Filming William Shakespeares Plays - Essay Example

Filming William Shakespeare's plays 2007 A) Introduction As the statistic shows, Shakespeare is one of the ics of the world literature whose works are used as sources for multiple films. From the very first years of development of cinema, there have been attempts to 're-make' the great playwright, and the reasons for this are many: among them, there is one of an obviously mercantile nature - after all, William Shakespeare does not have any heirs, and there is no copyright for his works. But this reason is obviously does not seem to be the main one. It should not be overlooked that the stories told by the prominent English writer in 16th century have not lost their topical character till nowadays. Moreover, it is believed that in many cases, the films based on Shakespearean plays are essentially drawing on the iconic position of the playwright which allows the film directors to incorporate their own ideas into the old plots and explore their own society and context of production. In this essay we will consider the extent to which this statement is true, basing on the modern filming of Shakespeare's plays, with especial emphasis on Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann. Nowadays, Hollywood is experiencing a real 'boom' of using classical works with purely pragmatic aims - i.e. for transferring them to the modern environment, and these films are oriented predominantly at teenagers and young people. In Gil Junger's Ten Things I Hate About You (1999), the plot of Taming of the Shrew is used, with the names of main characters preserved, yet Shakespeare is not mentioned as a source text in the film's titles. Same as in Philip Spink's Ronnie and Julie (1997), here only the basic lines of the plot are preserved, and both films are just teenage comedies. It can easily be noticed that in new screen versions of Shakespearean plays, the characters are 'moving' in time and space; however they do not seem to lose their up-to-datedness, and it can be presumed that the playwright of the 16th century managed to depict the life situations and problems that are still topical nowadays, and that whereas the world around us has changed by means of technical and cultural progress, the human soul remained just the same as four hundred years ago. So, is the thesis of the 'progress of humanity' just a myth What is there beyond the urge of film directors to create new and new versions of the old works How do these new motion pictures influence our perception of Shakespeare, and, vice versa, how Shakespeare's image of a famous playwright influences our attitude to the ideas conveyed by the modern films based on his plots Let us try to penetrate into the world of Shakespearean characters that have been 'transferred' to the modern environment. B) William Shakespeare vs modern filming of his plays: is the playwright's image being 'exploited' 1. 'Shakespeare's boom' in cinematography: a concise overview In the 80-90s years of the last century, there has appeared a whole bulk of new films based on Shakespeare's plays. As a rule, they did not go beyond the limits of traditional interpretations: in 1989, an English actor Kenneth Branagh directed Henry V that won an Oscar, European Film Award and quite a few other awards; then success came to Branagh's films Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Hamlet (1996) and As You Like It (2006). There have been multiple attempts of filming Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - i.e. Franco Zeffirelli, who is commonly acknowledged to be the author of the best screen version of Romeo and Juliet (1968) and who had also screened The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Otello (1986), presented his version of Hamlet in 1991 with Mel Gibson playing the main male part, however his film was evaluated as very boring. Not particularly new was Oliver Parker's Othello (1995) in terms of interpretation of Shakespearean plot and ideas. In 1991, Peter Greenaway came up with a quite original interpretation of Shakespeare's Tempest - Prospero's Books. Quite free is considered Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) where Shakespearean characters are wearing the costumes of the last century, and Denzel Washington plays Don Pedro of Aragon - a Spanish nobleman. Even a very free screening of Hamlet - Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - did not go beyond the scope of tradition, the only thing that was changed is that the plot was shown from the viewpoint of minor characters. Yet, beginning from the second part of the 1990s, there have been several films that completely broke the stereotypes of filming Shakespeare. Richard Loncraine releases a very expensive and detailed version of Richard III (1995) featuring a bulk of marvellous actors; the peculiarity of this film is that its action takes place in the 1930-40s, in the (non-existent) fascist England. In the knights' tournament, instead of horses, there are jeeps, and in the final scene of the film Richard shouts his famous phrase 'Half a kingdom for a horse!' It seems that by his filming, Locraine wants to stress not the ideas initially incorporated into the play by William Shakespeare, and not even the realia of the fascist times (which would seem the most logical), but the idea about the danger of monarchy or ay other kind of individual governance - since it is most likely to turn into dictatorship. That is why, Richard in Locraine's film wears a black fascist uniform. Trevor Nunn presented a film version of Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996) with Ben Kingsley playing the part of Feste the fool and amazing Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia. The jokes of the 16th century seem topical and funny even for the Victorian epoch, where the action of the film takes place - this epoch is marked by Puritanism, and the characters are viewed under a different angle. Al Pacino who had been dreaming of playing Shakespearean characters since the days of his youth, realized this dream having directed Looking for Richard (1996) - a most talented film which, however, according to the actor and director himself, is a meditation on Shakespearean character rather than a movie: 'It's not Richard III', he says of the film. 'It's me looking for Richard. It's a meditation on Richard. At the same time, it's an experimental experience in a kind of personal way. I want it to invoke some kind of connection and relevance to Shakespeare. Yet, on a simple level, I hope the audience will just be entertained by it and come away from it having a sense of it.1 Al Pacino's film contains scenes from the play, as well as rehearsals, historic accounts of the events mentioned in Shakespeare's work, interviews with actors, scholars, film directors, etc. Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) is a very expensive project with well-known actors starring, and the peculiarity of this version is that with the initial film duration 242 min, it gave a full account of Shakespearean text without cutting out anything. Hamlet being 'the first British film to be shot in 70mm in over 25 years'2, this added certain 'epic' character to it, and, same as with Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, its action is set in Victorian epoch - according to Branagh, the 19th century was chosen deliberately as an epoch when humankind was making a great move towards totalitarism, and the aim of the film was to show that. 2. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet (1996) The fact that Shakespearen works can be filmed in various ways was, perhaps, most evidently shown by Baz Luhrmann, an Australian film director, who in 1996 shot Romeo+Juliet with the action transferred from the medieval Verona to modern Mexico city. He proved that Shakespeare is as much persuasive in the epoch of Post-Modernism as he was in the 16th century onwards. The atmosphere of Renaissance is mixed in Romeo+Juliet with modern passions, and that fully reflects Luhrmann's idea of making the screen version of Shakespeare's play Elisabethan in terms of spirit and modern in terms of form. Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes made the work of the classical playwright closer to the modern teenagers - there is even a chance it was the first time ever they liked a film based on Shakespeare's work. As Luhrmann himself has it, asked why he was shocked on discovering that his film was leading in all charts: I thought it would stir up an interest. But we were being relentlessly told that youth are uninterested in Shakespeare and that they would not want to see Romeo and Juliet. We're not just number one, but by three times.3 It is a very controversial question of whether or not modern screening of Shakespeare's works should be considered as attempts of their directors to draw on his iconic position culturally as a great playwright as a pretext for an exploration of their own society and context of production. Many accuse, for example, Baz Luhrmann of using the famous plot - but they obviously forget that almost all Shakespearean plays were based on the plots of Italian novellas and were not invented by the playwright himself. There is nothing wrong in re-making something that was created by somebody else, finding truth and beauty in somebody else's words and thoughts. In this way, we 'renew' the old words by our own thoughts - after all, our epoch itself is all about plagiarism or, if we put this in philosophical terms, re-make or pastiche. Every thought has already existed once, every word has already been said, and every story plot has already been used (as it was noted by Jorge Luis Borges). Same happens in the world of cinema. The new life of a classical work in modern conditions is a significant element of this work's being still topical for the modern audience. It is very important for the film directors to realize the way the old play can function in new social and cultural environment. As stated by Peter Brook: 'Hamlet needs to be staged every ten years'.4 In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up, myth is an imprinture of the human condition. The idea that the incumbent adult world is in conflict and their kids fall in love, that the incumbent adult world uses the grand tragedy of their children because of their hatred, is happening today in countries and towns near here. That is an imprint of the human condition. So these primary strands, when they are condensed down into a mythological form, they are not a social or economic or a realistic explanation of what it is to be in Miami, but they do unite us on a fundamental level through time and geography, and they move themselves through time and geography.5 Whereas the stylistics of modernism considered newness to be the most important criteria of the significance of piece of art, and repeating a well-known motif was thought to be irrelevant to creative activity, the culture of post-modern epoch views repetition and copying as the basic techniques of art. One of the most prominent theorists of post-modern art Umberto Eco, talking about the modern historical period, states that nowadays 'iteration and repetition seem to dominate the whole world of artistic creativity, and in which it is difficult to distinguish between the repetition of the media and the repetition of the so-called major arts. In this period one is facing the discussion of a new theory of art, one that I would label postmodern aesthetics, which is revisiting the very concepts of repetition and iteration under a different profile'.6 Further in the same essay, Eco writes about the essence of a re-make, accounting for the works of Shakespeare as well: The remake consists in telling again a previous successful story. The history of arts and literature is full of pseudo-remakes that were able to tell at every time something different. The whole of Shakespeare is a remake of preceding stories. Therefore 'interesting' remakes can escape repetition.7 Therefore, the main problem is not to confuse repetition and re-making - and not to judge the films that are re-making Shakespearean works as being essentially unworthy and banal. Moreover, Eco speaks about 'intertextual dialogue' which presupposes the new text's 'echoing' the original one (or ones)8. It may rightfully be stated that in many cases, film directors who are screening Shakespearean plays, incorporate the technique of intertextual dialogue into their movies, not merely repeating the playwright's ideas but rather using them as 'quotations': Such phenomena of "intertextual dialogue" were once typical of experimental art, and presupposed a Model Reader, culturally very sophisticated. (3) The fact that similar devices have now become more common in the media world leads us to see that the media are carrying on--and presupposing--the possession of pieces of information already conveyed by other media.9 I believe that Baz Luhrmann has shown that Shakespeare can be interpreted in many ways, the main condition of success of this interpretation being taking the original text for granted. Changing the realia and even the epoch is not much of a problem - in fact, it helps to reveal the modern component of Shakespeare's plays, of course if this correlates with the film director's idea. In Luhrmann's interpretation, Shakespeare's tragedy has become much closer to the concerns and problems of the modern teenagers. Having incorporated modern musical rhythms into the film, Luhrmann, nevertheless, preserved the poetic lines of the original - that is why no wonder that generally critics evaluated this film positively. Besides - and that is perhaps the most important - Luhrmann managed to preserve the spirituality of William Shakespeare's play, and has shown respect to and understanding of the feelings of its main characters, and that makes his film a real work of modern art. C) Conclusion Remakes exist as an inseparable element of post-modern aesthetics, and it would be wrong to judge about the significance of a work of art depending on the volume of original creative work performed by its author. Though the creators of remakes do not invent plots themselves, and they base their creative activity on someone else's thoughts and beliefs, still their works can be as great and important as those preceeding them and serving as one of their sources ('one of', because there is at least one other source - the creativity of the 'new' author of the re-make, his outlook and attitude). Saying that the success of the modern filmed remakes of Shakespearean plays do not deserve attention being only pastiches of the great playwright's works is as unfair as calling William Shakespeare himself a plagiator for using the plots of Italian novels. Shakespeare virtually breathed a new life into somebody else's stories, and though of course it is impossible to claim that the modern film directors 'outgrew' Shakespeare in terms of significance of their creative works, still the fact that their movies appeal to the hearts and minds of the modern audience does not allow to call them subliterary. In case the films are created with good taste and in a decent manner, it is impossible to accuse their directors of merely exploiting William Shakespeare's images and ideas, basing on his outlook - in fact, a new approach presupposes a new outlook and incorporating the old plot into the context of the modern culture. Of course to some extent these films use the image of Shakespeare as a great playwright, and his reputation often helps them to gain public opinion, yet a counter statement is also true - in many cases, these films make people, especially teenagers, get interested in reading Shakespeare's plays, so it is possible to say that the benefit is mutual. In Baz Luhrmann's film, Romeo and Juliet are not 'angels' (as, for example, in Franco Zefirelli's screen version of the play) - they are a boy and a girl living in the neighbourhood, and that adds significance to the love story that seems a real miracle in the epoch of drugs, guns and television craze. If the new generation accepts the new film versions of the eternal Shakespearean stories with admiration - why should we blame the film directors rather than be grateful to them References 1. Andrew, Geoff. (2001, September 7) 'Interview with Buz Luhrmann', The Guardian/NFT interview. Retrieved from: 2. Mukhtarov, Ildar. (2006) Metamorphoses of the classic in theatre. Retrieved from: < http://www.sanat.orexca.com/eng/1-03/metamorphoses.shtml> 3. Trivia for Hamlet. Retrieved from: 4. Adamek, Paul. (1996, November 3) Interview with Baz Luhrmann, Retrieved from: 5. Eco, Umberto, (2005) 'Innovation & repetition: between modern & postmodern aesthetics', Daedalus, 134:4, p. 193. 6. Kirkland, Bruce. (1996, September 9) 'Looking for a New Pacino', Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved from: Read More