“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.”
Actually, I would argue the opposite: that, yes, Shakespeare’s language is elegant, but on the page it reads rather heavily, so bogged down with words that have fallen out of favor (I suppose “cock-a-hoop” had to go if the OED was gonna make room for “thingamabob”). While I get a kick out of all those old words, it doesn’t always make for an easy read, checking the footnotes every few lines… which is why Shakespeare feels so alive and so relevant when transposed to screen (and stage, of course). Hearing the cadences, coupled with visual cues, the language stops feeling faintly foreign.
The comedies, especially, I think, benefit from being loosed from the page. I wasn’t very familiar with Shakespeare’s comedies prior to this little experiment of ours (I’ve only read Much Ado About Nothing). After weeks of cramming the tragedies – one after another after another – all that murderous plotting and tortured speechmaking had sent me into something of a tailspin of dour, which is why it was such a blessed relief to watch two modern takes on the comedies.
Let’s start with Love’s Labour’s Lost, Kenneth Branagh’s 2000 reimagining, which was soundly thrashed by film critics when it came out – in part, I think, because everybody was ready to knock the golden boy of Shakespeare down a couple pegs (god knows I was after his interminable four-hour Hamlet).
The basic story is the same – in order to purse loftier goals of education and asceticism, the king of Navarre swears off sex for four years and bullies his best friends into doing the same, but their chastity vow buckles when a comely princess rolls into the kingdom with three handmaidens in tow. Branagh shifts the action to the Thirties, in a Europe on the brink of war, inserts Cole Porter standards, and casts the thing with a mix of Shakespearean actors and Hollywood pretty people circa 2000.
You ask:
1) Do you think when Branagh was casting the movie, he looked at Matthew Lillard and thought to himself, “Let’s see, he can’t sing, he can’t dance, and he can’t pronounce Shakespeare’s lines. He’s perfect!”?
I think he was thinking, “Well, the Weinsteins are producing this thing, and they’re gonna want me to put some young bodies in the seats. Let’s see if we can’t find somebody from Scream who’ll do the trick.” I think he must have been thinking something along those lines when he cast Alicia Silverstone as the princess – but tell me she wasn’t bunny-rabbit cute when she tried to work her mouth around the language like an especially large carrot?
2) What in the world are the songs of George Gershwin and Cole Porter doing in this movie?
Um, why in the world aren’t more songs of Gershwin and Porter in movies today?
3) Do women in love really giggle that much when they’re around their girlfriends talking about boys?
No. We also don’t call our friends of the female sex our “girlfriends.”
Here’s the thing – there’s a lot that doesn’t work in this movie. About half the cast is just reciting lines, almost no one can sing better than passably, and Branagh can’t always find the sweet spot between slapstick, silly, and just plain stupid.
And yet.
Okay, just watch this first (sorry for the terrible quality), and then we’ll talk…
This article appears in August 15 • 2008.
