Director Baz Luhrmann is dead on in his assertion that Shakespeare wrote for a broad audience. In fact, if Shakespeare were writing today he'd probably be doing films or television. We tend to forget that Shakespeare's plays were first and foremost popular entertainment. He wrote of and for his times, and had the kind of pop appeal and commercial savvy that Steven Spielberg exemplifies today.
Shakespeare's plays had to please a wide cross section of Elizabethan society -- from the lowly, rowdy groundlings who had to stand through the performance to the wealthy patrons who watched comfortably from the boxes that lined the Globe Theater. As a result, you can find bawdy humor, low comedy, violent action and sublime artistry in a single play. And it's this vast range that makes Shakespeare's plays so vibrant even four centuries after their creation. Ironically, Shakespeare thought his sonnets would be his literary legacy and he never bothered to publish even a single play in his lifetime.
Shakespeare's rare genius allowed him to please the crowds without sacrificing his artistic ambitions. But his genius should not be placed high up on some pedestal. Such excessive reverence robs Shakespeare of his vibrancy. If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be looking for ways to make his plays speak to twentieth century audiences. Two new films which do precisely that are Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Al Pacino's Looking for Richard , a documentary about Pacino's attempt to make Richard III more accessible to modern audiences.
There have been at least a half dozen film versions of Romeo and Juliet including the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version. Like Zeffirelli, Luhrmann employs teenaged performers, in this case Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, to play the star-crossed lovers and to appeal to young crowds.
Romeo: "Did my heart love till now for swear it sight, for I never saw true beauty till this night."
Luhrmann, who won acclaim for his outrageous debut, Strictly Ballroom , endows Romeo + Juliet with vibrant energy. He opens the film with a TV anchorwoman reading Shakespeare's prologue as if it were the evening's lead story. Then he delivers an MTV style montage that introduces us to Verona Beach, a created world somewhere south of the border where Catholicism has a strong presence and where the rivalry between the Montagues and the Capulets spills on to the streets like a gang war.
Luhrmann, who's done Shakespeare on stage in his native Australia, understands that the Elizabethan language can be a barrier. So he devises clever ways of making it less intimidating. He updates some words, repeats lines, employs pop imagery and even places text on the screen all as a means of making it more understandable.
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet has more depth of passion than Lurhmann's. But Luhrmann's film has an undeniable energy and flash. What Luhrmann captures so well is the speed and intensity of youth. He uses a pounding rock score to set the breathless pace of the film. He also employs images of lightning and fireworks to emphasize the notion of lights that burn brightly but briefly like the young lovers. In addition, he tweaks the ending to make the haste of their passions even more poignant.
Whereas Romeo + Juliet sacrifices depth in favor of hip style and flamboyant imagery, Pacino's Looking for Richard offers a documentary all about searching for meaning. The film succeeds best as a portrait of an actor's passion and Pacino's passion is truly infectious. Pacino, who spent years and his own money on this film, intercuts interviews of actors, scholars and street people with rehearsals of Richard III and staged scenes of the play. His purpose is to break apart the play to make it more accessible. Sometimes the actors' confusion or ignorance regarding the play seems contrived for the cameras so that he can ask questions that viewers might ask. But these contrivances can be forgiven in light of what Pacino does so well. And what he does is bring the Bard to vivid life. Like Ian McKellen's Richard III of last year, Pacino's Richard is riveting cinema. He discovers that Richard's appeal lies in the fact that he's a modern villain who takes delight in his villainy and in his showmanship. Pacino delivers a kind of New York method take on the Bard with stunning performances by himself, Penelope Allen, Estelle Parsons and Kevin Spacey. The film also reveals Pacino as an engaging, passionate and dedicated actor whose love for Shakespeare makes him the perfect teacher. Here he argues with his producer Michael Hadge.
Michael Hadge: "Shakespeare used a lot of fancy words."
Al Pacino: "Excuse me they are not fancy words, I think that's where we get confused. It's poetry, though, and it's hard to grasp hold of some rap, slang too but it's hard to get hold of it until your ear gets used to it."
In his quest for meaning Pacino is well aided by his co-hort and co-producer Frederic Kimball who invigorates the film with his fierce opinions.
Kimball: "You are making this entire documentary to show that actors are the proud inheritors of the understanding of Shakespeare and then you say I'm gonna get a scholar..."
Al Pacino: "The scholar has a right to his opinion."
Kimball: "But why does he get to speak directly into the camera."
With these two lively, innovative takes on Shakespeare, Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night arrives as something of a letdown. Twelfth Night revolves around the complications that arise when Viola disguises herself as a boy and serves as an emissary between a lovesick duke and his unresponsive lady. In some respects it's one of Shakespeare's darker comedies because the theme of death hangs over the play. Nunn plays up these darker tones by shooting most of the film in shadows with only an occasional shaft of light penetrating the darkness. This approach makes the comic aspects of the play more difficult to exploit. In the play, the characters come across as fools for love who have no other motivation for their behavior except that they've been pricked by cupid's arrow. But the film's gloominess and emphasis on naturalism play against this and make the characters' behavior more troublesome. Only Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia seems to capture the giddy, unpredictability of love as she falls for the disguised Viola.
Whereas Luhrmann and Pacino do all they can to illuminate their texts, Nunn's cinematic choices make his film more obscure and problematic. The British Nunn may receive scholarly approval for his interpretation but it's the upstart Australian and the New York method actor who deliver Shakespeare as he's meant to be performed-- full of a vigor and invention that will ignite the passions of a new generation.
Companion viewing:
Richard III
(with Ian McKellen), Franco Zeffirelli's
Romeo and Juliet, Chimes at Midnight
