Shakespeare

[Karl Henning]

Am I only one who prefers Branagh's Hamlet flick to Laurence Olivier's? It helps that Branagh actually filmed pretty much every word of the play and goes so hilariously over-the-top in his acting that it is awesome to watch every second of it. I think it is the best Shakespeare film of all time.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but I love the Branagh, while I do not believe I have seen the entirety of the Olivier.

[Brian]

I love all the Branagh Shakespeare films, but Hamlet the least - the cheesy handling of the Ghost bothers me, and of course there is the time you need to invest to watch the movie. Whereas Much Ado only has one major problem - Michael Keaton's misguided performance - and Henry V is perfection.

[Karl Henning]

I have no quarrel with your liking Henry V and Much Ado better even than the Hamlet   

[(poco) Sforzando]

I love all the Branagh Shakespeare films, but Hamlet the least - the cheesy handling of the Ghost bothers me, and of course there is the time you need to invest to watch the movie. Whereas Much Ado only has one major problem - Michael Keaton's misguided performance - and Henry V is perfection.

I wish I liked Branagh's Shakespeare more than I do; I don't know them all, but even the Much Ado (the prince is coming! the prince is coming! everybody take a bath for 20 minutes!) seems to me inadequate despite Emma Thompson's pitch-perfect performance. The one Branagh I like unreservedly is his Henry V. I suppose I prefer B's Hamlet to Olivier's, but that's not saying much. My favorite Much Ado by far is the film version from the NY Shakespeare Festival with Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes, easily available at Amazon. The Joss Wheldon is also pretty good.

As for Hamlets on film, the only one I truly like is the film of Richard Burton's 1964 Broadway performance direted by Gielgud, with a superb Polonius from Hume Cronyn. The Jacobi BBC is pretty good too. If you can find the Burton for a decent price, grab it; used copies start at $85 on Amazon these days.

Other good Shakespeare on film, IMO: Orson Welles as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight. The Zeffirelli Romeo. A superb Taming of the Shrew in commedia dell'arte style starring Mark Singer (yes, the Beastmaster). Brando and James Mason in Julius Caesar. The Peter Brooks Lear, and the filmed stage performance starring James Earl Jones.

Some good Shakespearean adaptations: Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and Ran, based on Macbeth and Lear respectively. Sherwood Hu's astonishing Prince of the Himalayas, a version of Hamlet set in Tibet, with major changes to the plot. (Download here:
http://films.myfilmblog.com/req.php?req=static.php&page=prince-of-the-himalayas)

Some good films about performing Shakespeare include Al Pacino's Looking for Richard, about casting and performing Richard III. And better still, the superb Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, about a struggling Canadian Shakespeare festival, one 6-episode season each on Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. Again easily available on Amazon, with 159 out of 177 reviewers giving it 5 stars. I'd give it 6.

[Karl Henning]

Interesting, Larry, thanks.

[SimonNZ]

To mark the passing of the fine actor Roger Rees I watched the Trevor Nunn production of The Comedy Of Errors, in which he stars alongside Judi Dench and Francesca Annis. I've owned the dvd for a while but had put off watching it because I generally find the play silly or slapstick - but here they struck just the right tone and to my surprise it was a proper hoot from start to finish. Recommended.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks for the suggestion, Simon!

[(poco) Sforzando]

I wish I liked Branagh's Shakespeare more than I do. . . .

I remember writing here some years ago that I thought Branagh's "Hamlet" was "ghastly"; that judgment was no doubt excessive, as I gave it another viewing a few weeks ago. There are some good things in it: if I had to pick one success above all, it would be Charlton Heston's Player-King. And it's good to see the whole thing uncut (even though that really means a conflation of Quarto 2 and the Folio); I was so delighted to finally hear the "boy players" sequence in II:ii that I repeated it three times.

But an uncut "Hamlet" proves problematic in performance: we know that by law, plays could not start in Shakespeare's London before 2 PM, our play could not be performed uncut in under 4 hours, and there is evidence that the usual running time of a play was 2-2.5 hours. There are also several printed editions of plays, such as Ben Jonson's very long "Bartholomew Fair," that indicate they provide a fuller text than was expected to be performed on stage. Anyone interested in the issues is welcome to consult Lukas Erne's "Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist," the most original and compelling contribution to Shakespearean scholarship I've encountered in years, but the takeaway is that a full "Hamlet" is unlikely to have been performed at the Globe any time during Shakespeare's lifetime. (Which means the standard directorial practice of cutting the longer plays has validity: the question becomes what to cut, and how to cut without damaging the action. I once saw a "Hamlet" where all references to the possibly demonic nature of the ghost were excised; determined not to be outdone in stupidity, the most recent production I saw just got rid of the Ghost completely.)

However, I digress. One thing I find particularly offensive in Branagh's film is the suggestion that Hamlet and Ophelia had sexual relations; she insists early in the play that they did not, which is no proof in itself, but there is no supporting evidence that they did other than a song Ophelia sings in her madness. Branagh's casting also has such a mix of styles, and is so obviously designed to showcase his "stars," that it becomes muddled. And the huge Blenheim Castle just gets in the way, particularly in the final duel scene, where Branagh seems to want to break every staircase in the place.

But the worst thing about the film is Branagh himself, and especially his soliloquies. He races through all the soliloquies at breakneck speed, never pausing after sentences to help shape their structures. As the soliloquies are the heart of the character, it is disturbing to hear such uninflected line-readings from a presumably trained Shakespearean actor.

[(poco) Sforzando]

To mark the passing of the fine actor Roger Rees I watched the Trevor Nunn production of The Comedy Of Errors, in which he stars alongside Judi Dench and Francesca Annis. I've owned the dvd for a while but had put off watching it because I generally find the play silly or slapstick - but here they struck just the right tone and to my surprise it was a proper hoot from start to finish. Recommended.

Despite the clunky verse, it really is such a cleverly designed piece that Harold Bloom believes it was written somewhat later than the date often assigned. (That is, it is often considered Shakespeare's first play, but it is much stronger than "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," which has the unconvincing "conversion" of Proteus near the end.) The last time I saw it, a production at Hofstra University near New York City, I think it worked exceedingly well for what it was trying to do.

[SimonNZ]

^I liked Richard Briers' more sinister-undertoned Polonius in the Branagh Hamlet, especially the scene with Depardieu - really dislike it when he's played more commonly as bumbling comic relief, and you can only wonder how he came to be offered such a job. But otherwise I largely agree with your assessment of the film. Its useful and perfectly watchable, but in so many ways a missed opportunity to create something at least cinematically definitive.

Have you seen Branagh's As You Like It? I need to return to it as I stopped after I got annoyed at the ninja-assassin opening. But I've been told by a variety of people that it actually proves to be very good in the end.

[(poco) Sforzando]

^I liked Richard Briers' more sinister-undertoned Polonius in the Branagh Hamlet, especially the scene with Depardieu - really dislike it when he's played more commonly as bumbling comic relief, and you can only wonder how he came to be offered such a job. But otherwise I largely agree with your assessment of the film. Its useful and perfectly watchable, but in so many ways a missed opportunity to create something at least cinematically definitive.

Have you seen Branagh's As You Like It? I need to return to it as I stopped after I got annoyed at the ninja-assassin opening. But I've been told by a variety of people that it actually proves to be very good in the end.

Don't know the AYLI. (Coincidentally, I saw a very nice community college production only a week ago.) Briers is indeed fine; also good in taking the same approach was Hume Cronyn in the 1964 Richard Burton production directed by Gielgud. Along the "sinister" Polonius line, some scholars have argued that the play hints he was an accomplice to Claudius in murdering Hamlet's father.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Derek Jacobi does a great job in portraying Claudius. It is not an easy job to make someone who killed his brother sympathetic. But Jacobi nails it, of course helped by Shakespeare's magnificent empathizing text. In Shakespeare there are not many completely unsympathetic characters. From those plays of his I've read two possible exceptions could be "Honest" Iago from Othello and Richard III. But they are so layered characters that it's hard to tell, really. Of course, there are many more works of his unexplored by me.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Don't know the AYLI.

I got this in the mail just now and am trying to get through it. Suffice it to say Branagh seems to have lost all shame; it's 127 minutes long, about as long as the full text of the play, yet it is cut to shreds, abysmally acted, and slow, slow, slow. It's as if Branagh and his producer got together and one of them said, "Hey! I have a really stupid idea! let's put the forest of Arden in 19th-century Japan!" "Hey! that makes absolutely no sense! let's do it! these idiots will see the Branagh name, they won't know the difference, and they'll think it's just great!"

After the first hour trudging through this disaster, I still haven't the slightest idea why this was set in Japan, or why a kabuki performance is ambushed at the start by ninja warriors, other than to use a sumo who speaks nothing and just grunts to play the wrestler Charles.

ETA: My God, this is interminable. It's like walking through sludge. It's not remotely funny. It's all pretty forest pictures, birds, sheep, and a non-stop pseudo-Debussy score. After what seems like hours, I've finally reached Act Five. And the ultimate pratfall: he shows the lion attacking Orlando. Tell, don't show. I can only hope he doesn't tackle The Winter's Tale.

[Brian]

I've heard a rumor that Criterion will soon (year or so) release Welles' Othello and Chimes at Midnight. Only a rumor, nothing confirmed.

Wow, that AYLI sounds abominable.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I've heard a rumor that Criterion will soon (year or so) release Welles' Othello and Chimes at Midnight. Only a rumor, nothing confirmed.

Wow, that AYLI sounds abominable.

I'm not a great fan of Welles's Othello (even less of his Macbeth), but Chimes was terrific. Fortunately a DVD is already available. Actually my favorite "Welles Shakespeare" is the Richard Linklater-directed "Me and Orson Welles," starring a wonderful Christian McKay as Welles and a quite good Zac Efron as "me."

I'm taking an intermission, my third, from the AYLI. Can't imagine what it must be like to sit through this in a theater. (Like books, some films you can't bear to put down, some you can't bear to take up.) In truth, the second half is better than the first, if only because it couldn't get any worse, and because more of Shakespeare is preserved. But I've seen enough beautifully acted stage versions of AYLI (best of all, Rebecca Hall, in a marvelous production directed by her famous father Sir Peter) to know it's not the play's fault.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, that was a waste of a good two hours. BTW, no play would benefit more from a truly HIP Shakespeare (i.e., young boys playing the female roles) than this one, which depicts (as the Sparks Notes author gets just right) "the dizzying intermingling of homosexual and heterosexual affections that govern a man [that is, a physical boy] pretending to be a woman [Rosalind] pretending to be a man [Ganymede] pretending to be a woman [Rosalind] in the hopes of seducing a man [Orlando]," and includes lines like these:

- TOUCHSTONE (to Rosalind and Celia): Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.
CELIA: By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

- And ROSALIND: If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me.

These days, of course, one is more likely to see women playing male roles. Just last week I saw a marathon of the "Henriad" in NY where both Bolingbroke and Prince Hal were played by women, and I recently saw an all-female "Othello." But for all that I wish to see more opportunities for women in theater, there's something to be said for going back to original practice. (I have seen an all-male "Twelfth Night," but the Viola and Olivia were taking by mature actors. That's not the idea: they should be young teenage boys, preferably with high voices. Chris Colfer might still do, or a 16-year-old Justin Bieber if he could act.)

[SimonNZ]

I actually had another go at the Branagh AYLI, after mentioning it upthread, but, like yourself, got frustrated again and had to quit, for the moment, at the halfway mark. Mainly because Bryce Dallas Howard and Romola Garai - who elsewhere have proven fine actresses - are here made to play Rosalind and Celia as something near to a couple of high-school twits.

My theory (not backed up by any reading) is that Branagh was pressured into doing another Shakespeare when that's no longer where his interest lies, has come to resent being seen as just "the Shakespeare guy" (at least by the studios), and was determined to show he can make different sorts of pictures at the same time - so they would come to realise he might be worthy of directing, erm, Thor, say.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I actually had another go at the Branagh AYLI, after mentioning it upthread, but, like yourself, got frustrated again and had to quit, for the moment, at the halfway mark. Mainly because Bryce Dallas Howard and Romola Garai - who elsewhere have proven fine actresses - are here made to play Rosalind and Celia as something near to a couple of high-school twits.

Indeed, and you might say there were a number of other fine actors wasted by misdirection. Rosalind - in reality Shakespeare's sharpest and most perceptive comic woman - is as far from a twit as you can imagine. But as it happens, I saw Romola Garai in a fine revival of Tom Stoppard's "Indian Ink" a couple of years ago in New York.

To redress the balance: oddly enough, Branagh directed a very interesting and original version of Mozart's "Magic Flute" (in English, and set in WW1) that I would recommend to anyone not a Mozartean purist. But he's still doing Shakespeare at least on stage; he brought his Macbeth here two years ago and man, it was bad. (Then again, most Macbeths I've seen recently on stage - Patrick Stewart, Ethan Hawke, Branagh - have all been lousy. The best was by John Douglas Thompson, who was also excellent in Marlowe's Tamburlaine last year. Call it the curse of the Scottish Play. My theory is that the best way to do the Witches is to play them not as cackling harridans but as highly dignified prophets of doom - that's what they are, really: the equivalent of Greek oracles.)

[SimonNZ]

But he's still doing Shakespeare at least on stage; he brought his Macbeth here two years ago and man, it was bad.

Was that the same production as the National Theatre Live performance I saw at the cinema? I thought the staging of that had many interesting elements, in their use of the converted church, using most of the long aisle space for performance with the audience on each side facing each other, and the mud packed floor that was constantly rained on. But oh boy Alex Kingston (who again is fine elsewhere) was far outside of her abilities as Lady Macbeth.

I'm looking forward to the Michael Fassbender film, which should finally be released later this year.

[kishnevi]

or a 16-year-old Justin Bieber if he could act.)

Appropriately, the most suitable response is a line uttered by Touchstone
There's much virtue in an if