William Shakespeare Lives In Modern Screen Adaptations
Despite some well-noted attacks in recent years, especially from those quarters that consider him as just another dead, white, European male writer, William Shakespeare continues to show an admirable ability to endure.
He’s had more makeovers than Richard Nixon.
Much of this is due to Kenneth Branagh, the modern master of anything Shakespearean. Since 1989, when he directed and starred in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s history “Henry V,” he’s directed two others - the comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993), the tragedy “Hamlet” (1996) - and starred in a third (he was Iago in Oliver Parker’s 1995 version of “Othello”).
But Branagh hasn’t been alone. Including Trevor Nunn’s “Twelfth Night,” which was just released on video (see capsule review below), there have been no less than seven Shakespeare adaptations since “Henry V” - eight if you go all the way back to Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 film “Ran,” which essentially is a retelling of “King Lear.”
Here is a rundown on each:
Henry V (1989): This is the film that introduced Branagh to the world. As the boy-king Henry, he brings a contemporary meaning to every line he utters. And yet Shakespeare purists can find much to like, too.
Much Ado About Nothing (1993): Maybe the weakest of the lot, this comedy benefits whenever Branagh is paired off against his comic foil, then-wife Emma Thompson. Yet by casting the likes of Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves, Branagh cast the whole production into the realm of curiosity piece.
Othello (1995): Not much better than Branagh’s “Much Ado,” this heavily edited study of murderous jealousy was designed by director Parker as some sort of erotic tragedy. While Branagh is brilliant as Iago, his very performance overshadows the work of Laurence Fishburne as the lead character and French actress Irene Jacob as Desdemona.
Richard III (1995): Richard Loncraine updated the play to the 1930s, and he benefits greatly from Ian McKellan as the title character usurping a Nazi-like kingdom.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (1996): Baz Luhrman took a chance here, directing this adaptation of the tragic love story as if he were making a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. But it works. It’s outrageous, over the top, chrome-plated, dazzling and brilliant all at once.
Hamlet (1996): Audaciously taking on the whole of this four-hour play, the greatest single drama ever written, Branagh achieves a level of cinematic incandescence that is visually stunning while still true to Shakespeare’s intent.
Looking for Richard (1996): What could have been simply a vanity piece, an actor’s search for Shakespeare, ends up in Al Pacino’s hands as an entertaining look at how to attack one of the great English playwright’s most difficult plays.
In the end, it seems obvious, doesn’t it? The Bard still lives.
The week’s releases:
Twelfth Night
***
Another Shakespeare adaptation, and another cross-dressing comedy, this latest treat from England is less laugh-filled than in some more recent Elizabethan efforts. But that doesn’t take away from its obvious quality. Imogen Stubbs is fine in the lead, playing a young woman who, following the apparent death of her brother in a shipwreck, adopts his identity to avoid trouble in a threatening country. She falls in with a lovesick count (Toby Stephens), then falls in love with him at the same time the count’s romantic interest (Helena Bonham Carter) falls in love with her. It’s typical Shakespeare, with puns and other wordplay galore, and director Trevor Nunn has dressed it with due respect. While it has none of the contemporary energy of more recent Shakespeare adaptations such as “Richard III” and “Romeo & Juliet,” it is a good example of traditional Shakespeare taken straight from the museum shelves. Also starring, Ben Kingsley and Nigel Hawthorne. Rated PG
In Love and War
**
There’s a simple plot at work here: While recuperating from his wounds, which occur while he foolishly tries to experience front-line action in World War I, a young Red Cross ambulance driver named Ernest Hemingway (Chris O’Donnell) falls in love with the woman (Sandra Bullock) who nurses him back to health. Director Richard Attenborough uses his grand style to make more of this slight story, which is supposedly based on real events, than it can bear. Both O’Donnell and Bullock are good, with O’Donnell capturing the adolescent type of arrogance that a youthful Hemingway might have worn like a medal. For her part, Bullock turns in a solid performance as an older woman who, against her better judgment, falls for a half-formed man. Above all else, though, the film has a problem in defining the very notion of love: If, in fact, the nurse does “love” this cocky pup enough to want to marry him, she’s in severe need of therapy. Rated PG-13
Scream
**
Wes Craven, whose early career involved his making some of the sickest films of his generation (“Last House on the Left,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” etc.), tries to do a parody of the psycho-in-the house genre. It follows the form, with a masked serial killer stalking the residents of a small town, but it never becomes what it so wants to be, which is a lucid commentary on the form. Drew Barrymore has a brief role, which proves that she can at least scream well, but Neve Campbell (television’s “Party of Five”) is the actual lead. Also starring, Courtney Cox (“Friends”), the phenom-of-the-moment Skeets Ulrich and David Arquette. Rated R
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