Tag Archives: Shakespeare

‘Hamnet’: Shakespeare in grief

27 Nov

The mere mention of the name Shakespeare and the conversation gets serious real fast. Gone for more than 400 years, the man has achieved transcendent cultural, intellectual and pop icon status. Who today could lay claim to such four centuries from now – Taylor Swift? Akira Kurosawa based the bulk of his samurai westerns on Shakespearean tragedies. “The Forbidden Planet” (1956), “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999) and “My Own Private Idaho” (1991) are just a handful of the many pop films based on the works by the Bard of Avon. The man himself was reimagined on screen in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and the lesser-known Kenneth Branagh outing, “All is True” (2018). Add to that “Hamnet,” a portrait of grief directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao and bolstered by strong performances from leads Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley.

It’s a heartfelt effort that despite the talent takes too long to find its wings. Drawn from Maggie O’Farrell’s much-ballyhooed 2020 novel – the author contributes to the script too – there’s a lot of emotion poured out onto the screen, seeking our sympathies without necessarily earning them. Much is obfuscated too, to the point of annoyance: The name Shakespeare is held back, so if you did not know the basis for the film, for much of it you’d see just an earnest young man (Mescal’s Will) lovestruck by his neighbor’s daughter (Buckley’s Agnes), a peculiar woman with witchy tendencies from a higher social strata.

Our smitten scribe is a tutor with scant financial resources, further saddled by the debts of his overbearing and quick-to-judge father. Money and class loom as impediments, yet Will professes his ardor with such conviction and eloquence that he and Agnes are allowed to wed (it helps that she is older and quirky to the point that her brother and father fear her becoming a spinster). They have three children – including twins Judith and the Hamnet of the film’s title.

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Ophelia

27 Jun

A new feminist slant on a bard classic

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A feminist reenvisioning of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Ophelia” assumes the POV of Hamlet’s betrothed (the heroine of the title) and boldly begins with a “Sunset Boulevard”-esque opener; us hovering above the protagonist’s body floating in a body of water as their voiceover from beyond tells us how they got there and why. It’s an alluring grip, but not necessarily one that holds as tight as that 1950 classic starring Willam Holden and Gloria Swanson.

Based on the young adult novel by Lisa Klein, the perspective pivot might tweak some Shakespearean loyalists but for others, it may also pique bard interest—after all look what Tom Stoppard did with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” The burden of success for such a high dive attempt ultimately comes in the execution, and while Claire McCarthy’s production is big, lush and gorgeously shot (by Denison Baker) it doesn’t quite stick it. On the plus side, the tragic tale of deadly familial parlor games finishes with some smart, surprising twists and the whole feminine slant feels timely and appropriate given the state of sexual politics and equality these days.

The casting too is something of a minor coup, with Daisy Ridley (Rey in the current “Star Wars” trilogy) donning auburn locks in the title role, Naomi Watts as Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude and Clive Owen as the snaky manipulator Claudius. George MacKay add a fresh face in the role of the Danish prince though it’s mostly in the corners of the frame, though the scenes with Ridley—and there’s not enough of them—posses the kind of rich ripe chemistry found in the Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmann productions of “Romeo and Juliet.” Though the role of Claudious is deepened with more backstory here, Owen is mostly held in check by his character’s singular duplicitous mode. Ridley and Watt on the other hand, are gifted more full bodied characters that expand, bond together and lift what threatens to become a production over leaden with plot and expectation. To that end, MacCarthy and her screenwriter Semi Chellas (“Mad Men”) do keep all the pieces successfully (if precariously) in the air, and handle the flips from the known to the new, with respectful diligence.

Overall “Ophelia” delivers bewitching intrigue and charm. It takes bold chances and mostly succeeds—a big part of that being Ridley’s subtly sizzle. Her Ophelia’s not too far from Rey in “The Force Awakens” (heroines of ‘common’ origin forced to the center of an epic conflict spurred by greed and tyranny) but in a Shakespearean yarn you can’t hide behind massive CGI FX and Yoda speak, her range and confidence will have casting agents think of her for—just about anything. McCarthy (“The Waiting City”) too should likely see her stock rise, the composition is assuredly sharp and authentic, though the slight modernistic infusion into the period score, distracts more than it adds anything new.

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Shadow

10 May

‘Shadow’: Things aren’t just black and white for dynasties preparing a bloody red rematch

By Tom Meek
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Before Chinese director Zhang Yimou got into wuxia-infused dynasty dramas (“House of Flying Daggers” and “Hero”) he wove provocative, intimate tales of personal struggle (“Raise the Red Lantern,” “The Story of Qui Ju” and “Not One Less”) that edged into the political (one, “To Live” was banned in China). In 2016, perhaps rattled by the ascent of Trump in American politics, he jumped the shark with the “The Great Wall” a cockamamie actioner with Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe checking in as Western avengers of sorts saving China from a horde of ravaging monsters. Yeah. The good news – and it’s relative, mind you – is that Zhang’s latest, “Shadow,” marks a return to form, even if the plot is something of writhing nest of snake to untangle.

Somewhere in an ancient “great walled” country (clearly China, but fictitious, nonetheless) two clans remain at uneasy odds after ganging up to conquer a vying third. The Yan and Pei dynasties decide to settle who rules the lands by setting forth their best warrior in a winner-take-all contest. During that cage match the great legionary for the Pei, Zi Yu (Chao Deng) is wounded severely, but all the Yan take in victory is an impregnable mountainside city.

If that already feels like a lot to chew on, it’s just the backstory. In the now, the Pei king (Ryan Zheng, serving up a wonderful rendering of feverish instability) is something of a delusional fop who favors political appeasement by marrying off his sister (Xiaotong Guan) to the young Yan prince (Lei Wu). It’s an idea she despises, and with cause. To make matters more complicated (can they be?), there’s a more central thread about the Pei king and his “shadow,” a double named Jing Zhou (also played by Chao, pulling off the double duty with aplomb). That’s right, quicker than you can say Jean-Claude Van Damme or “Double Impact,” in a dank subterranean cave, the wounded warlord – slender, hobbled and disheveled, also with a dash of madness – trains his doppelgänger for a grudge match with the victorious Yan warrior. Then there’s the matter of Zi Yu’s wife, Madam (Li Sun) and the budding of a romantic triangle. More plots within plots.

It takes nearly half the film before Zhang delivers the anticipated hyperkinetic goods as the Pei, armed with razor-barbed umbrellas, literally slide into the Yan city and duke it out with their halberd-wielding rivals. What’s most noticeable throughout the film is the palette Zhang and cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao choose: Everything’s dank and drab, black or white or some washed out shade of gray – I’m not sure there’s ever an outside scene when it’s not raining – except for gratuitous spurts of crimson blood. Part of that choice is clearly thematic, most visually obvious when the two warriors fight atop a black and white, yin-yang symbol. The obvious representations of the forces of light and darkness are not, in this case, explicitly just good and evil, but more the nuanced contemplation of madness and corruption versus loyalty and a just rule.

Zhang has cited Kurosawa as major influence, and you can see it clearly on display in “Shadow.” It’s also got Shakespearean bones, but it’s no “Ran.” (Few films are.) While it’s better than an also-ran, the serpentining plots within might give you a touch of head spins before the gorgeous, grand spectacle of battle, dueling zithers and venomous final bow.

 

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Macbeth

12 Dec

‘Macbeth’: Latest take on Shakespeare’s tale murders Bard’s words something wicked

By Tom Meek
Friday, December 11, 2015

The ambitions of Justin Kurzel are similar to – and misguided like – the protagonist of his cinematic retelling of “Macbeth.” Best known for “The Snowtown Murders” (2011), a bloody coming-of-age drama based on true events, Kurzel seeks to ascend to a throne held by Welles, Polanski and Kurosawa, and he guts the bard to do it.

121115i MacbethThat’s not to say “Macbeth” is all a mess. It offers a rapturous staging of the battle of Ellon, righteous in its fury, and boasts two of the best and most interesting actors working in film today, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. But Fassbender, so alive with spit and rage in “12 Years a Slave,” feels muted here, lacking the enunciating articulation that Kenneth Branagh rebranded as the standard when as a young man he ingeniously resurrected “Henry V” in 1989. There’s a dull detachment that one could attribute to the amount of blood spilled at Ellon. The three scribes (a scribe for every witch) who adapt Shakespeare’s timeless tale of tragedy, avarice and madness (Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff and Michael Lesslie) imbue Macbeth with a son, who is gone before he even speaks during the opening carnage.

Perhaps this is the reason for the man’s descent into madness, which somehow becomes twisted into a paranoid ascent to the kingship of Scotland? It’s a novel idea that doesn’t get played out thoroughly enough, as much of the film falls into a bloody stupor with Fassbender looking far away and Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth, wide-eyed and teary, not quite driven by the blood guilt and insanity tradition has mandated. The film finds its liveliness mostly as Macbeth’s adversaries plot to undo him and the cruel murderous doings he does – burning a family at the stake or gutting his long trusted ally, Duncan (David Thewlis) with extreme prejudice – spurs their thirst for revenge.

For all the slick film-school craft Kurzel layer into the project, it’s sad that the bard’s snappy poetic language is unceremoniously culled. It’s there in pen, but falls limp from the tongue, sotto voce at times. Clearly Kurosawa, transposing the tragedy to feudal Japan with “Throne of Blood” (1957), took artistic liberties, but he had Shakespeare in his bones (he adapted several other of the bard’s plays to his samurai setting). Here, the merriment and rage conveyed in word is lost, and the tortured soul driven by prophecy and hubris feels less like it’s portraying a timeless human condition and more like an Enron plot to drive revenue.

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