Cinema Junkie presents Midday MoviesBONUS EPISODE: Unconventional Shakespeare adaptations
(Note this transcript is auto generated and may contain transcription errors.)
ANDREW BOWEN Welcome back to Midday Edition. I'm Andrew Bowen sitting in for Jade Hindmon.
CLIP Brush up your Shakespeare. Start quoting him now. Brush up your Shakespeare and the women you will wow. Just to claim a few lines from a fella, and he'll think you're a heck of a fella. If your blonde won't respond when you flatter her, tell her what pony told Cleo Patterer. And if still to be shocked, she pretends well, just remind her that all's well, that ends well. Brush up your Shakespeare, and they'll all cow, cow.
ANDREW BOWEN That was a bit of brush up your Shakespeare from the musical Kiss Me Kate. Well, summer means Shakespeare in San Diego. The Old Globe just opened a production of The Comedy of Errors, inspired by a '90s soundtrack. And a new company called The Queen's Men is doing an all-female version of Julius Caesar. So that prompted our Midday Movies Critics to create a list of some unconventional Shakespeare film adaptations. I'd once again like to welcome KPBS cinema junkie, Beth Accomando, and Moviewallas' podcaster, Yazdi Pithavala. Welcome to both of you.
BETH ACCOMANDO Thank you so much.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Thank you.
ANDREW BOWEN So we've had literally centuries to come up with all sorts of adaptations, reimaginations of Shakespeare's plays. What do think are the ingredients for excellence in this very niche genre? Beth, why don't you start?
BETH ACCOMANDO So I think the key is you have to have a vision. You can't be making it just because you want to do a Shakespeare adaptation or you think it's going to be financially beneficial. You have to know why you're doing it. What are the themes that attract you? Is Shakespeare something you've loved all your life? Do you want to make it accessible to a new audience? Do you feel there's a new reason to tackle Hamlet this year? So I think that's the key to make it work. And then from there, anything is possible.
ANDREW BOWEN Yazdi, what do you think?
YAZDI PITHAVALA I love it when I watch a movie and I really like it, and then I find out much later that that was a Shakespeare adaptation. So I love it when a movie is so seamlessly integrated to a different time, and it still manages to exemplify some of the themes from the original play, be it social commentary about class or gender or what have you.
ANDREW BOWEN I think most people know back in Shakespeare's times, All of these plays were performed exclusively by men. But as I mentioned in the intro, there is a new company doing all-female version of Julius Caesar. Beth, tell us more about The Queen's Men.
BETH ACCOMANDO Sure. This is a brand new company performing at Trinity Theater, and there are a pair of 19-year-old women who are putting on a show. They have adapted Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to feature an all-female cast because they wanted to set it in contemporary times and in the world of women soccer. So I'm going to have more about this next week, but it's exciting, and I got to see a little bit of it, and it was quite intriguing.
ANDREW BOWEN And Yasdi, August 15th is Indian Independence Day, so good time to be thinking about Indian cinema. Give us a bit of background behind Indian Independence Day first.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Yes. So the Indian Independence Day, which happens on August 15th every year, it commemorates India's freedom from British rule in 1947. And it's important not to confuse it with another Indian holiday, which is the Indian Republic Day, which is also celebrated on January 26th every year, but that marks the adoption of the Indian Constitution for the first time, which happened in 1950.
ANDREW BOWEN So you have two Indian Shakespeare films to share with us today. The first is an adaptation of The Comedy of Errors. Tell us about this.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Yeah. So this is a movie from 1982, and it's a movie called Angur or Grapes. And it is a pretty free adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, which, of course, is about two pairs of twins who get separated at birth, and they come together in all kinds of chaos ensues. What I really like about this movie is that it takes its time to build the plot and then in the last half, just descends into pure mayhem. And unlike rather broad slapsticky humor, this movie focuses on very dry dialog, which is smart and clever. And it's not a very shouty movie. It's a very quiet movie, but the dialog is so good and the actors are so stellar at what they're doing that you just burst into laughs all the time. And here's a clip from one of the musical the numbers in the film.
ANDREW BOWEN And there are actually quite a few Indian adaptations of the Bard. Beth, tell us your favorite.
BETH ACCOMANDO Sure. And since we're in a studio and not in a theater, I can freely say that Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare play. There is a curse assigned to that name.
ANDREW BOWEN That's right. We got to call it the Scottish Play.
BETH ACCOMANDO The Scottish Play, if you're in a theater or else you have to like spin three times and find a virgin or something to do something. Anyway, Macbeth is this intense, lean, bloody play. I love it. And there are so many adaptations of it. In fact, all of my pics today are going to be variations on Macbeth. But there is an Indian version called Macbull, which is set in Mumbai. It's a Mumbai noir film. It's set in the world of crime. It's a little slow to start, as one might expect. There are a lot of musical numbers in this, and here is one that kicks it off. But once it dives into the meat of Macbeth, it picks up and it delivers a truly effective murder to set the whole plot in motion. And the film is great because it makes a cultural translation of the play. So we don't have this British, royal political maneuvering Instead, there's a lot of family and melodrama, and Macbeth is driven more by sexual desire or lust, as opposed to ambition for power. But once it gets going, the murder itself is really well done, and the sense of how these murders haunt him and this visual theme of blood is played out so well in the film.
BETH ACCOMANDO And of course, you have Irfan Khan with those big sad eyes. And he's great as Magpool, who is manipulated by a Lady Macbeth character. And again, it's more of a sexual temptation that he's taunted by, as opposed to a strict play for power. But I really enjoyed this version of Macbeth.
YAZDI PITHAVALA And Beth, the filmmaker, Vishal Bhardouaj, who made Macbool, also did two other Indian adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, Omkara, which is an adaptation of Othello and Hyder, which is adaptation of Hamlet, and they're all worth seeking out.
BETH ACCOMANDO I want to do a series of Indian Shakespeare.
ANDREW BOWEN Yeah, it's a whole genre of itself, apparently. Well, Beth, I know you love your dark, bloody tragedies. Yasdi, you've got a cheerier Shakespeare option to share with us. And it's another comedy.
YAZDI PITHAVALA It is. It's the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, which came out in 1999. It's streaming on Hulu. Shockingly, it was the first feature from filmmaker Gil Jünger, and it a string of baby-face actors, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Heath Ledger, and Julius Stiles. You have to see them. They look like kids. I rewatched this movie just this week, and 25 years later, it still holds up remarkably well. The filmmaker takes a lot of liberty with the original Shakespeare script, but puts it within the context of a high school. And there's just enough touches that you can recognize it's a Shakespeare adaptation. The school is called Padua. The last His name of the male lead is Verona, and it's Stratford for the two other girls. And it's a delightful little movie which holds up remarkably well. And if folks haven't seen it, they really ought to check it out. Here is the clip from the movie, which comes rather late, and it explains the title for the movie.
CLIP I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much, it makes me sick. It even makes me rhyme. I hate it. I hate the way you're always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not around and the fact that you didn't call. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
ANDREW BOWEN What a touching moment. Well, Beth, you actually have a funny adaptation of Macbeth that you want to highlight. What is this film?
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes, I do. So this is a marvelous film called Scotland PA, and it transfers the Scottish play to Scotland, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s. And the power play is set in the world of fast food. And there's a white trash slacker who is egged on by his ambitious wife to overthrow the fast food king Duncan. So with Macbeth, there are the golden arches of Macbeth in this fast food empire that they create. It's a really inventive, creative, fun, but it's also spot on in terms of the themes, this idea of ambition and marital relationship and the intimacy of that. And there's some funny bits where the tomorrow and tomorrow's speech is a self-help tape that plays out in a car. Tomorrow is tomorrow.
CLIP Tomorrow is not today.
ANDREW BOWEN Today is who I am.
BETH ACCOMANDO But you have Christopher Walkin.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Lieutenant McDonald. I'm here to drop off my cards, which on the coffee table next to my wife's barbegunosh.
BETH ACCOMANDO And the witches are now hippy dippy flower children. It was foul.
CLIP The foul was foul. It was foul. And the fair was fair. Foul is fair. The fair is foul. My ass hurts. I don't think that one works. She's having a spell. Oh, God. So dramatic.
ANDREW BOWEN And that was from Scotland, PA. Yasdi, I hear you have a zombie Shakespeare film to recommend. Tell us about this, please.
YAZDI PITHAVALA So God help us all. I am recommending a movie about zombies, but I really have a soft for Warm Bodies, which is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. It came out in 2013, and it's streaming on Amazon Prime. This is one of the movies where I watched it. I didn't even realize it was based on Romeo and Juliet, but it imagines Romeo as a zombie who is falling in love with a living girl.
CLIP What am I doing with my life? I'm so pale. I should get out more. I should eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What's wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can't I connect with people? Oh, right. It's because I'm dead.
YAZDI PITHAVALA And Nicholas Holt. Yes, that Nicholas Holt and Theresa Palmer are so well cast as the leads in this movie. There is even a serenading scene on the balcony from Romeo and Juliet. How can you not like it? Oh my God. Ar.
CLIP What are you doing here? I came to see you. R. You can't just do that. It's dangerous. Regio, shut up. I'm trying to sleep. Sorry. Jesus, R. Are you crazy? The people here, they're not like me. If they see you, you will get killed. Do you understand that?
ANDREW BOWEN I can just imagine what's on screen listening to that. Well, Beth, close us out here. You have one last Macbeth film that you want to share.
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes. And so this is another foreign adaptation. This is Kurosawa's Epic Throne of Blood. And here's a little bit of the music to set the tone for the film. As with Mechbull, this is a cultural translation rather than just a literal one. And a key thing has to do with the end. And spoiler alert, if you're not aware of how Macbeth ends. It ends badly for our title character. But in England, beheading was a sign of disgrace. And so that's how they choose to end Macbeth's life. And in Kurosawa's film, that doesn't translate exactly the same. So there is a scene at the end where he dies in battle with arrows, and that is considered more of a disgrace than a beheading would have been. So what's particularly effective in this film, I think, is Kurosawa's take on the supernatural. So Macbeth is famous for its witches, and Macbeth is haunted by these ghosts, and Kurosawa handles that really well. And I think what this shows is how malleable Shakespeare is and how universal his themes are. The things he talks about in terms of power and love, and ambition, and greed, and all these things are so fundamental to human nature that they can play out anywhere.
BETH ACCOMANDO And I just love how people can tackle this in so many different ways. And each one of those succeeds in different ways and highlights different aspects of the play. As someone who loves Shakespeare, I just adore seeing this diversity.
ANDREW BOWEN I want to thank our Midday Movies Critics for their unconventional Shakespeare recommendations. I've been speaking with KPBS cinema junkie, Beth Accomando, and a Moviewallas' Yazdi Pithavala. Thank you so much for joining us.
BETH ACCOMANDO Thank you.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Thank you, Andrew.
ANDREW BOWEN Let's go out with a little bit more of brush up your Shakespeare from the musical Kiss Me Kate.
CLIP Brush up your Shakespeare. Start quoting him now. Brush up your Shakespeare, and the women you will wow. If your girl is a Washington high stream, treat the kid to a midsummer's night's dream. If she then wants an all by herself night, let her rest every 11th or 12th night. If because of your heat, she gets huffy, simply play on and lay on, McDuffie. Roger, you're changed now, and they'll all kow-tow. Forsooth. And they'll all kow-tow. Thinks thou? And they'll all kow-tow, we trow, and they'll all kow-tow. We trow, and they'll all kow-tow.
