Twelfth Night on DVD from Amazon
Starring Imogen Stubbs, Helena Bonham-Carter, Ben Kingsley, Toby Stephens, and Nigel Hawthorne
reviewed (again) 2010 by John Murphy
(for John’s 2004 review, click here)
One of the nice things about writing a blog is that nothing is set in stone. A review in print tends to make an author’s opinion (arrived at via contingency’s endless byways) seem inevitable and complete, like a Papal Bull or a design etched in acid. We all know this isn’t the case, but since writers rarely have the chance to revise opinions after publication, the printed opinion must stand, rather like an awkward-looking sentinel guarding a long-abandoned citadel.
As you may have gathered, the blog vs. print preamble is my philosophical way of admitting that I was wrong about something. In the greenery of my youth, I gave Trevor Nunn’s film adaptation of Twelfth Night the short shrift. I had my reasons, some of which still stand. But there was a crimped lack of generosity in my earlier review that demands some amendment.
Ben Kingsley as Feste
Context is part of it. It’s easier to see now where Twelfth Night fits into the trajectory of cinematic Shakespeare. The 1990′s were a Boom decade for the Bard, mostly thanks to the surprise critical and commercial success of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. Nunn’s film — which was released in the same year as Branagh’s Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet — has many elective affinities with Branagh’s populist Bard-vision. The late 19th century seems the go-to time-period: not so long ago as to be distant, but not too recent for the language to seem out-of-place. Scenes are invented, lines cut and rearranged, to minimize audience confusion. The Royal Shakespeare Company furnishes many of the cast members, and the composer even does a passable Patrick Doyle imitation.
Richard E. Grant as Sir Andrew Aguecheek
Twelfth Night was thus caught in Branagh’s towline, and suffers in some ways by the comparison. For all his faults as a director, Branagh is never without ambition or energy. Nunn’s approach to his material is more leisurely, even somber at moments. Yet even if the visual style can be a bit leaden, I didn’t give him enough credit. As befits a director best known for his work on stage, Nunn elicits top-shelf performances from an impressive ensemble. Standouts include Richard E. Grant, full of pathos and bathos as Olivia’s slightly slow suitor, Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Ben Kingsley as a feisty Feste, somewhat menacing; and a very fine Helena Bonham-Carter, toning down the eccentricities to play a more appealing version of the black-shrouded Goth-girl.
Imogen Stubbs as Viola & Steven Mackintosh as Sebastian
The real pinch-hitter, however, is Imogen Stubbs as Viola. Stubbs was the most moving and convincing Desdemona I’ve seen in Nunn’s version of Othello from the late 80′s, and she brings the same irrepressible energy and charm to this significantly less doom-laden role. She’s simply delightful to watch and carries the movie on her padded shoulders.
Nigel Hawthorne, cross-gartered, as Malvolio
Although Nunn is not the most visually inventive of directors, his cinematographer gives the movie an autumnal, Pre-Raphaelite-like burnished glow that attractively suits the melancholy undercurrents of the story. Nigel Hawthorne, excellent as always, brings a shade of poignancy and wounded pride to the part of Malvolio, whose fifth act vow to be “reveng’d on the whole pack of you,” casts a pall over the otherwise clear-skied happy ending. Hawthorne’s performance, along with Stubbs’ and the rest of the fine ensemble, keep the film afloat and guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable time in their company.
[Did you know Ben Kingsley was an erstwhile folksinger? Here's proof in his role as Feste:]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar0SRsMw0wQ[/youtube]
Sebastian (Ronny Jhutti) and Viola (Parminder Nagra), are brother and sister stowaways separated during a raid on a ship. Picked up by a fishing crew, Viola ends up ashore at Illyria, governed by the duke of Orsino (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Assuming her brother to be lost, Viola disguises herself as a man and enters Orsino’s service. He employs her as his romantic emissary to a frigid noblewoman, Olivia (Claire Price), who is in mourning for the recent death of her brother. She rejects Orsino but in the process takes a fancy to the messenger — Viola, disguised as a boy — and her icy exterior begins to melt.
Sounds like a charming set-up for a winning comedy of errors, no? Yes, absolutely, if you were watching nearly any other version of Twelfth Night. Tim Supple, perhaps frustrated in a desire to direct King Lear, makes the inexplicable aesthetic choice to suck Twelfth Night of any trace of humor. I am at a loss to understand why. Yes, the Malvolio subplot has a melancholy air about it, but most of the scenes are knee-slapping funny when given the right treatment. Supple & co. don’t bother mining for comic gold (the play is the paylode), they don’t even pick up the pickaxes. Some foolproof scenes, such as Malvolio appearing to Olivia in yellow stockings, cross-gartered — a scene so surefire funny any halfway decent high school production earns belly laughs — are, in this version, plodding, heavy-handed, and about as funny as a migraine.
The largely charismatic, multicultural cast is left to flounder in the void. Parminder Nagra, a charmer in Bend it like Beckham, tries admirably to generate heat but only succeeds in appearing vaguely pissed off. With her flipped-up hairdo, petulant mouth, and attractively oval face, she hardly convinces as a young man — she more closely resembles what she is: a girl dressed in her brother’s clothes. Chiwetel Ejiofor commands as Orsino, but doesn’t seem to be playing a character so much as modeling a series of designer fashion lines — there’s Casual Duke, Sporty Duke, and Mob-Boss Duke, for starters. I’d like to see him in a meatier production, playing Henry V perhaps, or Marc Antony.
Orsino listens to CD mixes labeled “Music by the Fool,” and I couldn’t help but wish the duke had chosen better background music. If “Music by the Fool” be the food of love, I’ve lost my appetite. Zubin Varla plays Feste as a sixties-style troubadour always threatening to pick up a guitar. His voice is pleasing and he has a nice finger-picking touch on the guitar, but the songs are glaringly out-of-place. They’re painfully sincere cry-in-your-beer ballads that inspire embarrassed laughter any time he reaches for the six-string. When he does, Supple discordantly shifts into music-video mode and whatever momentum he’d managed to get going comes to a grinding halt.
Modern accoutrements, such as the music-video interludes, feel like embellishments on a flimsy structure. In 1996′s Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann matched his headlong, head-rush, acid-trip visual style to a story of equally impetuous young lovers, caught up in a whirlwind tragedy-romance of operatic proportion. With Twelfth Night, Supple’s camera trickery, claustrophobic close-ups, vivid set designs, and dancey soundtrack all seem like unnecessary flourishes; but at least they hold the audience’s attention while the actors are obliged to declaim Shakespeare’s lines like mournful funeral-goers.
But who knows, perhaps we can look forward to Mr. Supple directing a rollicking, rolling-in-the-aisles funny adaptation of Titus Andronicus?
The great thing about Branagh is that he is aiming at the same audience who’d enjoy an episode of Friends or the comic misadventures of Bill & Ted. His version of Shakespeare is for everyone, not dusty academics or film snobs. To this end, he rounds out Shakespeare’s script with imaginative bits of physical comedy and some inspired casting. The action clips along nicely, breezing through Shakespeare’s Wodehousian comedy of errors with a welcome sparkle. Drama depends on mistaken identity, double-crosses, and Shakespeare can’t help but throw in a near-tragedy twist on the broad plot, but things arrange themselves neatly by the end, and all get their just desserts.
Okay, so Branagh’s stunt casting isn’t an across-the-board success. Keanu Reeves as a villainous bastard (in both the old and new sense) shows some limitation with the language, but fortunately for us he’s “Not of many words” and does look good grimacing while sporting a “Hello, I’m obviously the Bad Guy” black beard. Denzel Washington, another movie star not typically associated with a classical repertoire, acquits himself with grace and confidence as regal Don Pedro. Why hasn’t he done more Shakespeare since this movie?
Probably the most divisive bit of casting is Michael Keaton as Dogberry, that beloved master of malapropisms. For some, he’s grating and over-the-top. I agree, but that’s why he’s hilarious. His performance seems inspired less by Shakespeare than by the Monty Python troupe, but when the issue is comedy, who’s complaining? Keaton’s Dogberry is an off-kilter lowbrow foil to the witty repartee of Benedick and Beatrice, and the result is some side-splittingly funny moments.
Speaking of Benedick and Beatrice, played by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, respectively, they are the two main reasons to see this show. When they go toe-to-toe, the electricity between them could light up several city blocks. The verbal sparring in the scenes with B. and B. is classic: a merry war of wit in the vein of 1940s screwball comedies, but with better dialogue. Shakespeare’s humor is wise and witty, pithily summarizing topics as universal as Love, Pride, and the like, with a playful nudge & wink. Ken and Em deliver their lines with veterans’ ease and new-kid-on-the-block energy. What a joy to see them here, young and ravishing and perfectly matched. They have the potent chemistry of a timeless on-screen couple, making their initial disdain and eventual love look effortless. I don’t go in much for Hollywood gossip or behind-the-scenes drama, but I have to admit that I was truly saddened by their split as a couple. Whatever the reality, their professional relationship was one for the record books.
Oh well, at least we’ve got this movie for the time capsule. Here Branagh hits just the right tone. “Suit the action to the words, the words to the action,” as Hamlet puts it, and Branagh takes that advice to heart much more in this production than he did, ironically, in his 
Shakespeare was of his time, no question, but his genius transcended time. It’s almost as though Shylock was originally conceived as a one-dimensional villain bellowing blood-thirstily for his bond, only to become something more in the process of writing. I can picture Shakespeare scribbling away with his feathered quill, the ghost of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta over his shoulder, and happening upon the line, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” and Eureka! One of the most breathtaking, heartbreaking, and humane passages in the canon of world literature emerges…but maybe that’s romanticizing the old Bard just a bit.
Perhaps the proof is in the pudding. The Merchant of Venice is discomfiting to watch, shifting incongruously from sunny broad comedy (the various misguided courtships of Portia) to dark and brooding tragedy (the scenes with Shylock). Audience discomfort is not a mark of a bad production, however. Far from it. Radford’s film is a resounding success because it is a relatively straightforward adaptation of the play. Radford avoids a strictly polemical interpretation and thereby refuses to let his audience off the hook. He takes the Bard on his own problematic terms and we, the groundlings, are left to decide what to take away from the experience.
Shaggy-bearded Pacino, his lined face a time-worn monument, makes for an intensely compelling Shylock. He doesn’t cater to PC trends and bend-over-backwards to soften Shylock or make him more “likable.” This is a fierce, irascible, angry, and resentful individual. He has plenty of reasons to be. Title cards at the film’s beginning create a historical context for the plot. In Venice circa 1596, Jews were prohibited by law to own property and lived under Christian lock-and-key in the city’s ghetto. Thus, lending money at interest provided one of their few means of self-support, since “usury” was against Christian law. Shylock is one of these much maligned money-lenders. A prologue shows Shylock spit on by Antonio, the play’s Christian counterpart, the titular Merchant of Venice.
Though Shylock is the source of the play’s controversy, and its most memorable character, Radford’s film brings the other characters into clear relief. Joseph Fiennes acquits himself well as Bassanio, the one-time playboy, now smitten suitor to Portia and catalyst for the play’s events. Fiennes smolders well; recalling his earthy and passionate Will from
And, as a 20-something male, I confess she’s not hard to look at.
Apart from the performances, the movie looks great. Of course, Venice, a crumbling dream city, just has to be to look great. The costumes are worn, lived-in. The actors’ pasty faces and unkempt hair suggest the absence of indoor plumbing. Scenes have the dramatic chiaroscuro appropriate to a dim, candle-lit world. Jocelyn Pook’s score is atmospheric and as effectively time-bound as the material itself.
For that reason alone this movie is worth seeing. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, see it. If you’re a Pacino fan, see it. But be prepared to leave unsatisfied, rankled, and scratching your head. I think that’s a compliment to the production.
