DVD review -King Lear (1999)

King Lear (1999). D: Brian Blessed. Starring Brian Blessed, Phillipa Peake.

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

DVD review - Hamlet (2003)

Hamlet (2003). D: Mike Mundell. Starring Will Houston, Gareth Thomas.

Disc Two of my set of three. Fortunately, something of an improvement on the dismal MacBeth. This version of Hamlet bears all the marks of a very low budget production but has enough going for it to make it worth while.

It looks like a theatre production opened up and filmed. The cast range from competent to very good - a hint they are presenting a well rehearsed stage production - but some are incongruous. A very contemporary looking Osric, for example, or the youthful Polonius. On stage oddities such as there are less noticeable than on film. The production looks cheap, with the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes taking place in a small, drab room that doesn't reflect well on the majesty of the Danish royal house. A badly presented ghost doesn't help either.

The text has been edited heavily. The film bravely dumps the brilliant opening Shakespeare envisaged on the dark battlements of Elsinore. "To be or not to be" is shunted forwards to just before the entrance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This gives Hamlet's melancholy a more genuine feel - no question of him hamming it up for Claudius and Laertes - but it also means the audience has empathy with him, and less sympathy for his plight. We've only just met the guy, and he's telling us about how he wants to off himself. Don't you hate people like that? Fortinbras is gone entirely - the final catastrophe that befalls the Danish royal family leaves a power vacuum with no cynical warlordling ready to stride into it.

The film stutters at the start. The opening scenes are stages in Elizabethan buildings and look awkward and staged. Subsquent scenes are more effective, and the Elizabethan settings are discarded in favour of pleasingly medieval look. It's possible the director was trying for something similar to Olivier's Henry V in mind, which started with a facsimile of an Elizabethan staging of the play. It doesn't really work, and the opening scenes are ragged but it does pick up after that.

The main strength of the film is the cast. It looks like they have been playing the parts on stage and they are generally very good. Will Houston as Hamlet is very good, after a shaky start. Gareth Thomas is a sympathetic Claudius, and Lucy Cockram - after another dicey first scene - is good as Ophelia. David Powell Davies is too young for Polonius, but provides the character with a more dignity than he is usually allowed. He doesn't come across as pompous or foolish. This combination of a fairly likable Claudius and a wily Polonius makes our identification with Hamlet more provisional than is often the case, and this is good, for me at any rate.

The staging of the Mousetrap and the confrontation between Hamlet and Gertrude are very well done - the latter is superb. Houston imbues his lines with manic energy to make them more menacing than they are often read. This Hamlet's witty retorts seem to be teetering on the edge of madness. He carries this over onto the following scene, where he is quizzed about the fate of Polonius. Our sympathy here is actually with the hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as they try to keep pace with the Prince, and it works very well. Hamlet's verbal sparring alienates us, as it should - he has, after all, just killed someone. That Houston manages to pull us back to him in the final scenes is a credit to a young actor who should shine in years to come.

All in, a brave attempt to film one of the difficult texts in the cannon. It is flawed, but the flaws relate more to the realities of film making. Its virtues, on the other hand, are most noticeable where they are most needed - the acting, the poetry, and the staging. There has been a glut of Hamlets recently. None have been perfect, including this one, but this is the one I like best.

**

DVD review - MacBeth (1997)

MacBeth (1997). Directed by Jeremy Freeston and Brian Blessed. Starring Jason COnnery and Helen Baxendale.

This was part of a box set I bought recently, a triple bill of Shakespearean tragedies -MacBeth, Hamlet and King Lear (reviews of the other two to follow). I watched MacBeth first because it is one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare, and I've been curious about this version for some time.

MacBeth, I've always thought, is the most accessible of Shakespeare's 'Great Period' plays. Compact, focused, with heaps of violence, it should have been the play most open to screen adaptations. I'm not aware of a really good rendering of the story, however - the best effort being Orson Welles's vigorous shoestring version. To the list of MacBotches we must add the Connery/Baxendale effort.

(It seems it was not a 'film adaptation' at all, but a TV version that was given a theatrical release, post Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet and Branagh's Hamlet. That might explain some of its flaws, but doesn't excuse them.)

It starts well, with a feisty battle sequence with pleasingly grisly witches looking on. Poor old Gray Malkin and Paddock are cut from the opening scene, but they aren't alone for long. In quick order they are joined by the bloodied Sargent and his account of the battle, the treachery of the Thane of Cawdor, the luckless master o' the Tiger, even MacBeth's meeting with Duncan when he is invested as thane of Cawdor. All of these had virtues that plead like angels trumpet tongued against the dark damnation of their sending off, but sent off they are. These aren't the only cuts, either. This is MacBeth in a hurry.

From the opening battle we are pitched directly into MacBeth's encounter with the witches, which is well done. Brian Blessed, curiously, directed the witchy sequences, and he has great fun with the special effects as MacBeth and Banquo are told of their fates. Jason Connery as MacBeth is awkward, obviously unsure what to make of the verse. Graham MacTavish as Banquo, on the other hand, is capable, making his lines natural and easy. Within a few minutes of Connery's mumbling, the viewer is struck the urge to see the roles reversed and MacTavish in the title role. No wonder MacBeth felt he needed to kill him.

These first few minutes marks the high point of the film. From there we move to Helen Baxendale receiving word of her husband. She's as lost as Connery, and denied the beard that he gets to hide behind. Her "Unsex me here" invocation of evil is embarrassing, not unsettling. There are some reasonably clever touches - MacBeth's "We will speak further" is not a sign of his hesitancy in the face of his wife's wicked ambition, but his attempt to silence her prattling as he throws her onto the bed.

The acting of the leads is the biggest let down. Connery's method consists of staring glazedly about the screen while he mumbles his monologues via voice-over. Baxendale looks pinched and neurotic. An attempt to do something interesting with "Is this a dagger?" - the fantastical dagger is a shadow cast by a cross on an altar - falls flat due to Connery's poor delivery and sloppy direction, which mars the production throughout. We accompany Lady MacBeth back into the murder chamber, where she gets to stab the reviving Duncan, but the effect is comic, not dramatic.

Big scenes are botched - the appearance of Banquo at the feast is made incomprehensible through attempts to mix subjective rendering of MacBeth's delusion with what those around him see, or don't see. The second meeting with the witches is even less coherent, and the prophetic visions are confusing. Timing seems to be an issue here - Banquo's banquet is the centrepoint of the play, but the film moves rapidly towards conclusion after it, giving it an unbalanced feel and no scope for the intricacies of the riddles MacBeth is caught in to be appreciated, or for his descent into madness to be convincing. Another crucial cut is the scene where Malcolm tests MacDuff, and MacDuff learns of the murder of his family. This robs his revenge of most of its emotional force - and the character of a lot of the screen time. He's a virtual stranger when he turns up to kill MacBeth.

A point for trying. MacTavish's Banquo earns another. The first few minutes garners another. But that's all. From then on it's sound and fury blah blah blah.

NO STAR