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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #70: Henry VI Parts 1 & 2 (2016)

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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70: Dominic Cooke’s Henry VI Parts 1 & 2 (2016)

I am an outright Shakespeare junkie, dear readers. This you should know by now. Yet the prospect of outright speed-balling multiple Shakespeare plays in one sitting seems daunting, even to me. I am aware of festivals that mount all of The War of the Roses plays in a single day.

Fuck that.

Season 2 of The Hollow Crown lets you over-indulge these plays if you like, or watch them over several nights.

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Season 1 of The Hollow Crown (already discussed on this blog) was a bit of a wash. The two parts of Henry IV worked well, with Simon Russell Beale as a tragic Falstaff, Tom Hiddleston as a greasy Prince Hal, and Jeremy Irons as an irascible Henry IV.

Alas and fuck, though, Richard II was mincingly excruciating, and Henry V (bereft of Beale) drags. Maybe the transformation of Prince Hal into King Henry is especially difficult to imagine with the same cast, after two whole installments of Henry IV; the context of the whole makes Henry V seem less noble and meaningful in terms of story arc. Of course, Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V makes any other historically accurate film of that play look pallid.

Great Performances: The Hollow Crown - Henry IV Part One

Season 2 of The Hollow Crown turns out to be much stronger, despite having fewer stars in the cast, or perhaps because of that.

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The second season begins with Henry VI, Part 1, in which we can see the political nightmare arising out of the scene and collection of temperaments. Henry VI is a very young king who, like Richard II, imagines that the divine right of kings and the culture of nobility would on the whole make the kingdom governable—and unlike Richard II, Henry isn’t abusing the nobility or acting so cruelly that his subjects must rebel. Unfortunately for Henry, he has not seen Richard II firsthand, and is not imaginative enough to know how fragile a thing peace is, especially when others will use him and his noble assumptions as a tool.

The film of Henry VI, Part 1 shouldn’t work, really, for the sake of how complicated its scope is.

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France is being re-claimed by the Dauphin after Henry V’s death, aided by Joan of Arc. Henry VI is something of a lofty man-child (as I’ve mentioned) still guided by his uncle Humphrey as the Lord Protector of England.

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Richard Plantagenet, whose family has long been stripped of title, learns about the fate of Richard II and that the natural succession of the kings of England would have led him to the throne if Henry IV had not usurped Richard.

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Plantagenet convenes some nobles to see who might claim loyalty to him if he made a claim to the throne. This macho act is done by plucking either red or white roses. The nobles sort of break even.

Henry VI makes peace between Humphrey and Winchester, the head of the Church of England, then responds positively to Plantagenet’s request to be granted his family’s title once again. Having settled matters of court, the king then plans to wage war against France.

During that war, the Duke of Somerset is reluctant to assist with some of the fighting so that some of his adversaries in the English court might be killed off. When Somerset does fight, he manages to find Margaret, a French noblewoman whom he finds attractive. He plans to advance her as a matrimonial solution to the French war and then use her as a sexual partner and influence on the king. Margaret is keen, as well, to exert her will over the court.

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This is part soap opera, part tragedy. While the sets are consistent with season 1 of The Hollow Crown, season 2 is a vast improvement. Zac Nicholson’s cinematography and Gareth C. Scales’s editing make this plot seem far less convoluted than it is.

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Tom Sturridge manages to be a hopelessly foppish Henry VI. His cheekbones are noble, but he looks too stoned, too mellow, to be long for this world in this court.

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Ben Miles is a coarse, brutal Somerset. The choice to have him eating while Joan of Arc is burned at the stake is a dark touch.

Hugh Bonneville is a noble Humphrey, someone who insists on living with honor even as he sees the court destroying both him and his country.

Sally Hawkins, who you may remember as the lead in The Shape of Water, plays Eleanor, Humphrey’s wife, who ends up in Margaret’s crosshairs.

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In terms of cruelty, the stories of Henry VI Parts 1 and about half of Part 2 approach Titus Andronicus. Part 2 of The Hollow Crown—Henry VI Parts 2 and 3—will match that horror-show.

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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 #67: Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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67. Lloyd Kaufman’s Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

Last week, the bourgeoisie wet dream that is Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet so dismayed me that I decided the time had come to try Tromeo and Juliet. From time to time, I review films that may seem tangential to Shakespearean theatre, such as Strange Brew and Gnomeo and Juliet and Edward II. I anticipated that this Lloyd Kaufman film would be one of those at best. I admit I don’t know much of Kaufman’s oeuvre beyond The Toxic Avenger. His studio, Troma, is a factory for latter day exploitation cinema. Perhaps it’s the fact that James Gunn, of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, co-wrote the script, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Tromeo and Juliet is one of the best Shakespeare films of all time.

I am not joking.

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Tromeo and Juliet was released the same year as Romeo + Juliet.

Of course, little of Shakespeare’s language appears in Tromeo, and when it does, it is usually given voice in the form of the prologue, performed by Lemmy of Motörhead!

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But the screenplay also nimbly borrows lines from other Shakespeare plays.

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There is in this film the exploitation-movie compulsion towards graphic sex and gore, as well as astoundingly low lowbrow humor that may superficially seem contrary to the spirit of the great bard. If you want a painfully sanitized aesthetic, might I recommend Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet?

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Perhaps viewers not from America might think this Will to Outrage strained. Tromeo and Juliet is a decidedly American take on Shakespeare’s tragedy. The two feuding households are dueling pornographic filmmakers. The hymn “Shall We Gather at the River” repeats constantly throughout the film, and the need to repress awareness of our own desires, and our need to wield tyrannical control our children’s desires, is one of the themes of this film. Sometimes this comes off as goofy camp, but sometimes this comes off as a surrealistic nightmare of Puritanical America. The spiritual life at the center of Romeo and Juliet’s culture, and the patriarchal fury of the play, are consistent with these themes.

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One peculiar example is a scene that juxtaposes two sexual acts. Juliet (Jane Jenson) confides her ambivalent sexual feelings about men to her nurse (Debbie Rochon), with whom she is sexually intimate. Meanwhile, Romeo (Will Kennan) is pining for his Rosie (Rosaline) while seated alone at his computer.

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He considers which Shakespeare Sex Interactive CD-Rom to watch. (It’s 1996.) Instead of The Merchant of Penis, he opts for As You Lick It, and when prompted to choose what sort of experience he wants, he chooses true love. In Shakespeare’s text, Juliet is infantilized by the nurse, with whom she is too close, something she will realize when the nurse advises her to betray Romeo. And in Shakespeare’s text, Romeo’s sense of romantic and sexual identity is as ethereal as the pornography of love. Gunn and Kaufman and the actors have all committed to these choices, so they don’t feel arbitrary, though they do feel delightfully uncomfortable.

In deconstructing Shakespeare, Gunn and Kaufman get Shakespeare in a way that Carlei and Baz Lurhmann cannot.

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William Beckwith plays Cappy Capulet, Juliet’s father, and his performance is revelatory for its strangeness, for its absorption of cognitive dissonance and conviction in his own corrupt transcendence that reminds me of contemporary presidential politics.

Tromeo and Juliet is wickedly funny, and engages with Shakespearean texts in a profound way. The last shot of the movie is of Shakespeare laughing at the camera. Provided Shakespeare got some royalties for this adaptation, I think he would indeed be laughing at this wonderful cinematic experience.

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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 #55: Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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55. Orson Welles’s Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight [Henry IV Parts 1 & 2] (1965)

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One restraint of most Shakespeare film productions happens to be, alas and fuck, the budget. Often, actors, including the best actors, will willingly work for scale in service of the bard, but the cost of film and catering and the crew and their equipage will or cannot do so. Quality often suffers.

Such seems to have been the case with Chimes at Midnight, which features a tour de force performance by Orson Welles as Falstaff.

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Welles was very, very, very fat. That is not a criticism, merely an observation. He looks like an optical illusion, a caricature of a caricature that is Sir John Falstaff. And yet in appearing like such a cartoon, Welles somehow makes the part quite real, and shows us what Shakespeare’s own original audience would have loved about this rascal who contains so many vices, a bursting character from a medieval morality play.

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Contrasting the enormity of Welles’s girth is the slender running time of Chimes at Midnight, which squeezes both parts of Henry IV down to under 2 hours of running time. If you don’t already know these plays, abandon all hope of following the manic, complicated plot. If you have experienced these plays, though, then lean in and enjoy this manic take on its complicated, truncated plot. Ralph Richardson served as a narrator, to offer context and some sense of segues.

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Henry IV is played by John Gielgud, who makes England’s sovereign and his moral disappointment in his son, prince Hal, seem majestic rather than bitchy or sheepishly human.

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Keith Baxter and his dimpled chin play Hal, and he seems truly mischievous, a quick, fun foil for Welles’s Falstaff.

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Norman Rodway, as Henry Percy, AKA “Hotspur,” switches between manic comedy and tragedy in his threat against the throne. He seems to have gotten the memo to act and speak as fast as he can, and manages to make both seem palatable enough.

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The great battle between Henry IV and Hotspur’s forces os both impressive and awfully awkward. I suspect the sound of rattling armor was created by shaking a pillowcase of silverware. (Perhaps that is authentically how battle sounded in the Middle Ages. If that is so, one should avoid accuracy.) There is a great confusion of fog, mud, and clanging, interspersed with Orson Welles hysterically trotting about in truly enormous armor. The editing is extra-manic, and I suspect the film was often sped up like kung fu action sequences.

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It occurs to me, dear readers, that perhaps I’ve been premature to claim the low budget of this movie was its downfall. Perhaps the downfall was its modest reception, and its therefore being out of print a long while. The version I got ahold of was less crisp than I expect the Criterion Collection print is. As The Hollow Crown demonstrates, the inn setting of much of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 are drab enough if treated with historical accuracy, so the black and white is less a burden than it might have been. Perhaps the sound is better in the Criterion edition (I doubt it). The energetically frumpy medievalish score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino has to grate no matter how crisp it sounds.

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But the chief musical instrument of Falstaff is the voice of Orson Welles. The voice and the man were larger than life, and experiencing it embodying Falstaff helps one believe that an absurd amount of indulgence might be his due. We can imagine a king, a prince, a beautiful young prostitute (played by Jeanne Moreau) could grant him something like grace. On the field of victory, or in the Boar’s Head Inn, Falstaff is a beacon of vivaciousness and intelligence. In the throne room, however, such grace reveals itself to be an almost infinite length of rope by which he will hang himself.

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The subtitle of the film (or the title, depending on where it was released) might make the theme of this film seem unpleasantly sentimental. The “chimes at midnight” speech takes place between Falstaff and Master Shallow, a justice of the peace in the countryside with whom Falstaff is resting after a battle. This scene takes place before he learns that his carousing friend Prince Hal will be coronated as Henry V. Master Shallow is a dreadful bore, and his desire to reminisce about the greatness of being awake at midnight is sad. That Falstaff indulges him makes us sorry for Falstaff. Alan Webb’s Shallow speaks in an elderly quavering falsetto that is unendurable. This brief film shoves that dialogue into the beginning of our story to make the theme clear.

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Except it isn’t, unless we are to see the theme as the weariness of having to deal with dullards. At least the screenplay skips repeating the speech later.

As brief as this film of two plays is, it ends by squeezing in the beginning of Henry V as well, to reach the closure of Sir John’s story, his death, and mourning of the Boar’s Head crowd. If the film were a half-hour longer, perhaps The Merry Wives of Windsor could also have been crammed in.

Like I said, if you know these Falstaff plays, then this film is well worth the effort, but do grab the Criterion edition. So says your humble 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 Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #41: Omkara [Othello] (2006)

06 Sunday Nov 2016

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41. Omkara [Othello] (2006)

With the exception of The Tempest, the plots of Shakespeare’s plays are not actually original to him. What is original is the exceptional psychological depth that he granted the characters in these plays, and the exquisite language with which he chiseled their psychologies into existence.

So when artists adapt Shakespeare onto film, altering the settings and contexts of Shakespeare’s plays seems to me like a Shakespearean move itself. When actors find new interpretations and new meanings in Shakespeare’s scripts, that is essential to the joy of Shakespeare’s work. The characters and their psychologies become alive, as if for the first time, despite these texts being around for four centuries.

One potentially unsettling move that can make us see the plays anew, however, is to not only discard the setting and the historical context of a play, but Shakespeare’s language, too. Perhaps it’s my own prejudice as an English speaker, but that bold move seems more interesting in foreign films—or perhaps visionary foreign adaptations, such as those by Kurosawa, make me forget the exquisite English that was lost, and let’s me focus on the psychology of the story with a strange new immediacy. The thrill in part emanates from my own ignorance of Japanese or any other language except English, as well as the intrigue of translation, in which meaning is not only lost, but gained as well.

This is precisely how I feel about Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, a retelling of Othello set in a wild country district on the fringes of Indian society.

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The themes and story of Othello play out in rewarding ways, and Omkara actually seems better developed in terms of world-building and characterization.

Omkara is a respected mid-level gangster and assassin who works for Bhaisaab, an organized crime boss who has decided to enter politics. As Bhaisaab prepares to enter Parliament as a way of legitimizing his business, he ceremoniously names Omkara his successor.

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At that time, Omkara nominates Kesu, an American, as his own successor rather than Langda, who has served him faithfully longer; Kesu is popular with college students and can therefore garner votes for Bhaisaab.

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Amidst all this activity, Omkara has stolen Dolly from her wedding to Rajju, drawing the wrath of her father, who is an associate of Bhaisaab, who sides with Omkara when Dolly reveals that she chose to go with Omkara.

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Omkara is a half-caste. He brings Dolly to his family’s home, where his sister greets her sister-in-law to be with great warmth.

We see Langda be slighted by Omkara, and his sociopathic friendship with Rajju develop.

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We see Kesu’s relationship to the beautiful Billo, a popular singer and dancer, is developed.

In Othello, the role of the Duke of Venice is merely procedural. Bianca seems like a romantic cipher, merely procedural, too. Emilia, Iago’s wife, does little except to stupidly empower her husband to destroy the court, and only after it’s too late call foul on the authorities.

Naseeruddin Shah, as the godfatherly Bhaisaab, has a remarkable and likeable gravitas.

Billo, as portrayed by Bipasha Basu and sung by Rekha Bhardwaj, has much more to do than serve as a generic court tart for intrigue.

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The two songs she sings—which allows the musically ecstatic extravagance of Bollywood into what is basically a gritty drama—both advance the plot in direct ways, and point at the dangers of sexuality in this story about the destructive forces of jealousy.

Indu, Omkara’s sister, appears to have a romance with Langda that grants him the ability to set his nefarious plan in motion.

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Indu has more of an equal relationship to Dolly than Emelia could have to Desdemona, and so their emotional bond makes the story that much more powerful. Indu is not as passive as Emilia.

Othello is only a soldier off stage. Omkara is a soldier on screen, which makes his demeanor with Dolly that much more menacing.

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I have spent little time discussing Ajay Devgn as Omkara, Saif Ali Khan as Langda, Kareena Kapoor as Dolly, or Viveik Oberoi as Kesu. The acting all around seems stellar to me, which makes isolating acting performances almost beside the point.

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I cannot say how realistic the setting is for present day India, but the new setting did seem plausible to me, and the overall vision of this relatively new Othello is a remarkable thing. The screenplay by Robin Bhatt, Abhishek Chaubey, and Vishal Bhardwaj does visionary work.

Normally, I balk at films, even Shakespeare films, that run two and a half hours, but Omkara is an exceptional 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.

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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #40: Cymbeline (2014)

25 Sunday Sep 2016

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40. Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline (2014)

With his Hamlet, Michael Almereyda demonstrated some interesting interpretive choices marred by casting a mawkish, mumbling Ethan Hawke as Hamlet, and Ethan Hawke Ethan Hawked the shit out of that shitty film.

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With his Cymbeline, Michael Almereyda demonstrated some astoundingly feeble tawdry interpretive choices marred even further by casting a mawkish, mumbling Ethan Hawke as the scheming Iachimo, and Ethan Hawke, yes, Ethan Hawked the shit out of this even shittier film.

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Cymbeline happens to be among Shakespeare’s oddest plays. It is a comedy straining pretty deeply into tragedy, and involves fairy tale elements, like a magical evil stepmother, and Greek gods, too.

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Cymbeline, the king of ancient Britain, is angered when he finds that his daughter, Imogen, has married some poor fool named Posthumous, and so bans Posthumous, who retreats to Rome. The Queen, meanwhile, is trying to secure her bloodline by getting Imogen, who is her stepdaughter, to marry her biological son with the tragic name of Cloten. The Queen is evil, incidentally. (Shakespeare didn’t draw her out as well as Iago or Richard III, that’s for sure.)

The love plot involves a wager made between the exiled Posthumous and a conniving misogynist named Iachimo, who promises to bring back to Rome proof of Imogen’s infidelity.

Between the strangely developed love plot and the convoluted political plots, a deus ex machina, in this case the god Jupiter, must straighten things out enough for the play to come to a finish. While many of Shakespeare’s stories merely requires competent acting for a thoroughly good experience, Cymbeline requires finesse and insight.

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Unfortunately, Michael Almereyda was directing, and what he was directing was Ethan Hawke’s facial hair, and Ethan Hawke.

This Cymbeline is so bad that it almost makes Almereyda’s Hamlet look good.

Ed Harris was cast as Cymbeline, and in that part, this fine actor is out to lunch. He utters his lines as if pained, as if the words fit tighter into his mouth than his lame leather jacket clung to his aging torso. Milla Jovovich plays the Queen, and her performance teeters between fair and actually good, except that her costuming is silly, as is the conceit of the whole movie.

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The kingdom of Britain is re-imagined as a motorcycle gang dealing meth because that Breaking Bad show was pretty good, right? Let’s just go with that.

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In her pre-Fifty Shades of Gray glory, Dakota Johnson plays Imogen, and gives off the impression of being a rather clean mop that has forgotten where it has left its keys.

Michael Almereyda seems to have fallen in love with shoegazing in the early 1990s, and thought, one could film Shakespeare in that spirit, no?

Had the camera never left Milla Jovovich’s shoes, the film would have been much, much better.

Don’t watch this movie unless you lost a bet. That’s what the rogue says.

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Note: At least one line of this review originated from my first discussion of this film in Shakespearing 35.1.

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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.

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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #37: Hamlet (2000)

28 Sunday Aug 2016

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37. Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)

When it comes to presenting Shakespeare well on film, sometimes it just isn’t enough to be a pretentious twat.

Baz Luhrman has proven that once, and Michael Almereyda has proven that twice, the first time with Hamlet.

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This Hamlet stars a really goofy knit-cap. Underneath it, unfortunately for this movie, was Ethan Hawke’s facial stubble. Even more unfortunately, Ethan Hawke was underneath all that.

Hamlet and his Stupid Hat

Clearly, this is one of those Hamlets where you’ll have to try to watch around the idiot playing Hamlet.

On paper, I should love this postmodern film, which sets Hamlet in New York City, in 2000, in a corporate context: Denmark is a Corporation, run by Hamlet’s uncle and his mother. The family lives in the Elsinore Hotel. Hamlet is a film student, and there is a meta-cinematic dimension to the way this Hamlet is imagined. There is so much potential in these choices.

The rhetoric of Claudius’s speech to Denmark works perfectly in a PR-saturated corporate world.

And Kyle MacLachlan’s Claudius seems grandiose in addressing Bill Murray’s thoughtful Polonius,

Hamlet Bill Murrayand Liev Schreiber’s lucid, powerful Laertes.

And then the scene moves to Hamlet.

Damn.

Ethan Hawke acts with the intensity of a Fruit Roll Up being peeled from plastic.

Hamlet Yuck

Kyle MacLachlin, who I adore, will by the end of the movie seem bewildered to find himself outside of a David Lynch universe. By the final act, his Claudius mostly seems shell-shocked. I could try to rationalize this as a valid aesthetic choice.  Claudius is in shock that his impulsive plan (to kill his brother, to marry his sister-in-law, who he had secretly been in love with while his brother was alive, and gain the CEO-ship of Denmark) actually worked, but has actually brought him little satisfaction.

But so many of the actors look dulled with shock in this movie, or like they are trying to act their way out of a Quaalude haze. Or like they are trying to act with Ethan Hawke.

Hamlet Sam ShepardSam Shepard, another interesting casting choice, theoretically speaking (a Postmodern playwright acting in Shakespeare), plays the ghost of the father of Hamlet, but not persuasively. But we rely on Hamlet to let us know how frightening the ghost is, and Ethan Hawke forgot to wear his knit cap in that scene. Sam Sheperd as King Hamlet’s ghost is an opportunity squandered.

In time, with their contact with Hawke, almost everyone seems to be on the same soporific downers in this film.

Diane Venora portrays Gertrude as a bored socialite. Fine. Sure.

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If only the play were called Polonius. Or Laertes. Or Ophelia.

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Julia Stiles does well as Ophelia, conveying a sense of vulnerability and sensitivity and … peculiar timing. Her Ophelia is struggling to have an identity. She looks nearly as pristine as a doll.

Hamlet Polonius OpheliaShe is being systematically crushed by the characters of Hamlet. Stiles clearly know what her lines mean, and she has to act with the affectless non-acting and occasional ham-acting of Ethan Hawke.

Hamlet Julie Styles and the Horrible Hawke

Besides Hamlet, Ophelia is the other virtuoso role in the play. Odd how Julia Stiles generally emotes well, yet her character has every cause for the stilted, affectless mode of most of the cast, since she is the recipient of so many gazes in this film, and is viewed at times as an outright art object by Hamlet.

Hamlet GazeThat is how Michael Almereyda seems to view humanity, though: not as a collection of human psyches and spirits, but as art objects for him to film doing Shakespeary things.

This Hamlet loves to watch his film footage from film school and other media, and all of it comes off as self-indulgent rubbish, like Hamlet is casually thinking of the movie he would like to make out of the poetry of his soliloquies. In other words, Almereyda interrupts his bad film of Hamlet to show us even more abysmal, shittier films. Such meta-cinematic play requires brilliance, and this film, alas and fuck, is not brilliant.

But clearly Almereyda and Hawke are convinced that they are.

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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.

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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #36: Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

14 Sunday Aug 2016

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36. Charlton Heston’s Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

31 Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s continuation of sorts of Caesar. The triumvirate of Roman leaders, Octavius Caesar, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Marc Antony is on the verge of breaking with Marc Antony since he has lapsed in his Roman duties and gone native with lust in Egypt with Cleopatra. Pompey, son of the Roman leader who was deposed by Julius Caesar, is threatening Rome with a triumvirate of his own.

After the debacle of the film of Julius Caesar, Charlton Heston must have been charged up and mightily disappointed.

Caesar didn’t bomb because of him, after all, but because of Jason Robards. As he was nearing 50 years of age, Heston was reaching the far limit of middle age, and wanted another Shakespearean romp, another period piece, another go.

He proved he could be Mark Antony, so why not film Antony and Cleopatra like a sequel to Julius Caesar?

Why not direct the film himself?

Why not adapt the script with someone named Federico De Urrutia?

Antony and Cleopatra Poster

These are not the worst ideas, but Heston overlooked two major things with this film: In A&C, Antony does not have anything like the funeral oration from Caesar, and just as Robards, a capable actor, somehow managed to capsize Caesar, casting the wrong Cleopatra would ruin this new film.

Antony and Cleopatra 5One needs a Cleopatra who can persuade you that Marc Antony is not entirely wrong to cause civil war in Rome, and bring shame to two fine Roman noblewomen, over a single woman who was not his wife. One needs a Cleopatra who is imaginative, erotic, powerful, and mercurial.

For reasons passing understanding, Hildegard Neil played Cleoptra as a hysterical, yet somehow blandly blonde harpy: a bad impression of Elizabeth Taylor, perhaps.

Antony and Cleopatra 2I say this with no joy, as Neil is married to Brian Blessed, who could kill me easily, and frankly if that is how my life ended, I would have no regrets except for the reason for his provocation. Also, Neil spent one season performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company, so perhaps this almost unwatchable performance is connected to whatever mysterious curse befell Jason Robards in Caesar.

Sweet Jebus, there is just so much Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.

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Where was I?

The script has some excellent moments, I must say.

When Marc Antony returns to Rome to meet with Octavius Caesar in Act II, the dialogue takes place in a small arena while two gladiators, providing a bold subtext, battle one another.

Antony and Cleopatra 3When Enobarbus suggests a bacchanal for the peace brokered between Octavius Caesar, Marc Antony, and Pompey, a pantomime of Antony’s relationship to Cleopatra is enacted in dance. Antony himself, drunk, seems to enjoy the spectacle, especially when she falls into Octavius’s lap.

Antony and Cleopatra 10The dancer playing Cleopatra in this play-within-a-play would likely have made a better Cleopatra.

If Robert Vaughn seems to run away with his scenes as Casca in Caesar, Freddie Jones runs away with his scenes as Pompey. (I know him from David Lynch movies, such as The Elephant Man). Character actors seem to frolic well with Shakespeare.

Antony and Cleopatra 9John Castle is both likeable and creepy as the ever even-keeled Octiavius.

Antony and Cleopatra 11Roger Delgado, who looks like Dennis Hopper, is wonderful as the soothsayer.

Antony and Cleopatra 6Oh, right, Charlton Heston is in this thing.

Antony and Cleopatra 6 HestonAs Antony, whose identity is being torn apart by love, Heston is underwhelming, if not actually bad. There’s not much chemistry between him and Neil, obviously.

This looks like a low budget film with some amazing locations, so there is a dreamy quality here. One gets the sense that Egypt and Rome and everyplace else is very far apart, and everyone must be tired in beautiful scenery.

Antony and Cleopatra 12The sea battle scenes late in the film feature a lot of super-impositions, and apparently uses leftover footage from Ben Hur. It’s kind of fun to watch.

Antony and Cleopatra 4Then Marc Antony and Cleopatra argue.

Then the armies fight on land.

And then Antony will wound himself before being captured, and take about five hours of screentime to die. And then Cleopatra kills herself, but not without a metric fuck-ton of squeaky dialogue first.

My friend Don Royster insisted that this movie was so bad that I simply had to watch it.

For all its flaws (like Hildegard Neil, and Hildegard Neil), Charlton Heston’s Antony and Cleopatra is still much better than Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet, or Michael Almereyda’s Shakespearean botchery.

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1flipJohn 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.

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21st Century Brontë #7: The Unlikeable, Likeable Character

28 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Bronte, Uncategorized

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21st Century Brontë #7 by Brontë Betterncourt

The Unlikeable, Likeable Character

Late last year I started a Dungeon & Dragons 5e campaign. The decision occurred around 2:30-3:00 A.M.

Dungeons and Dragons

Previously, my D&D experience ranged from on and off participation in my friend 3.5th edition, and the inkling of participation in my other friend’s Pathfinder edition. Both campaigns had separate rules and overarching stories. One was successful enough to last two years (and still running), while the other ended five months or so after launch, when an arrow impaled a bird crucial to the plot of our entire story, leaving our Dungeon Master speaking in tongues.

Learning an entirely new edition of game mechanics, lore, and creatures, and compiling them into my own homebrew campaign sounded like a totally sane thing to do.

So far, nothing has exploded. I’ve had the mass slaughter of innocent carnies and ceilings collapse onto unsuspecting players. One character nearly drowned in sewer water. There was also a debate involving the consumption of sentient beings and malicious rats.

I can only take credit for the first one.

I hope that my players’ characters make it to the end of the campaign. If played well, they’ll develop within the chaotic world of my fictional continent and its accompanying realms. But as it stands, a few of the players have considered abandoning one of their own. The character is only 13 years old, but has already attempted to steal, lie, and cook the corpses of those slain in battle. She also killed a highwayman after he gave up fighting due to being too injured.

I applaud my players for staying true to their characters, but they must also adhere to the rules of the game. For me, the DM acts as a referee. I believe our job is to stand back and allow the players to interact with the surrounding world, intervening only to roleplay and set scenes. My enjoyment results from their interaction with the story I’ve created.

But what do you do about a character who may not cooperate with the others? Is there merit to keeping a morally corrupted character around, and what does that add to everyone else’s experience?

Can an unlikeable, likeable character persist in Dungeons & Dragons?

It’s a mouthful to say, but the phrase stands for characters that we find fascinating in their universe, but would not associate with in real life. Think Eric Cartman from South Park: an overall fucked up kid. In just one episode he coerces the town to take down the Jews, leading droves of citizens down the street Third Reich style. He’s clad in the signature Hitler-stache and uniform, shouting broken commands in German, which the citizens blindly parrot. This scene is so outrageous that I find it hysterical. If I knew this kid in real life, I’d consider throwing him into oncoming traffic.

Cartman

The problem then rests in the fact that an unlikeable likeable character in art works in a realm separate from our own. With D&D, we aren’t given that separation, nor a window into that character’s thought processes (otherwise that would be meta-gaming, which is highly frowned upon). We have to directly interact with this character’s socially unacceptable traits, hampering our ability to appreciate this character’s nuances and motivations through mere observation. Considering that the other players know basic ethics, I doubt they’d laugh at an unlikeable likeable character forming a racist-fueled regime in the forests.

Well, the character in question is still young. Though her actions aren’t acceptable, they could be excusable to an extent. What is unlikeable now may change through a pivotal event in the campaign that she could ultimately grow and change from. The easiest fix would be a redemption arc.

Or what if the character didn’t follow this predictable arc?

Maybe the character could balance her questionable morals, remaining good enough to remain with the party, while engaging in shady dealings with demons or devils? If done well, she wouldn’t need to apologize. Instead, she ends up betraying the party, and one of the final battles consist of everyone fighting her?

But this brings us back to my original concern: Does it matter if a character is complex if we don’t like that character enough to follow her thought-processes? Can likeability be forsaken for writing an unapologetic character?

One of the reasons why I find an unlikeable-likeable character appealing is how unrelenting they are. Eric Cartman is still capable of coincidental good if there is personal gain for him. But the character is unapologetic in how outrageous his actions are, and if his character were to suddenly become good, I would feel cheated.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we have a character whose actions are deemed good, but her personality is not one that people would gravitate to. In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is sent into a walled off micro ecosystem where only one person can leave alive. We automatically root for her because she’s the narrator, but her personality isn’t an easy one to like. She’s sacrifices herself to keep her sister from entering the Games, but toward others she is emotionally walled off. The gifts sent from sponsors are attributed to the more likeable personalities working behind the scenes on her behalf, not because she’s charismatic. And sometimes her bluntness beckons a laugh from the reader.

The Hunger Games

Katniss doesn’t kill many people, and she doesn’t take pleasure in the act. But murder is made redeemable due to her dire circumstances and the psychological trauma that she never fully recovers from. I can see why she’s likeable, or at the very least respected. But what if The Hunger Games was written in a point of view from one of the wealthier districts? We see the nature of the tributes from District 1 and 2 taking glee in murdering others, but we can attribute that behavior from how they were raised. They were brought up to fight, to see the Games like the Romans do gladiatorial combat, and returning home victorious bestows a great honor on the family.

The Hunger Games Katniss

We wouldn’t even know anything about Katniss if we followed their narration, instead seeing her as a chick who’s good with a bow and arrow, standing between them and glory.

Would we root for this point of view? Quite possibly.

Humans in general are curious. We can’t ignore a car collision; it’s more eerie to not see any bystanders ogling at public tragedy. Some may walk away, and maybe those individuals wouldn’t be interested in reading about morally ambiguous characters. But through these incidents, and through these characters we’re able to spectate these grey areas without clouding our own values. We don’t have to feel guilty since we have that safe distance between Cartman spewing profanities, or teenage carnage. Instead, we can gain a better understanding on how the minds of these characters work. That doesn’t mean we agree with their actions, but we can further understand the inner workings of the mind, and how others can possibly believe that what they’re doing is right.

Let’s go old school for a moment: Shakespeare’s Othello. If we’re discussing characters that we would hate to know in real life but enjoy witnessing from a distance, Iago definitely fits this description. He is the driving force of this story, manipulating and killing to undo Othello’s life. To Iago, everyone else is … collateral damage. Speculations of Iago’s motives span from the bitterness of not receiving a promotion, to fears he has been cuckolded, to even homoerotic desires, but by the end of the play, nothing has been confirmed. The lack of an answer for why he’s so hell-bent on ruining Othello’s life is mind-boggling. We want to ask, why would any sane person do such a thing?

Iago

Why do we need an explanation?

I believe the problem rests in the fact that Iago is an extremely likeable character, one who makes us uncomfortable for liking him. The stage or screen lights up every time he appears, and he played the parts of friend, of confidant so well that I forgot about his treachery until his soliloquies reminded me that he is evil. It’s like he’s the director of the play, reminding us of what is really happening because he knows he’s that damn good as an actor that he might fool us along with everyone else in Othello’s coterie.

I find him the most interesting character of this play. Everyone else is clear cut with their emotions and motivations, but Iago exists outside of our comprehension. Even at the very end when Othello asks him why he would do such despicable things, Iago refuses to speak.

A personality so unapologetic could definitely work in a medium such as D&D. Unless such players verbalize their thoughts in roleplay, we don’t know their intentions. Players who are ready to trust everyone unless proven otherwise are in for a rude awakening if they come across a man like Iago, and the pain of his betrayal would continue to sting long after the wounds were inflicted. Which, if we’re considering a D&D Homebrew campaign as an art medium, sends a powerful message of smearing good and evil boundaries. The blow would be more direct since the players are directly interacting with said character, instead of viewing them from a distance.

So I’ll have to see what the character in question will do, though I might not rely on her for a performance of Iago’s magnitude.

I may just draw that inspiration for myself.

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21st Cen Bronté

Brontë Bettencourt (Episode 34) graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelors in English Creative Writing. When she’s not writing or working, she is a full time Dungeon Master and Youtube connoisseur.

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

06 Sunday Dec 2015

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

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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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1flip

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.

Shakespearing #37: The Tempest

21 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by in Shakespearing

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Shakespearing #37 by David Foley

The Tempest

The Drink: Dark and Stormy. Photo by Amy Watkins.

The Drink: Dark and Stormy. Photo by Amy Watkins.

Sometimes it takes a production that doesn’t work to make you understand how a play does. As I re-read The Tempest, I wondered guiltily if I’d ever much liked it. Coming after Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, it felt tepid. Where was the drama, the deep emotion? The next night I went to see the new Shakespeare in the Park production, directed by Michael Greif, and irritably doubted if the play works at all.

Part of the problem was language. Nobody in the production—including, weirdly, New York Shakespeare Festival stalwart Sam Waterston—has been encouraged to think about it, and a good deal of Prospero’s magic is a magic of words. If anything makes him seem like a self-portrait of the playwright, it’s the way he builds a world of words and makes everyone play a part in it.

So the island is a created world, and it’s created through language, and you need to pay attention to that. On the other hand, with a lot of Shakespeare you can get away with short-shrifting the language. Even if you mess it up, Shakespeare the dramatist will pull you through.

But, as I say, there isn’t much drama here. Greif tries to deal with that by pumping up what he can find. Pitched intensities of speech keep burying the language, and the dialogue is underscored with kettle drums and flashes of light in an understandable but misguided hope that drama will happen if he just keeps hitting it hard enough.

It occurs to me that pretty much the opposite tack is needed for The Tempest. You should take your cue from its most famous line: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” This is not Midsummer, though; it’s a daylight dream. Prospero is insistent that everything needs to be concluded by “the sixt hour.” The play makes a dream of the drama of our waking life. Even the drama of grief is transformed in Ariel’s lovely song: “Those are pearls that were his eyes.”

The play is built on such dream-like images. Greif leaves out an important one. In the final scene, Miranda and Ferdinand are revealed playing chess. Chess is a game of rank and stratagems. It’s the world in small, if you understand the world and all our experiences of it (even love) as inextricably bound to skirmishes for power and advantage. The island, too, writes that world small. Far from civilization, it helplessly recreates structures of obeisance and aggression. Caliban, the least civilized character in the play, only needs to see a pair of drunks on the beach to create a little principality of them.

And yet The Tempest longs for a world innocent of all that. Gonzalo conjures this world in his vision of a “golden age” without “treason, felony,/Sword, pike, knife, gun” where “nature should bring forth” in “all abundance,/To feed my innocent people.” And Miranda and Ferdinand’s wedding pageant is an idyll of peace and plenty, of “turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,/And flat meads thatched with stover.” Miranda is radically innocent, always encountering the world as if for the first time. What loss of innocence does that chess game represent?

Caliban represents another kind of innocence. From a position beyond the reach of civilization, he calls into question its most cherished structures. As does the play. Perhaps The Tempest is less a drama than a diorama, framing all our structures and stratagems as a dream and hinting at the dream’s dark irrationality. As Prospero says of Caliban at the end of the play, “This thing of darkness/I acknowledge mine.”

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David Foley

David Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.