It would be hard to sit here and argue against Throne of Blood and say that simply because Kurosawa chose to ignore Shakespeare’s language, his movie isn’t as good as it could be. Throne of Blood is so beautiful and so terrifying and so intense and so dark and dreary and so totally idiosyncratic that to take a position against it would be pure folly. Not that I’m against pure folly, mind you. In fact some of my shining moments have been acts of pure folly (in fact, most of my moments in general have been acts of pure folly). But I’m no sucker, and I try not to walk into punches if I can avoid it, so I’ll leave Kurosawa alone.
But that doesn’t mean that other, mere mortal filmmakers can take the storyline of a Shakespeare play and hope it will provide the framework for great entertainment. Like I said earlier this afternoon (when I was young), Shakespeare the storyteller leaves a lot to be desired, so it’s best when adapting his work to the big screen to rely on Shakespeare the poet, get yourself some actors who know what to do with his words, and go from there. It’s the surest way to glory.
But, I know you’ll protest that Shakespeare’s language, though elegant on the page, becomes heavy and purple onscreen and that otherwise likable actors become bloated and declamatory when they’re forced to speak it. Which, of course, is true. But let’s face it: Any writer’s language is insufferable when the wrong actor is using it. Remember watching Kenneth Branagh stumble and stutter his way through Woody Allen’s Celebrity, trying vainly, and with all his customary classical bombast, to capture the stuttering New York wit and self-flagellation of the classic Allen schlemiel? It was as excruciating as listening to Keanu Reeves botch up Branagh’s own Much Ado About Nothing five years earlier … and not half as funny.
The problem with Shakespeare’s language is that it’s so complicated and thick, both in content and form, that most actors, when confronted with it, barely ever make it to the acting side of things. They’re too busy trying to get all those weird words out of their mouths in something resembling order to even think about communicating why they’re saying them. Which usually results in blockish, wooden performances performed by actors who match every action and every emotion in one-to-one correspondence to the words they’re speaking and therefore leave no room for subtlety, ambiguity, depth, or interpretation. I don’t even know if I blame these actors, really; Honestly, it’s like trying to act in a foreign language you only have a passing acquaintance with. It’s like switching to the harpsichord after a lifetime spent playing the piano. It’s like dancing the polka when you’re a tango man at heart.
But I think if last night’s viewing of Richard III proved anything, it’s that, in the right hands, and off the right tongue, Shakespeare’s words contain within them a whole world of variation and emotional interpretation. Coming from Ian McKellen‘s throat, Shakespeare’s words don’t seem odd or foreign at all; in fact, they sound quite natural, as if they were the most logical vernacular for a three-faced homicidal gentleman with an eye toward fratricide and usurpation
And why shouldn’t they be? What could possibly go better with poisoned wine than poisoned words? What better suits the intricacies of court intrigue and treachery than language that’s so dense and fraught with double meanings? And what suits the ironic temperament of a dastardly villain who kills as much for sport as for advancement than overblown understatement that both reduces bloody actions to political formalities and raises them to the level of high art?
Hearing the list of all his sins – murders, betrayals, tyranny – read back to him near the movie’s end, McKellen’s Richard replies dryly, “Men will deal unadvisedly sometimes,” Accused of murder by the distraught wife of a dead nobleman, he says simply, “I grant you, yes.” Yes, I killed your husband. Yes, I made you a widow. Yes, I’ll make you my wife soon enough. And yes, I’ll then kill you as well. There’s no reason to grouse about it; the deed is done. Better you should complain about the sun setting in the West, or Japan being in Asia.
Whenever I’ve read the play in the past, I’ve always taken Richard for an almost inhuman beast – outside the normal social order – but in McKellen’s hands, he becomes the most elegant man in England. Murderous and immoral and proto-Fascist, true, but also the most sophisticated, most self-aware man in the room, irresistible in his own sinister little way. More human, it turns out, than most could hope to be.
Now I’m off to the bar.
This article appears in August 15 • 2008.