Category: Reviews

Movie and book reviews

Review : The Wednesday Wars

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

The Wednesday Wars plays out like a Shakespeare geek’s version of the hero daydream.

Think back to when you were a child.  Surely at one point or another we all dreamed the hero daydream, where bullies backed away from us in the halls, teachers and adults praised our genius, teammates carried us around on their shoulders after we singlehandedly won the big game.  You know the drill.  All that stuff that would never happen, we just hoped that maybe someday. I remember, and this will seriously date me, that I would someday appear on Johnny Carson because I was just so very precocious, and Johnny would be amazed at how smart I was at such a young age.

Our narrator, seventh-grader “Holling Hoodhood”, has to read The Tempest … and takes away from it the knowledge that most of Caliban’s lines are Shakespearean curse words.  So he spends the rest of the book muttering “toads…beetles…bats!” when he’s angry at the situation, sometimes going so far as to shout “The red plague rid you!” at his enemies.

Do you know what happens?  Do the bullies of the school all point and laugh and call him an even bigger nerd, knock his books down and give him a wedgie?  Oh no, patient reader!  In this hero’s daydream the bullies think that these newfangled curses are cool, and it’s only a matter of time before Shakespeare is heard up and down the hallways.   I wish!

There’s an even funnier scene when our hero needs a favor from a grownup, who just happens to be in charge of the upcoming Shakespeare show.  “What I need,” says the grownup, “What would really save the day?  Is to find a 12year old boy that knows his Shakespeare!”  Because, you know, that happens. 🙂 And then there’s the scene where he gets to play ball with the Yankees.  Yeah.

Much of this story’s structure has been told before. A middle school student growing up in the 60s, having to deal with the teacher that hates him, the bullies that want revenge after he “takes one out,” an older sister who threatens death if he ever comes into her room….you know, the usual.  If that’s all it was, I’d have no interest in this book.  It is still a young adult book, narrated in that voice, and I found it overly redundant in many points.  It’s cute in places (like when Holling’s most pressing concern over his Shakespearean debut is the fact that his costume has feathers on the butt).  But his obsession with these things, while in character for a 12yr old, tried my patience on more than one occasion.

What makes this book special is Holling’s relationship with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, who has him working through Shakespeare as part of a special extra assignment.  There are bits in the beginning (as noted with Caliban’s curses) where it’s amusing to watch him get into Shakespeare, but it’s not long before they’re taking on bigger and more important issues like “The quality of mercy is not strained” from Merchant. All this is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War (Mrs. Baker’s husband is missing in action, and Holling’s older sister is considering becoming a flower child).

It’s here that we go from “hero’s daydream” to “Yes, yes, I wish life was more like this.”  Everything that happens to Holling has happened and will continue to happen to all young adults at this stage of life.  I’m jealous of him because he’s got Shakespeare (and Mrs. Baker) by his side. I mean, come on, he takes a date to Romeo and Juliet  … and she likes it!  In middle school!

All kidding aside there is a wonderful story being told here, in particular as the narrator’s relationship with his sister evolves. I’ve heard that there might be a sequel in the works, and I’ll definitely put that one on my list as well.  I want to live vicariously through this kid.

Review : A Thousand Acres

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Bardfilm and I have been discussing “modern adaptations” lately, and I asked for the distinction – did he mean modern setting but original text, or modern language?  For this particular context he meant the latter.  Since I don’t normally seek out such movies I went out and found one – the King Lear adaptation of the book of the same name, A Thousand Acres.

Jason Robards plays our Lear (“Larry”, as it becomes apparently quickly that the author’s gone with a whole first initial thing) to his daughters Michelle Pfeiffer (as “R”ose), Jessica Lange (as “G”inny) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (as “C”aroline).  From that point it’s harder to tell who is who because unless I’m missing something the first initial game goes out the window as Colin Firth’s Jess is plainly the bastard Edmund.  As you can see, though, the cast is first rate.

For any “modern adaptation” of this sort that’s clearly only taking inspiration from Shakespeare and not trying to tell his story, I look for a couple of things.  How much direct homage to Shakespeare is there?  How much of the original story remains?  How much new material does this story provide?

In other words does the end result produce something standalone, while still showing respect for the original?  It’s very tricky to strike a balance, because every time you diverge from the source material you’re going to have audience like me asking, “Oh, really? So you think you’re about to tell a better story?” and you need to bring it.  Safest not to change the story too much, but instead to bring new elements that Shakespeare never touched upon.

How does A Thousand Acres do?  It’s not bad.  The connection to the source material is clear, and  more than minimal.  Larry runs the farm, and wants to retire and divide it up amongst his three daughters.  R and G find this a great idea, but when C so much as says “Let me think about it” he disowns her on the spot.  I mentioned Jess as the bastard character who does all the bastard things, sleeping with the sisters, getting into a fight with his father (Pat Hingle as this sort of Kent/Gloucester combination character), but he’s not really the architect of all the bad that happens.  There’s even a nice big storm for the daughters to send their father into.

Other than those story elements the similarities are few and far between.  In this story, R and G (makes me think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when I say that :)) are actually the good guys, if you can believe it. It’s a very complicated story.  Nobody in town likes them because the people think the daughters conspired to steal the farm from their father.  Meanwhile the daughters have both got some deep dark secrets that reveal their father is not the nice man he seems, and is well deserving of their hate.

I found the story too confusing to follow in many parts, and that’s one of the reasons that I often dislike modern adaptations.  You try to add your own material, but then to really develop a foundation in that material you have to stray farther (further?) from the original, and eventually you hit walls where you can’t go more in any direction.  Same here.  There are some obvious places where R and G are talking and it seems like the most obvious thing in the world to do is for them to go talk to C…but they can’t.  That’s not how the story went.  In fact we never really even get C’s side of the story – this is Goneril’s movie, if I have to pick a central character.

The whole thing is additionally complicated with the addition of husbands and children, alcoholism and terminal illnesses.  There’s a whole lot going on in this movie besides the Shakespeare.  And it’s all set in this weird sort of Tennessee Williams sounding world where full grown women still call their parents “Mommy” and “Daddy” which, when coupled with the deep dark secrets that we learn, is all the more uncomfortable.

See it if you get a moment, if for nothing else than to have something to talk about the next time somebody trots out one of those lists that contains nothing but Lion King, Ten Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man. But don’t go out of your way for it.

 

It’s The New Shrew Review, Coming Right At You

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

(* Ok, please tell me somebody gets that reference.)

I just read today that former Disney princess and modern day movie darling Anne Hathaway is signed on to a new Taming of the Shrew movie?  How cool would that be?  The article suggests that she’ll of course play Katharina, which I suppose make sense given her star power — I think the only other role would be Bianca, and that’s very much just a supporting role.

But two questions spring immediately to mind.  First, who should be her Petruchio?  Obviously this movie’s going to skew to a younger audience so I don’t think we’ll see any Russell Crowes or Ralph Fiennes’ stepping up.  How about Chris Hemsworth, the dude that played Thor?  There’s already a bit of ol’ Shakespeare about much of his dialogue anyway.  He’s got the rough sound and look about him that he might be able to play Petruchio.

Second question – do we think that anybody’s ever going to match Liz Taylor and Richard Burton?  That wasn’t just a haphazard hookup of who happened to be hot in Hollywood (see what I did there? Ha!).  They were on a completely different level than that, and it showed.  The fact that it was Shakespeare was really just a bonus — wasn’t that the first (and only?) Shakespeare that she ever did?  Burton was a different story, of course.

When Kenneth Branagh or David Tenant (feel free to borrow some N’s from each other, boys, I can never remember how to spell either of your names) makes with the modern Shakespeare, I think we see it differently.  They are Shakespeareans, and decades from now students will discuss their interpretations alongside Olivier.  But … is Anne Hathaway the next Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren? Do young actors today have the Royal Shakespeare Company to fall back on, to produce the next Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen?

Commonwealth Shakespeare 2012 Presents Coriolanus : Part 2

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

Ok, now that you’ve heard the story of how I got there, let’s talk about the show.  It should be noted that other than my introduction to the play via the recent Ralph Fiennes movie, I don’t have much detailed knowledge of the little things.

Taken to an extreme, it’s hard to explain Coriolanus to someone without sounding like a punchline — “This big bad war hero declares war on Rome and promises to burn it to the ground, until his mother comes and lays the guilt trip on him and makes him promise to play nice.”  Of course the interesting bits are in how we get there, and in why this can happen like it does.  The Fiennes’ movie (with Vanessa Redgrave as the mom) had some pretty deep and dark emotional baggage.  This one felt like it was playing more for the comedy angle.

The scenery is plain, wooden, with a burnt-out feeling to it.  At first I think it conjures up a little too much of a pastoral / foresty vibe rather than the industrial sort of thing I was expecting, but not to the point of distraction.  As is typical with all of the staging of their productions, they’ve got stairs to a landing stage left, and a higher balcony stage right.  There’s a main entrance through doors center stage, but that’s typically used for special stage directions – most actors entrances and exits come from the audience.

One of the downsides to seeing the same group perform a different play every year is that their characters begin to blend.  No more is this more true than with their comedian Fred Sullivan, who was so definitive as Nick Bottom that I’ve struggled to hear him portray anything differently since.  He was Brabantio, Parolles, and now Menenius.  I did not yet have an appreciation for how funny Menenius could be!  Fred’s got what I can best describe as a classic Abbott and Costello sense of timing, equally able to deliver the straight line, the zinger, or to burst into over the top ranting and raving.  Every year it’s a treat to watch (and hear) him.

Likewise, Volumnia is portrayed this year by the same woman who did The Countess last year in All’s Well That Ends Well.  I apologize for not having her name handy, I do not have a program with it (I know Fred’s name from years of paying attention to his characters).  I wasn’t sure what to do with Volumnia who is first seen playing guns with Coriolanus’ son, fingers cocked and pointed and shouting “eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh” at the boy as he play stumbles to his death down the stairs.   She is a joyful lady at this point, who doesn’t appear to have a care in the world.  Her son, her wonderful son!  A war hero!  She can’t wait for him to come home, with his shield or on it (no, she doesn’t say that, but that’s the idea).  Her tone doesn’t change in the slightest when she talks about the pride she would have in her son if he died, something that Coriolanus’ wife never quite seems to comprehend.  This was not what I expected.  But, then again, this gave her a great deal of room to change as the play progresses, which I think worked well.

Coriolanus is little more than a boy who I might have seen play Lysander or perhaps Bertram.  When you first see him there’s no “Holy cow he looks like someone you don’t want to mess with,” it’s more like “Ok, they all look like they’re playing army guys and he’s the one playing a little harder and a little better than everybody else.”

And that really becomes the theme of it.  All of Coriolanus’ rants against not wanting to walk among the people really do come off whiny.  When he does finally walk among them he is, to put it quite frankly, a real dick about it.  At “A match, sir. There’s in all two worthy voices
begged. I have your alms: adieu,” he might as well have stuck in a sarcastic, “Oh, yippy for me, more voices! Yay!”

His tone is not reserved for just the people, either.  He talks to his mother that way.  At “Chide me no more….look, I am going” he begins a slow motion walk across the stage.

But then … I’m not sure I completely understand what they were going with in the end, which is why with live theatre I always wish that I had opportunity to watch it a few times.  Coriolanus quite frankly seems scared to be in the camp of Aufidius.  He keeps repeating to them “See?  See what I did?  See how I turn away the messengers?  That’s good, right? You trust me, right?  Menenius over here, I loved him like a father, but I turned him away as well, you saw that Aufidius, didn’t you? Your people saw me do that?”  I mean, the lines are what they are, and I’m sure that he wasn’t adding any (the above are my paraphrases of course), but I thought the idea was that Coriolanus had this aura about him that caused soldiers to flock to him, and here he is constantly needing to ask “You trust me, right? I proved to you that you can trust me?”

The penultimate scene is all about Volumnia, of course, and she knocks it out of the park.  It is a clear case of motherly manipulation over her son – he turns his back on her, tries to hide from her, and then finally flings himself at her feet in tears.  She, of course, comes home in triumph, to a parade with rose petals strewn in her path and the people all shouting her name as the saviour of Rome.

As for Coriolanus’ ending, I still love that whole line about “I fluttered your Volskis at Corioli.  Alone. I did it.  Boy.”  Even though I was not impressed with Coriolanus in any sort of “one man army / robotic war machine” sort of way as the Fiennes did it, this one still managed to make it clear that “I know and you know that I can destroy you, you’ve seen me do it, so you don’t get to call me boy without paying for it.”  Whether that’s true or not, of course, we learn very quickly.

On a somewhat related note (if I point back to my best lines from Coriolanus post), I did not enjoy the whole “common cry of curs” scene.  It was as if somebody said “Ok, this line right here?  Center of the play,  everything revolves around this moment.  So when it comes, make sure it explodes.”  It does, but only to the point where the rest of the crowd on stage seems to be saying “WTF, dude, why are you shouting?”  After delivering the big line so big that the people watching Dark Knight in the nearby movie theatre would have heard it, the followup “I banish you!” was far more pitiful.  Not dripping with disdain like he can’t wait to get out of this place, but more with a resolute “I have to do this, I have choice” resignation.  Wasn’t bad, necessarily, I just didn’t love it.

One last thing.  End of play, Coriolanus’ body has been carried off.  Enter his son, who wordlessly comes over, picks up what I think is his father’s weapon (I couldn’t see well), and then either holds it over his head, or salutes or something.  I really wish I could tell what he’d done, maybe somebody who saw the production can tell me.  But, regardless…..what?  Not really sure what that was all about.  We supposed to treat this as a circle of life / circle of violence message?  Wouldn’t that mean that Coriolanus’ wife now assumes the role of Volumnia, even though we’ve had an entire play to see how different their characters are?  Seemed an interesting choice.  A nice visual to end on, I’m just not completely sure why.

Review : Coriolanus (The Movie)

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

Sometimes the book is better than the movie — even when “the book” is “the script.”



I first spotted news of a Ralph Fiennes / Gerard Butler Coriolanus movie back in October 2009.  Well, the movie came and went in a very limited release late in 2011 (I don’t recall it ever coming through Boston), but it snuck onto DVD within the last couple of weeks and I got a copy for Father’s Day.  Prior to that I’d actually gotten a copy of the shooting script, which I reviewed here.

Here’s my really high level summary of the play, which I admit to having limited knowledge of:  Caius Marcius (played by Ralph Fiennes, who gets the Coriolanus title later in the play) is the super-soldier of the Roman army, doing battle against the Volscians, let by Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler).  Although Marcius had received some 27 wounds in more than a dozen battles, he has never been able to defeat Aufidius.  In fact they even battle hand-to-hand at the battle of Corioles, and it ends in a draw.

Well, Marcius’ advisors urge him to make a move into political office, and playing to the whims of the people is not in Marcius’ nature.  This goes badly for him, and it’s not long before his enemies (and the people of Rome) are screaming for his head.  But they’ll accept his banishment.

Marcius (now Coriolanus) does that natural thing, he walks straight into the Volscian camp, makes peace with his sworn enemy, and chooses to march on Rome.

This is where the entirety of the Roman empire has a collective, “What have we done?!” moment and scramble to figure out how to calm the enraged dragon (lots of dragon references in this play).   They send Coriolanus’ wife, mother and child to try and talk some sense into him.  It’s a very weird image, no doubt — this one-man army that has all of Rome quaking, and his mother giving him a guilt trip.  And having it work.

So, how was the movie?

I had some pretty high expectations after reading the script, and I was disappointed in the beginning.  The direction is, well, it’s not good.  As I live-tweeted my experience, this was echoed back at me from all angles – don’t like the direction.  The battle scenes in particular cut all over the place, and scenes from the script that I thought were going to be these amazing moments just come and go like nothing.  The whole battle at Corioles is supposed to be Caius Marcius single-handedly routing the Volscians.  I expected to see Fiennes’ character elevated into some sort of superhuman killing machine.  What I saw instead was just a battle scene that could have been any other battle scene, it just happened to have Fiennes in the lead.

After the battle there’s another scene that the script pays careful attention to, where Coriolanus’ mother is binding his wounds after battle, and his wife walks in on them.  The way it’s written there’s supposed to be this awkward moment where both Coriolanus and his mother look at the wife like she’s the outsider, like this bond between mother and son is the most natural thing in the world.  In the actual movie, however, this scene just comes and goes so quickly you wonder why it was even left in.

What I did like about the movie is when it shifted over into the political maneuvering.  Coriolanus is quickly taken out of his element and turned into a pawn where two sides are clearly shoving him around the board for their own gain.  He begrudgingly wins the support of the people (something he’s been told is required), but the second he leaves, his political enemies swoop in and turn the crowd right back in the other direction.

When people want to cite examples of how to turn a crowd through oratory they often go to Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar. But Coriolanus has plenty such moments.  “He should have showed us his battle scars!” calls out one of the citizens.  This is something that was hyped up by his handlers — the people want to see him take off his shirt and show the scars he got defending his country, something that Coriolanus refuses to do.  “I’m pretty sure he did show them, didn’t he?” responds one of his political enemies, knowing full well the answer.  “No!  No, he did not!  He didn’t!!” the crowd roars back, now enraged.

A moment here for Brian Cox, who plays Coriolanus’ trusted advisor Menenius.  His acting is superb in this crucial supporting role.  Early on he is an excitable political flunky, thrilled at the idea that his man has received 2 more wounds in battle.  “He had 25,” says Coriolanus’ mother.  “Now he has 27!” Menenius replies joyfully.  Later, when the crowd has turned, Menenius must then come to the negotiating table with their political enemies and bargain for his man’s very life, pleading “What must he do?” and then having the difficult job of trying to get Coriolanus to do it.

It is Menenius who is sent to beg Coriolanus not to attack Rome, and to suffer the results when it does not go well.  This scene was done especially well I thought, as Menenius goes from “Screw all you people, you’re the ones who banished him, you deal with it” to “Ok, I’m the only one he’ll listen to, I will go talk to him” to Coriolanus’ single word dismissal.

I don’t know how to wrap this up, having never seen a different production of this play to compare against.  I’m told that the ending is changed, but I couldn’t tell you how.  I can tell you that reading the script made me anticipate certain scenes, and that those scenes did not deliver, which is a shame.  But there were plenty of moments in the movie that I enjoyed that I did not expect – mostly the individual character evolution, and all the politics.

Here’s how I think I’ll sum it up.  This summer I’ll be going to see Coriolanus on Boston Common with my wife and some friends.  As is custom I’ll no doubt be asked what the play is about, and be tasked with summarizing the character and plot and pointing out the important bits.  I will not point out Coriolanus’ mother (much), nor will I point out the oddly homo-erotic relationship with Aufidius.  I will point to Coriolanus’ interactions with the crowd – why exactly he does not want to do what is asked of him, why it works the first time, how his enemies twist his words, and how it does not end well.  I think that might have been the most interesting part of the play for me.