Iago: " I hate the Moor..."
By playing the honest man, Iago abuses the bonds of friendship and trust between himself and Othello, and provokes the Moor into a jealous rage that has tragic consequences for all.
Parker, making his feature directorial debut, delivers a fine screen version of Shakespeare's play. Parker trims the text effectively to keep the pace moving swiftly and tries to emphasize the sexual passions at the center of the play.
Yet Parker doesn't invest the film with the kind of passion and driving vision that fueled Orson Welles' dynamic 1952 film. Parker's film may focus more on Othello yet he offers no new insights into this somewhat problematic character. We do not gain an understanding of what makes this great soldier fall such easy victim to Iago's plot nor what makes him love not wisely but too well.
Parker has some clever images -- like the black and white chess pieces that Iago toys with so casually -- but he never approaches Welles' artistry. Welles had a genius for finding cinematic equivalents for Shakespeare's text such as his powerful visual motif of entrapment to emphasize the web that ensnares Othello. Parker, on the other hand, adapts Shakespeare to the screen with exceeding competence but no real innovation.
Laurence Fishburne, as the first African American actor to play the title role on screen, is noble, brooding and too trusting of the deceitful Iago. That this is Fishburne's first attempt at Shakespeare, and that actually helps in some ways. He is less prone to classic recitation and more inclined to bluntly play the emotions, which befits a forthright soldier such as Othello. Kenneth Branagh brings vigor and calculated villainy to Iago. There's a wonderful sequence in which Iago hears Cassio mourn the loss of his good name and later feigns a similar outrage for dramatic effect.
Iago: "He who steals my purse..."
The only flaw in Branagh's performance occurs when he breaks the fourth wall to deliver his monologues which seem drained of all energy. The rest of his performance pulsates with a devilish delight in his villainy. Irene Jacob has a radiant honesty as Desdemona and Anne Patrick stands out as the world weary Emilia whose devotion to her mistress Desdemona is truly moving.
Parker's Othello is a commendable project and it's good to know that filmmakers still realize the power of Shakespeares words some three hundred years after he wrote them.
Companion viewing: Orson Welles' Othello, Apocalypse Now (Fishburne's screen debut at 14)
