DP Tool Club 8/CDASC08.ISO/VRAC/SUN9309.ZIP/MOV1

Text File | 1993-08-30 | 15KB | 278 lines

Through The Magic Lantern
Copyright (c) 1993, Diamond & Shipp
All rights reserved




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                  MOVIE REVIEWS BY BRUCE DIAMOND & RANDY SHIPP



     BRUCE DIAMOND:  Welcome once again to THROUGH THE MAGIC LANTERN,
                     with Bruce Diamond & Randy Shipp.  This time we
                     discuss Kenneth Branagh's latest Shakespearean
                     excursion, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.  I'm Diamond.


     RANDY SHIPP:  And I'm Shipp.  Coming off the critical, if not box
                   office, successes of his earlier films, HENRY V and
                   DEAD AGAIN, English actor/director Kenneth Branagh
                   takes us now on his first Shakespearean comedy, set
                   in the Renaissance Italian town of Messina.


     DIAMOND:  MUCH ADO is one of Shakespeare's bawdiest, most
               accessible, and hence popular plays.  The twist upon
               twist of misdirection, mistaken identity, and romantic
               wordplay is a heady, lively mix so typical of Shake-
               speare at his best.  The language is remarkably
               accessible, so Branagh should enjoy a broader audience
               for this romp than he did for the somber and dense
               HENRY V.


     SHIPP:  Despite this accessibility, MUCH ADO opened in a much
             more narrow release than maybe it could have.  I think
             that shows that although filmmakers like Branagh and
             Franco Zeffirelli (ROMEO AND JULIET, HAMLET) are creating
             good film versions of Shakespeare classics, studios and
             the other Powers-That-Be still don't think that the
             moviegoing public is ready to digest Shakespeare.  This
             seems to be in spite of the fact that MUCH ADO is so
             instantly familiar, without the cryptic passages that
             some people associate with Shakespeare.


     DIAMOND:  The story, of love-at-first-sight couterpointed by
               love-hidden-by-barbed tongue, is part of why MUCH ADO
               seems to be instantly familiar.  Long before empty-
               headed Broadway plays and soul-sucking TV sitcoms made
               it a staple, Shakespeare was deftly playing with love
               and its many vagaries.  How swiftly it comes, how
               swiftly it goes, and how easily it can be stolen away
               with the utterance of one wrong word, the action of one
               foul deed.  Shakespeare plays as much with his
               characters' naivete here, as he does with his
               audience's naivete.


     SHIPP:  More sophisticated audiences may wonder just how naive
             Shakespeare thinks they are during parts of the movie, as
             some of the plot twists require quite a suspension of
             disbelief, but all in great Shakespeare comedy fashion.
             It all fits.


     DIAMOND:  Let's get down to what's going on here.  Prince Don
               Pedro (Denzel Washington) is returning from a
               successful battle accompanied by his half brother, Don
               John (Keanu Reeves) and his loyal followers, Benedick
               (Branagh), and Count Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard, in
               an eye-opening performance as the naive lover around
               whom much of the plot revolves).  At the castle of
               Leonato (Richard Briers), Claudio falls instantly in
               love with the Governor of Messina's daughter, the
               innocent and beautiful, Hero (Kate Beckinsale).  The
               misdirection begins almost immediately, when Don Pedro
               offers to woo Hero on his behalf, while, during the
               revel, Don John (jealous of his brother's favor) tells
               Claudio that Pedro woos Hero for himself.  And so the
               dark underside of deception to this comedy begins.


     SHIPP:  And throughout the movie, just about the only person who
             isn't smiling and kicking up his heels is Don John.
             Keanu Reeves is a little stiff, I think, in this role,
             reminding me a lot of his performance in DRACULA.  I
             admire the guy's desire to move up to more serious roles,
             including the terrifically demanding Shakespeare parts,
             but I think he still seems like words won't flow off his
             tongue as easily as they do for some actors.  His scowl
             and appearance seemed perfect for the role, though.


     DIAMOND:  Really?  I thought he seemed a mite artificial, a
               little *too* stiff.  It's funny, but MUCH ADO isn't his
               first time with Shakespeare.  According to the advance
               publicity on the film, Reeves performed THE TEMPEST on
               stage in Lenox, Massachusetts, with Shakespeare &
               Company.  I can't help but feel that Branagh misstepped
               on the casting for Don John.  In fact, the Don John
               scenes seemed almost *too* dark, *too* obvious a
               contrast to the sun-filled joyousness that fills the
               screen when Claudio and Hero are together.  And it's
               too stark a contrast to the sharp-witted verbal
               bantering that Benedick and Beatrice (the wonderful
               Emma Thompson), Leonato's niece, engage in.


     SHIPP:  Yeah, at times I wondered how sinister the movie was
             going to get, and I hoped that for the sake of comedy
             that it never got too dark.  As it turns out, as you say,
             Reeves came close to overdoing it in a few places.  But,
             a nice contrast is indeed the wonderful dialog between
             Benedick and Beatrice.  Branagh and Thompson are real
             life husband and wife, and they work very well together.


     DIAMOND:  They've worked very well together, indeed, on all of
               Branagh's films.  They're the most natural, and
               talented, on-screen couple since, oh, I don't know when.
               Maybe since Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in ANNIE HALL?
               In stage versions of MUCH ADO that I've seen, the Don
               John scenes are never played this darkly.  In fact,
               there's some humor in them, especially during the
               assignation scene where Hero's lady-in-waiting,
               Margaret, is mistaken by Claudio for the lady herself,
               engaging in wantonness with Borachio, one of Don John's
               followers.


     SHIPP:  That scene in particular was played up very darkly.  At
             that point, the movie turned into a slightly less buoyant
             comedy.  Whereas in the beginning of the film, most of
             the fun is in Shakespeare's wordplay, and the sparring of
             Benedick and Beatrice, the end of the film relies
             more on visual comedy, mostly in the form of Michael
             Keaton, who plays Dogberry, an eccentric Constable of the
             watch.


     DIAMOND:  And here we come to Branagh's second serious error in
               casting, or in directing, depending how you look at it.
               While Reeves seems stiff and uncomfortable as Don John,
               stumbling around the Shakespeare while trying to appear
               aristocratic, Keaton merrily chews up the language and
               mangles it to great comic effect.  The problem arises
               in his overall performance, which seemed too forced,
               and too reminiscent of other famous Keaton roles.


     SHIPP:  Like BEETLEJUICE, maybe?


     DIAMOND:  *Definitely* like BEETLEJUICE.


     SHIPP:  Keaton runs around like someone who knows what they're
             doing, and that's no surprise, since the biggest
             difference between BEETLEJUICE and MUCH ADO for him is
             the language.  He's extremely bizarre and ugly, and gets
             laughs as much from his good comic delivery and excellent
             body language as he does from his fairly violent, almost
             slapstick abuse of his three watchmen and his toady (with
             whom he prances around the screen as though riding a
             horse.)


     DIAMOND:  You just led into my next thought.  MUCH ADO has been
               in release for some time now, now, though, as you
               noted, a very narrow release, so some areas where this
               review hits may not have seen the film yet.  Reviews
               have hit everywhere, though, and some critics have
               savaged the Dogberry role and Keaton's performance as
               too Monty Pythonesque in approach.
                    There's some element of truth to that, especially
               with the invisible horse scenes (echoing MONTY PYTHON
               AND THE HOLY GRAIL), but what one has to stop and
               realize is the rich influence that Shakespeare has had
               on English letters and culture.  All of the Pythonians
               were college- educated, and while the invisible horse
               trick was not a Shakespearean invention, he played with
               the language *long* before Cleese & co. did, a point
               that seems rather obvious.
                    One of Keaton's scenes, where he's trying to be
               official in front of the Governor, has him losing track
               of the points he wants to make.  "First," he'll say,
               then "thirdly," and then "my sixth point..." and on and
               on, which reminded me immediately of the Monty Python
               Spanish Inquisition sketch: "Nobody expects the Spanish
               Inquisition!  Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise
               and fear -- our *two* chief weapons are surprise, fear,
               and a ruthless efficiency -- our *three* main
               weapons...." and so on.


     SHIPP:  That scene before the Governor, by the way, was the one
             time I truly laughed hard at Dogberry.  The rest seemed
             awfully contrived, but Shakespeare's wordplay shone
             through brilliantly there, and Keaton's experience as a
             comic gave him the panache and zip to make it work well.


     DIAMOND:  Yes, I don't want to sell Keaton *too* short.  He did
               well in the role, but could have been better had he
               left BEETLEJUICE far behind him.  As Constable of the
               Watch, he and his droogs are meant chiefly as comic
               relief in MUCH ADO, but they also harbor the major plot
               point that turns the movie's central romance back
               around.  Thanks to Don John's deception, Claudio
               rejects Hero during their *wedding*!  He names her a
               wanton, impugns her name, and storms away, leaving Hero
               in tears, Beatrice determined to kill him, and Leonato
               with one of the film's great lines: "Hath no man's
               dagger here a point for me?"


     SHIPP:  Indeed.  And this film's not as full of memorable lines
             as perhaps HENRY V was, but taken as a whole, it is still
             two hours extremely well spent.  I can only hope that the
             Powers-That-Be begin to give the public credit for having
             tastes besides LAST ACTION HERO and WAYNE'S WORLD.
             The whole point that Branagh and Zefirelli are trying to
             make is that Shakespeare is not some dusty, four-hundred
             year old thing that's not relevant anymore.  Instead,
             they show us how we can still enjoy it, and how film can
             be an incredibly expressive medium for what used to be a
             strictly theatre art form.
               I think Branagh's second effort at Shakespeare on film
             is a worthy successor to HENRY V, which I enjoyed
             immensely, and I give the film a solid 8. I took one
             point off each for Don John's stiffness and the untimely
             appearance of Beetlejuice in the guise of Dogberry.  But
             I find little else to criticize, from beautiful location
             shots in Italy, to mostly good music by Patrick Doyle, to
             great acting, to a wonderful Shakespeare play.


     DIAMOND:  The rapturous, joyous love in this film, mixed with the
               comedy and the intrigue, is just as accessible as
               anything The Suits in Hollyweird produce, but more's
               the pity, not enough of the viewing public will realize
               that, thanks to the release pattern of MUCH ADO and
               thanks to the "moldy oldie" image you alluded to
               before.  One has to realize that Shakespeare wrote as
               much to the masses as he did to the supposedly more
               "sophisticated" audiences of his day, all within the
               same play.  What worked then, works now, and it works
               admirably.
                    I'll echo your 8 out of ten points, and point out
               the forced choreography that ends the picture, all for
               the sake of an incredible shot.  But, as I mentioned to
               you after the movie, staged Shakespeare seems to this
               same type of choreography, where the actors are too
               conscious of their movements *and* of the audience.  I
               don't know if this is a modern convention, or something
               from Shakespeare's day, but there it is.


     SHIPP:  And that's THROUGH THE MAGIC LANTERN for this month.  We
             hope you all enjoyed it, and that you'll tune in next
             time, when Bruce and I start the long haul toward
             Christmas release movies.  Until then, I'm the Lone
             Ranger...


     DIAMOND:  ...and I'm Jerry the Mouse.  We'll see *you* at the
               matinee.