This was very disappointing.
King Lear is a play that I am not overly familiar with, unlike MacBeth and Hamlet. Once you become intimate with a Shakespeare play you have preconceptions about how it should be done - settings, what the characters look like, staging delivery of key lines. Once that happens, any stage of film version - or even audio adaptation - becomes a gauging of how well your ideal is met, or how effectively it is challenged. For what it is worth, I'm inclined to be kind towards anyone brave enough to take on Shakespeare, particulary the 'big' plays. I liked Mike Mundell's Hamlet inspite of its flaws, for example.
I have read the King Lear, studied it in a half-hearted manner and watched the poor BBC adaptation starring Laurence Olivier, but that's it. I was able to watch this film version with out too many pre-conceptions about how it should be done.
I did have some hopes for this adaptation. Blessed is credited as the director of the sparky witchy scences in the otherwise lamentable MacBeth from the same production company. And, of course, he's an actor, whereas Jason Connery - bluntly - isn't. And Lear is one of the roles you can imagine suiting Blessed's 'gift' for ... um ... hyperbole.
But it all goes wrong, and quickly too.
First of all, technically, the film is inept. I don't know how much of the visual problems can be blamed on the transfer to DVD but I suspect they originate more in the original recording. The production looks like it was captured on someone's mobile phone. It is murky and digitised. Blessed also proves inept at calling the shots, with clumsy cutting and distracting camera movements or editing. A cinema verite or nouvelle vague Shakespeare might be an interesting project, but here it looks suspiciously like incompetence.
The setting and staging of the film is also disappointing. While we do get treated to shots of a castle exterior, most of the action takes place indoors and on a small scale, which emphsises the cheapness of the production. It's hard to understand why Lear gets so worked up about his daughters's cutting of his retinue, since he only seems to have about 10 knights with him at the best of times. There are irritating, unconnected druidic ceremonies cut into the action, which don't add anything and seem incongruous, as they don't match the rest of the play, which looks more dark age than pre-Roman. In fairness to Blessed, it should be noted that he does pull off one very good piece of staging, when Poor Tom makes his entrance during the storm.
All that would be irrelevant if the performances were good. You don't watch Shakespeare for the pretty pictures, you listen for the words. But Blessed plays Lear with uncharacteristic - and inappropriate - restraint. The failing king lacks majesty and authority, coming across as a grumpy hobbit. Hildegrade Niel's performance as the Fool is more annoying than amusing. The daughters are also weak - Phillipa Peake is unmemorable as Cordelia, which is fatal given she is off stage for the majority of the film.
There are, however, some good performances in amongst it all - Mark Burgess does well as Edgar, after a shakey start, and Jason Riddington is good as his vicious half-brother, Edmund. Robbert Whelan is a decent Gloucester. Best of all though, is Graham McTavish as Albany. His performance as Banquo was one of the few interesting things in MacBeth, and here he makes the most of a bigger role.
But it always comes back to Blessed, as Lear and as director. The nadir of the play is probably the storm sequence, when Blessed should let rip, both in acting and in staging, but instesad delivers his speeches on the heath in red tinged close up, drily. We don't get to see much storm at all, and the over all effect is, again, more of dypesia rather than catastrophe. It's very strange that we've spent decades wishing Blessed would tone it down, only to have him do it at the worst possible time.
It does get better as it progresses - though it must be noted, cruelly, that it is at its best when Blessed is not on screen - and there's a power to the action that it is very hard for even a bad production to utterly destroy. But I don't think, however, that's enough to recommend this version.
NO STAR
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