Best of the BardOne of our critics, also a theater director, picks his top ten Shakespeare films.By Ron Reed |
posted 6/01/2004
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3. Richard III (1995)
Directed by Richard Loncraine
Brits love to forget that, prior to the Second World War, an upper class Hitler-friendly fascism was part of the national politics; Remains of the Day gives us a downstairs view. In 1995, director Richard Loncraine and lead actor Ian McKellen, inspired by a renowned National Theatre production, played the "what if" game with Richard III, re-imagining Shakespeare's tale of sociopathic political ambition in a pre-WW2 England where right-wing totalitarianism has carried the day. The final battle scenes don't quite come off, but don't let that overshadow the absolute genius of all that comes before. Every duke and earl is memorable, the Machiavellian story-line gripping, the twisted psychology all too comprehensible: when Dick Three courts Lady Anne over the dead body of the husband he has himself murdered, the scene—miraculously—is utterly convincing. Harder than it looks. (Check out Al Pacino's Looking for Richard for a mind-expanding look behind the scenes at another production of this bloody masterpiece.)
Content: Rated R for violence and sexual content, and it's primarily the former that's the issue here.
4. Hamlet (1991)
directed by Franco Zeffirelli
If you think Mel Gibson is nothing but an action hero, or that Hamlet's just a melancholy Dane who's too depressed to actually do anything—faced with the choice whether to be or not to be, he'll pick "not to be" every time—Zeffirelli's high-energy treatment of Shakespeare's masterpiece will be a revelation. Mel can act, the play can sizzle, and this movie proves it. David Ball literally wrote the book on dramatic action; it's called Backwards & Forwards, and in it he uses Hamlet as his prime example of a character "catapulted into action, into battle, at a breathtaking pace that leaves no room for sluggish depression." I'm convinced everybody on this project read Ball's book—especially screenwriter Christopher DeVore, who relentlessly cuts to the chase. This is Zeffirelli's best movie, gorgeous to look at but stripped of his habitual sentimentality: he sets the film in a stony medieval castle by the sea, his Hamlet a warrior prince. Glenn Close is stunning as Queen Gertrude, and if the arras scene overdoes the Oedipal thing, there's no question men would kill kings for her. Paul Scofield is a heart-rending and non-melodramatic Ghost, more haunted than haunting. You won't find a hint of gentle Bilbo in Ian Holm's Polonius, who drives the story forward by playing down dodder to emphasize guile. Alan Bates suggests a strain of sensual self-indulgence that's the fatal flaw in his otherwise commanding Claudius, potent adversary for Gibson's fiery Hamlet. And can you imagine any actress better suited than Helena Bonham-Carter to play Ophelia? Naï ve, fragile and fetching. This movie just plain works.
Content: PG. Though the Oedipal complex stuff is prominent, there's no nudity.
5. Titus (2000)
directed by Julie Taymor
I'll admit, I'm completely confounded—where to put Julie Taymor's gut-punch of a film, Titus? It may be Shakespeare's worst play: it may also be the most brilliant, certainly the most audacious screen adaptation of anything in Wild Bill's oeuvre. If the appeal of Shakespeare's work is its profundity, how would any version of this callow, mean and trivial Jacobean-wannabe get anywhere near a Top Ten list? But the experience of seeing Taymor work aesthetic alchemy on this leaden-spirited proto-exploitation mess is extraordinary: when the story gets dumb, she cranks up the camp, and when it reaches for profundity she commits with such potency, one almost traces the rough outlines of what will someday issue forth as King Lear—perhaps the Bard's greatest work. Taymor took a better-than-average Disney movie and made a theatrical work of art when she transposed The Lion King to Broadway. In her audacious re-imagining of "Titus Andronicus," she has taken a theatrical sow's ear and made a cinematic silk purse—stuffed with human entrails perhaps, but a silk purse nonetheless.
Content: Rated R. Grisly violence. One shot pans across a Roman orgy. Though it doesn't glorify violence or sex, take the R rating seriously.
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