A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) directed by Michael Hoffman

Starring Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, David Strathairn, Stanley Fucci, Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, Sam Rockwell, John Sessions, and Sophie Marceau

reviewed by Debra & John Murphy

Debra Murphy:

Michael Hoffman’s film depicts a universe freely inhabited by faeries and dwarves, satyrs and all sorts of benign if mischievous forest folk, who weave in and out of our mortal world, fiddling merrily with our destinies and sprinkling all with a touch of magic.

The film’s opening, a scene of bustling preparations for the upcoming wedding feast of Theseus {David Strathairn} and Hippolyta {Sophie Marceau}, looks very much like an hommage to the opening scene of Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. {It is fitting, after all, since we owe much of the recent resurgence in filmed Shakespeare to Branagh.) But thereafter Hoffman goes his own way, and finds his own voice in a fetching synergy of ancient and modern, Christian and pagan, Shakespearean and operatic.

The setting is a turn-of-the-century Tuscan village called “Monte Athena”, standing in place of Shakespeare’s “Athens”. (Much Ado was also filmed in Tuscay, but then Shakespeare was nothing if not an Italophile.)  Just outside the prosperous little village lies a numinous forest world ruled by those warring (and married) faerie-deities, Oberon {Rupert Everett} and Titania {Michelle Pfeiffer}, whose classically outsized jealousies and carryings-on sew first disorder — “the course of true love never did run smooth” — then ultimately an Edenic harmony in the love lives of a foolish pair of mortal duos, Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius.

The Production

“Operatic” is the word that jumps to mind when watching this film, produced by Michael Hoffman and Leslie Urdang, with production design by Lucianna Arrighi, and costumes by Gabriella Pescucci. The cinematographer was Oliver Stapleton, who did such notable work on Hoffman’s Restoration. But this is, after all, supposed to be turn-of-the-century Tuscany, and the film is anchored by Simon Boswell’s lovely score, which thieves shamelessly from Italian opera. The music, along with Stapleton’s lush, warm photography, sweeps the audience into an appropriately light-hearted and romantic mood, and induced this viewer, at least, to indulge, as soon as the film was over, in a fantasy pilgrimage to bella Italia — did only the familial finances allow.

Despite the over-the-top production values, Hoffman stays true to the Bard’s marvelous language. Besides directing a stage Midsummer while a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Hoffman was one of the founders of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. By the sounds of it he directed his actors to emphasize clarity in their speech, which slows the pace a little for those familiar with the play, but makes listening a good deal more pleasurable, I dare say, for audience members not as familiar with Elizabethan English.

The Players

The cast is solid, with special kudos going to the Garbo-esque Michelle Pfeiffer and the scene-stealing Kevin Kline, one of the finest comic {and Shakespearean} actors in the States. After the foresty faery-doings, the final scene’s antic comedy might well have come off woefully anti-climactic. Instead, Kline as the ridiculous but sweet Nick Bottom-the-Weaver conquers his audience, on screen and off, with what amounts to a spot-on parody of every high school English student’s worst nightmare of a hanky-waving, sword-swishing, Bad-Shakespearean-Actor.

John Murphy’s take:

“Lord, what fools these mortals be…”

Thus opines Shakespeare in the guise of Puck, the woodland fairy. Midsummer is the Bard’s commentary on humanity’s fickle, thoroughly unpredictable nature. This, the latest film adaptation of the oft-produced play, understands Shakespeare’s intentions and, in turn, glorifies these self-same failings, which are the very root of human existence. The director, Michael Hoffman, chooses to create an atmosphere of magical realism as opposed to a vaudevillian slapstick-happy approach. In this respect Midsummer both shines and fails, for the lush, opulent decor and golden-hued lighting schematic supplement Shakespeare’s soaring verse, but also distract occasionally, preventing the scenes from taking full comic flight — a mistake not made, for example, in Kenneth Branagh’s similarly lush and Italianate Much Ado About Nothing.

If the director is more concerned with veneer than vibrant physicality and wordy banter, however, the actors, at least, manage to pick up some of the slack. Kevin Kline as Bottom the Weaver is, expectedly, a perpetual scene-stealer, coming up with a characterization which is something of a hybrid of Chaplinesque pathos and Gilbert & Sullivan’s posturing but charming Pirate King, which Kline also played to great effect on the stage and screen. Kline’s “on-stage” finale as Bottom-enacting-Pyramus ranks among the most side-splittingly send-ups of hammy Shakespearean acting ever to hit celluloid.

Supporting Kline is a strong cast of actors, consistently accessible in their mouthing of Shakespeare’s occasionally tongue-twisting rhymes. I was especially impressed by Calista Flockhart as poor love-spited Helena, and Christian Bale as the object of her undying affections, Demetrius. Their scenes have a notable vim, vigor and vitality which I found a bit lacking in those between the bland Lysander and Hermia. Rupert Everett as Oberon, King of the Fairies (methinks I nose an inside joke here somewhere) has an appropriately god-like presence, ever-sneering, ever above-it-all. Michelle Pfeiffer, that paragon of beauty, is ravishing as Titania, and her speech is eloquently suited to a role requiring very little acting, but a good deal of smoldering.

Given the 19th-century Italian setting, comparisons to Branagh’s Much Ado must naturally abound, and I have to say that this Midsummer does not quite stand up under the scrutiny. Though Much Ado had its weaknesses (Robert Sean Leonard, Keanu Reeves…need I say more?) the comedic peaks that Branagh and Emma Thompson achieved as bickering Beatrice and Benedick far outmeasure the more consistent but also (with the exception of Kline) shallower Midsummer. Still, Midsummer stands as a thoroughly enjoyable and weightless summer frolic, providing as pleasant a way to pass a midsummer’s evening as any.

Here’s the movie trailer:

And for the Baleheads among us: