dramatically necessary and comes in after the three hour mark.

I don’t know about you, dear readers, but this rogue doesn’t like to do even the things he likes to do for much over three hours at a time.

One can tell that Branagh suspected the problem of his own casting, since the principal parts are given to Shakespearean veterans, or at least British actors. He is Hamlet. Derek Jacobi is Claudius.

Hamlet Christie Jacobi

Julie Christie, a Hollywood veteran (Doctor Zhivago), is nevertheless an Englishwoman who studied acting in the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama, whose most famous alum happens to be Laurence Olivier.

Hamlet Polonius

Richard Briars (who was in Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado) is Polonius.

Hamlet Brian Blessed

Brian Blessed, who can do no wrong, is the ghost of King Hamlet.

Hamlet Winslet

Kate Winslet (British, despite being in Titanic) is Ophelia. Michael Maloney is Laertes (British); he played Rosencrantz in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990). Nicholas Farrell is Horatio; he played Montano alongside Branagh’s Iago the year before in Othello, and was also Antonio in Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night.

When those who have been trained in Shakespeare come across their Hollywood counterparts, the contrast is immediate, no matter the good intentions and intelligence of the non-Shakespeareans. My suspension of disbelief unsuspends itself.

Plop.

Franco Zeffirelli, who happens to be Italian, can mix and match actors from various regions and make them cohere into an idiom that places them in the same imaginative world. Branagh, for some reason, cannot.

There seems to be an impulse to jam American actors into minor parts whenever possible. This is tragically on display during one of my favorite parts in Hamlet, the gravedigger scene. The lead gravedigger is played by Billy Crystal, who performs Shakespearean humor like his normal schtick.

Hamlet Billy Crystal 2

To be fair, if the acting were more Americanized in this film, then Crystal’s performance almost works (although it seems like a sadly watered down version of his wise, marginalized character in The Princess Bride). But you can actually see Crystal acting, as if there is a delay between him deciding to make a face or a gesture and the realization of that action.

What makes the scene unbearable for me, though, is that Simon Russell Beale, who is considered to be the finest Shakespearean actor of his generation, is cast as the second gravedigger.

Hamlet Simon Russell Beale

(If you haven’t heard of Beale, check him out as Falstaff in the BBC version of Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, as part of its Hollow Crown series. SRB is mighty.) Imagine asking Derek Jacobi to step down as Claudius because Steve Martin has agreed to play the part.

In the right production, Steve Martin would be the perfect Claudius. But in Branagh’s hands such a Hamlet would be Cheaper by the Dozen Part III.

The good news is that Hamlet is largely filled with Hamlet, unlike a Godzilla movie where that shrieking, ginormous reptile tends to be painfully fucking scarce. And Branagh may be a bad director, but he is a breathtakingly good actor.

Hamlet Branagh

So his Hamlet is more wildly uneven then outright bad.

The difference in acting valences might seem fascinating if this were a nightmare Hamlet of the dream realm, as if the oddities of acting idioms might denote the metaphysical torments of creatures from a David Lynch story making their way through the Black Lodge, or living inside a radiator. But the setting of Branagh’s Hamlet is a Denmark that seems like a very proper 18th century British castle in which there is no herring to be seen, but does happen to be coated with a pristine layer of snow.

And at one point King Hamlet is envisioned as sleeping in his frozen orchard at the moment of death–you know, the one where he was, as far as the royal court of Denmark knows, stung by an adder.

Hamlet Brian Blessed 2

This works symbolically, at the total expense of realism, unless we want to think that Denmark is a stupid, stupid place, or else is infested with warm blooded poisonous serpents. And the symbolism isn’t strong enough to make me not crave a story that makes sense on a literal level.

The dream theory cannot rescue Branagh’s demented casting, seen abundantly in Much Ado, and which will get unfathomably worse in Love’s Labour’s Lost, starring (cough) Alicia Silverstone.

Much more to my liking is Branagh’s other, less famous Hamlet, a brilliant, self-aware comedy that lasts about ninety minutes. But you’ll have to wait until next time for me to tell about that.

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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 Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #11: Henry V (1989)

15 Sunday Nov 2015

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

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Henry V, Kenneth Branagh

#11: Henry V (1989)

Two weeks ago, I mocked Kenneth Branagh’s weak casting and directing, because I had to. I mean, Robert Sean Leonard.

By now, if you’re reading this, you’re obviously asking yourselves, how will this rogue rank Branagh’s Shakespeare films? Like this, from best to worst:

Henry V (1989)
Othello (1995, directed by Oliver Parker)
As You Like It (2006)
A Midwinter’s Tale (1995, a comedy about a beleaguered production of Hamlet)
Twelfth Night (1988, in which Paul Kanfo directed an adaptation of a stage production originally directed by Branagh)
Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Hamlet (1996)
Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)

The top four are top notch, Numbers 5 and 6 are a mixture of good and bland, and the last 2 are only as good as the liquor you’ll be drinking while watching them. Your liver may not survive Love’s Labour’s Lost, actually. (Alicia Silverstone plays one of the leads.)

But lest you think me hopelessly blackened in heart, let me devote the rest of this review to Branagh’s finest film, Henry V.

For Americans, the history plays have often been under the radar, as the intricacies of British history before Shakespeare’s time can seem rather obscure, especially since these plays often had multiple parts whose connective narrative threads can seem elusive. For British theatre-folk, though, they are much more familiar, and for a young actor like Branagh, trained in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, who would play Henry V in the Royal Shakespeare Company, filming the play and portraying the part would seem like a normal enough of a maneuver.

When Laurence Olivier wanted to declare himself a film actor and director of Shakespeare in 1944, he did so with Henry V. (L.O.’s first film work of Shakespeare, As You Like It, did not yet convince him that Shakespeare could be meaningfully filmed.) Of course, the timing of Olivier’s Henry V was fortuitous for a British public eager to feel patriotic and keep its spirit up. Henry V is about a young king who, after several dissolute years as a prince, strives to be an ideal monarch for his people, and fights for the rights of England without compromise.

Arguably, for Branagh to adapt Henry V for the screen is more problematic, for patriotism outside of a Nazi subtext asks a lot of its viewers. Henry will appeal to his priests (who privately, corruptly think mostly of their own statuses) and then throughout the play to God.

There is also the matter of the chorus, who will provide the audience with exposition at the start of every act. He opens the play with an apology that the stage cannot present the epic spectacle of the narrative:

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

This warning is meant for the sparse stage space of Shakespeare’s day, not the scenery that a modern movie is capable of showing. Often enough, in this film, the scenery will seem to lack nothing concocted by a Muse of fire.

This meta-theatrical hemming and hawing, however, comes off as charming, as we see the peerless Derek Jacobi prepare us for the film while stalking about a film set before thrusting open a large door to a black room.

Henry V had a limited budget, so some of the scenes were done sparsely. Frankly, there is a humility to the production that is so intimate and lets us focus on the exquisite actors.

And the acting in Henry V is perfection. Branagh begins the film as a calm, quiet king asking for counsel from his cabinet and from his clergy.

While the ambassador from France conveys an insult to him and his kingdom, Branagh manages one of the finest examples of modulation in any acting performance ever, as he moves from his calm to powerful, meticulous rage.

In his adaptation, Branagh shows Henry’s dissolute ado (borrowing from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2), and also shows how the king treats his own psychological make up as a tool, and how he draws out the psychology of those around him, including known traitors, and the various attitudes of the common soldiers fighting for him, and for England. Branagh shows Henry to be a trickster in fooling those around him, but a trickster with a heart so large that it will do anything to be a good man, and a good king, which at times will cost him his own humanity.

The cast is superb. Gigantic, sonorous, beautiful Brian Blessed plays Exeter, the king’s uncle; you may remember him as Prince Vultan (leader of the Hawkmen) from Flash Gordon. The intense Ian Holm is Captain Fluellen. Paul Scofield plays the woebegone king of France. Robbie Coltrane, who the world knows as Hagrid, plays Sir John Falstaff in some flashbacks. Judi Dench plays the inn keeper Mistress Quickly. Emma Thompson mines as much humor as is possible from the part of Princess Katherine of France. (Shakespeare really thought French accents were simply hysterical, for some reason. It gets worse in Merry Wives of Windsor.) If you squint, there’s a fifteen year-old Christian Bale playing Robin, an iconic boy for the commoners and the soldiers. Every actor in the film seems to know what to do, seems comfortable with rendering Shakespeare into the real.

And this Henry V is earthy. The battle scenes show the ugliness of war, and the exhaustion and confusion and the nauseating amounts of mud and blood that result from thousands of men swinging blades at one another’s heads for hours.

Of course, this is the play that has the “St. Crispen’s Day” speech in which Henry rallies his tired, weary soldiers who will be facing a massively larger, well-rested French army.

Here Patrick Doyle’s score rallies in melodic triumph, which seems appropriate; in later films, he seems to launch such pomp for the mere sake of Branagh seemingly never saying no under any circumstances.

Branagh does try to give his audience reasons why the French would fail at Agincourt: the French show ample hubris (that is in the text) and the English employ archers while the French do not. But what is remarkable to me about this Henry V is that Branagh seems as humble and earnest as Henry is. He gets me to cheer for England’s success, despite the fact that, unlike most Shakespeare junkies, I am not an anglophile whose heart tingles at the sight of the Union Jack, nor am I capable of believing that God will direct the fate of a nation’s military initiatives. But I am capable of believing that Henry believes that God will guide his hand, which is a remarkable thing.

The setting and the performances are all straightforwardly superior. Branagh followed in Olivier’s footsteps, and outdid him with his first Shakespeare film.

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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.