Cast your mind back to the hazy days of secondary school English Literature classes. I’m sure you encountered, in those many classes, the works of one William Shakespeare, and after hours upon hours of laboriously dissecting his works, there comes a time around the end of term when, as a treat, the teacher searches through a little library of educational DVDs and plops on some film adaptation of the play you happen to be studying. The more strait-laced professors may have subjected you to ‘one of the classics’ – something black and white, and probably five hours long – or, if you were lucky, something a bit more modern. Because I’m old, modern at the time meant Baz Luhrmann’s classic Romeo + Juliet, a camp and colourful spectacle drenched in the warm hues of the California sun. Being younger and foolish-er at the time, I hated it. This is not Shakespeare! I thought to myself. I hope to elucidate that, despite outward appearances, this version of the classic story has much more depth and nuance than many give it credit for. Press onward, dear reader, and I shall try to explain why teenage me was wrong, and why this silly, campy Shakespeare movie is great.
Shakespeare is credited as a writer on almost 1,900 movies according to IMDb, which is impressive considering he died 300 years before movies were invented (388 years before cinema was invented with Shrek 2). And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but not all these movies are good. What does become apparent when delving into the bard’s filmography is the pedigree associated with certain players in the cinematic space. Laurence Olivier is probably a name you’ll recognise for his associations with Shakespeare alone. He took the lead on many on-screen productions, which I would class as ‘straight’ adaptations. These take the text from the original source wholesale and typically adapt the work using very theatrical sensibilities. This is certainly admirable; the dedication to book accuracy gives his Richard III and Henry Vthat authentic Shakespearean vibe. That being said, such a close adherence to the text and stage sensibilities is, in my view, a detriment to the chosen medium of his works: film. Over-the-top theatrical flourishes struggle to authentically convey emotion on film in the same way they would on stage, which, coupled with some stiff direction, decreases these works’ value as films, which is how they should be judged first. Oh, and the blackface is also really bad.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the ‘loose’ adaptation: a wild card which usually adapts the plots and characters of Shakespeare without using the plays’ archaic language. Hollywood had a real moment with these in the early 2000s, which saw a slew of Shakespeare-inspired romcoms hit the market: She’s the Man, Get Over It, and 10 Things I Hate About You, just to name a few. And while these vary in quality, their popularity in the film market speaks to the endurance of the stories, even if the words aren’t brought along too. Many of the greatest films ever, like The Lion King, Throne of Blood, and Ran, owe their existence to the bard. Although the extra licence with the script also means extra licence to be bad. Rome and Jewel, for instance, is a hip-hop adaptation which reframes the story as an interracial romance, certainly a unique take. Or you could even try to make something kid-friendly like Gnomeo and Juliet (in which they are gnomes), or Sealed with a Kiss (in which they are seals and, weirdly, is also about racism).
Where does that lead us? Back to Romeo + Juliet. A modern adaptation that keeps the original dialogue. I call this category of movies the ‘Branagh’ zone. For me, any movie in this category strikes the right balance between straight and loose adaptations, keeping the bard’s words and sensibilities but injecting the production with enough modern filmmaking sensibilities to allow the works to stand on their own as movies. Kenneth Branagh has, for the most part, cornered the market on this one: his Much Ado About Nothing is how to adapt Shakespeare for a modern audience. The language may be hard to understand, but the emotions and feelings behind them are always clear in both the performances and direction.
So now I can look back on my more youthful naïveté and laugh. Shakespeare is for everyone. I had an idea of what it should be then that was very different to what Leonardo DiCaprio showed me it could be. After all, the play is the thing.
“Modern Shakespeare – Apr 13, 2012” by wittco.gmbh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.