The casting director should have spared us the bow to diversity and political correctness when a hispanic was cast as France and a negro as Burgundy. Set design and costume sacrificed tradition and historical representation to economy and off-beat originality. The costumes resemble those of Star Wars. The Fool, instead of being youthful, agile and entertaining, is fat, old and dumpy. The most entertaining thing about the fool is Lear referring to the grizzled 70 year-old as "boy". Holms as Lear can't hold a candle to Lawrence Oliver. Holms plays every scene with the same, monotonous, high level of intensity, like a manic Lear. He is unable to play Lear as a likeable, sympathetic character, in any scene. During the scene in which Lear's heart is supposed to break when Cordelia fails to declare her love with sufficient eloquence, Holms' Lear only comes accross as manic, obsessed and neurotic. Even with its poor film quality, Sir Lawrence Oliver's production is the best.
King Lear Meets Star Wars
The casting director should have spared us the bow he takes to racial diversity and political correctness: France is played by a hispanic and Burgundy by a negro. In its display of costume and set design, tradition and historical accuracy are sacrificed to off-beat originality. The costumes resemble those of Star Wars. The Fool, instead of being youthful, agile, amusing and entertaining, is fat, slow, old and dumpy. The most amusing thing about the Fool is that Lear refers to this grizzled 70-year-old as "boy". As for Holms as Lear, he doesn't hold a candle to Lawrence Oliver. Holms plays every scene with the same level of intensity, like a manic Lear. When the time comes for Lear's heart to break at Cordelia's failure to declare her love with sufficient eloquence, Holms fails to seem vulnerable at all. He fails to play Lear as a sympathetic character. He plays "manic" very well, but that's about it, and after a couple of scenes "manic" gets to be monotonous. Sir Lawrence Oliver's production is far better than this one.
Superb!
Lear is a play, one of several by Shakespeare, always completely owned and dominated by its lead. Ian Holm is one of those extraordinary actors who can bring tremendous depth and texture to even the shallowest things: witness his work in "The Day After Tomorrow" and, from an acting standpoint, the tremendously underrated science fiction film "The Fifth Element." I can safely say that Holm's presence in any film is enough to get me to see it and I can't say that about any other contemporary actor. He is always a total joy and after many years it's wonderful to see him finally achieving the stature over here that he deserves.
Needless to say, the mere idea of Holm doing Lear is brilliant. Good news is this production scores high marks across the board and lacks the at-times labored self-consciousness of the highly regarded Lear production featuring Olivier (The play can only bear the weight of one old King). Holm's portrayal of Lear's possible senility is not as overt and inevitable, he is more shown as a man who, at the peak of his power, uses that power to deny his responsibility for anything. He wants to be treated like a king without being burdened as a king. Making him out to simply be a senile old fool makes too much of a victim of him, especially to modern audiences. This king is old enough to have reached the end of his ambitions but not the end of his responsibilities--I believe that may be the core point of the play. Shakespeare needed Lear to be an old man because the idea of a younger man surrendering power probably would have seemed improbable, almost laughable, to his audiences without the introduction of a complexifying plot device, an external reason for the king to give up the throne. He'd also be handing power over to inappropriately younger heirs. It would then be an entirely different play.
The Bard may also be saying that senility is sometimes the result of abrogation or denial (to us--broadly--even from an external source) of responsibilities: old age shouldn't imply second childhood but if responsibility is taken away that's all that is left to any adult. In many ways, given our careless and insensitive treatment of age and experience in this culture--a culture sadly lacking in respect for our own wise old men and women--many of Lear's true messages may, in fact, be more than a bit alien for us if the play is presented wrongly. It could be why we tend to--incorrectly perhaps--overplay the senility card.
It's a subtle balancing act for any actor and Holm does a near perfect job of it. What some portray as senility, Holm shows rightly as the confusion of an individual accustomed to having his own way who no longer gets his own way and cannot for the life of him grasp why. Taken this way, the play has spectacular relevance for contemporary audiences, and may actually be about the most currently relevant of Shakespeare's plays. Think of the juvenile antics of the Tyco executives, of Donald Trump, of most of Hollywood, of the last several Presidential administrations. Will there someday be a Lear in the Oval Office wondering why the world has marginalized his or her nation and economy; why simply waving a flag and being the USA in name only ultimately means absolutely nothing?
Two of England's greatest actors, Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, electrify in this lean, stripped-down production of Shakespeare's darkest tragedy. In the wake of a battle, the Scottish warrior Macbeth (McKellen, Gods and Monsters, Lord of the Rings) receives a prophecy from a trio of witches: He shall be king. When fate doesn't unfold quickly enough, Macbeth and his even more ambitious wife (Dench, Shakespeare in Love, Iris) decide to give it a push. McKellen sweats anxiously and oozes a creeping lust for power, while Dench is hypnotically vicious from her first moment. For audiences used to their film careers, this grand pair will seem young as pups (this TV movie is from 1979, adapted from an acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Philip Casson DVD Release Date: Released the 16 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Rarely has The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare's most complex plays, looked as ravishingly sumptuous as in this adaptation, directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino). In a decadent version of renaissance Venice, a young nobleman named Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love) seeks to woo the lovely Portia (newcomer Lynn Collins), but lacks the money to travel to her estate. He seeks support from his friend, the merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons, Reversal of Fortune); Antonio's fortune is tied up in sea ventures, so the merchant offers to borrow money from a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon). But Shylock holds a grudge against Antonio, who has routinely treated the Jew with contempt, and demands that if the debt is not... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Al Pacino - Jeremy Irons - Joseph Fiennes - Lynn Collins Director(s): Michael Radford DVD Release Date: Released the 10 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Franco Zeffirelli's stripped-down, two-hour version of Shakespeare's play stars Mel Gibson as a rather robust version of the ambivalent Danish prince. Gibson is much better in the part than many critics have admitted, his powers of clarity doing much to make this particular Hamlet more accessible than several other filmed versions. The supporting cast is outstanding, including Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius, Ian Holm as Polonius, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. Zeffirelli's vigorous direction employs a lively camera style that nicely alters the viewer's preconceptions about the way Hamlet should look. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Mel Gibson - Glenn Close Director(s): Franco Zeffirelli DVD Release Date: Released the 24 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Othello is a difficult production for me to watch at any time. Seeing the horrors of jealousy run amuck to the destruction of innocence is painful at the best of times. In the instance of this production it is even more painful because it is so well done.
The story of Othello is that of a Venetian general who marries a local daughter of a nobleman. The general happens to be black. In an effort to sabotage the general, Iago undermines the faith of the husband for his wife leading ultimately to the tragedy of her death. While Shakespeare gives motivations for his characters, interpretations and emphases tend to vary. Kenneth Brannagh's production of Othello emphasies Iago as a troublemake who likes to cause trouble simple for the sake of doing so. This production, with Ian... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Trevor Nunn DVD Release Date: Released the 02 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Oliver Parker, a stage and film actor (Hellraiser), made his directorial debut with this scaled-back version of Shakespeare's play about the paranoid Moor, Othello (Laurence Fishburne), and his manipulative friend, Iago (Kenneth Branagh). Parker gets the story so lean he starts running a little short on the author's subtext, and if it's possible to overemphasize the banality of Iago's scheming and Othello's malleability, he does so. The director throws out what is universal in the story and makes it all seem merely ordinary, human, and unfortunate, which is the opposite of what watching Shakespeare should be. In the end, it's hard to care what these characters have done to one another. Branagh's Iago is a little flat and unfocused, while Fishburne is excellent as a quieter Othello... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Laurence Fishburne - Irène Jacob - Kenneth Branagh Director(s): Oliver Parker DVD Release Date: Released the 18 January 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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