randy_byers: (blonde venus)
[personal profile] randy_byers
I've been rereading Shakespeare's The Tempest, and it got me in the mood for Shakespeare on film. So I watched A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) again, probably for the fourth or fifth time. One of the things I love about this movie is the cast, with Kevin Klein, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Christian Bale, and David Straithairn at the top of the bill. However, this time around I recognized a couple of the secondary actors for the first time.

First was Roger Rees as Peter Quince. Rees first came to my attention as the delightfully drunken British ambassador on The West Wing, Lord John Marbury. More recently I spotted him with a completely different accent playing the German-Mexican father in Frida. He actually sports a similar mustache and yet a third accent as Quince. I see from IMDb that he was in The Prestige, but I don't remember his part.

The other actor I recognized was Sam Rockwell as Francis Flute. Rockwell first came to my attention in this year's British SF film, Moon, although I was reminded when I saw Galaxy Quest on an airplane recently that he's the hilarious redshirt character in that film. Rockwell gets one of the great scenes in this adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream when his Thisbe stops the laughter with an unexpectedly heartfelt death scene. It's a great bit of acting, as is his dual role in Moon.

I found the movie less visually interesting than I have in the past, but I still really enjoyed it as a presentation of the play and for the air of melancholy given to the ass, Bottom. He has spent a night in heaven, and it will haunt him the rest of his life. For all the play's comic frothiness, a tone of melancholy is well-suited, because the depiction of love's mechanical and mutable nature is pretty haunting in its own right. It's a little bit like Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte that way.

Date: 2009-10-26 10:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smofbabe.livejournal.com
Have you ever seen the star-studded 1935 version? Jimmy Cagney as Bottom, Mickey Rooney as Puck, and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, among others.

Date: 2009-10-26 11:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Nope, I've never seen that one. I have to admit that I have a hard time imagining those old studio stars in a Shakespeare production, although the co-directors are two Germans, including the hugely influential theatrical director Max Reinhardt. I'll definitely check it out at some point.

Date: 2009-10-26 11:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smofbabe.livejournal.com
I have to admit that I have a hard time imagining those old studio stars in a Shakespeare production

Dick Powell pretty much sucks although Cagney is good.

BTW, generational thing: I remember Roger Rees as the twit British boyfriend on Cheers :->

Date: 2009-10-26 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Whoa. I used to watch Cheers, but I don't remember a British twit boyfriend offhand. Whose boyfriend?

Date: 2009-10-26 11:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smofbabe.livejournal.com
Kirstie Alley's. He was trying to buy out the bar and was only using her to get inside info.

Date: 2009-10-26 11:50 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
Not everyone does Shakespeare well. It was heartbreaking how awful Jack Lemon was in the Branagh Hamlet. I remember there being complaints about Depardieu at the time, but Lemon was so much worse. I guess nobody wanted to say that out loud.

Then again, there was a staginess to Shakespeare productions in Lemon's heyday that has been supplanted by greater naturalism in contemporary ones (I find Olivier's Hamlet too painful to watch), and I guess it could just be a matter of a different style.

Date: 2009-10-26 11:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I've never liked Olivier's Hamlet either. The only one of Branagh's Shakespeare films I've seen is Henry V.

Date: 2009-10-27 12:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smofbabe.livejournal.com
The only one of Branagh's Shakespeare films I've seen is Henry V.

It's one of my least favorite plays (totally illogical plot) but I liked Branagh's version of Much Ado About Nothing although Michael Keaton was badly directed and way over the top as Dogberry, and, as usual, Keanu Reeves as Don John was totally wooden. However, the rest of the cast were great and I liked the whole feel of it.

Date: 2009-10-27 01:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angriest.livejournal.com
I liked Branagh's Loves Labours' Lost, which has a delightful old-style musical vibe to it - and songs. His Hamlet is a bit over-done really, and Branagh felt way too old for the part (but then I generally don't like any Hamlet who looks over 35).

Branagh's best screen Shakespeare is one of the ones he didn't direct - his Iago in Oliver Parker's Othello is fantastic.

Date: 2009-10-27 01:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Thanks for the reminder! I remember hearing great things about that Othello when it came out.

Date: 2009-10-27 12:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smofbabe.livejournal.com
Yup, Jack Lemmon was just tragic casting in that one.

Date: 2009-10-26 11:43 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
We've recently been going through the BBC miniseries, Shakespeare Re-Told, which takes four of the plays and sets them in contemporary settings and tells the core story of the play without any of the Shakespearean language. It's an interesting exercise, especially since the plays a couple of the plays they picked seem hard to drag into the 21st century. But one of the plays that works surprisingly well is their version of Midsummer Night's Dream, set in a cabin resort where most of the participants are either guests of a wealthy businessman throwing an engagement party for his daughter, or staff of the resort. There are still fairies, though.

It did put me in mind that it might be time to re-watch the 1999 film, and since I hadn't remembered Sam Rockwell being in it that's an additional impetus. Rockwell is remarkably versatile, and cameleonlike, unrecognizably different in every role. (Cue cranky Harrison Ford, re Apocalypse Now: "I'm an actor, dammit, you're not supposed to recognize me!")

Date: 2009-10-26 11:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
The miniseries sounds interesting. What are the other plays adapted?

Date: 2009-10-26 11:53 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
Much Ado About Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew
Macbeth

Taming works remarkably well, actually, which I never would have guessed. But then, I'm always a sucker for Rufus Sewell.

Date: 2009-10-27 12:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ron-drummond.livejournal.com
You do have a knack for making me want to drop everything else I'm watching and watch what you're watching. I've only seen the '99 Dream once, and it sounds like it would be well worth watching again. And of course I'm eager for Taymor's Tempest and long for a goodly immersion in various forms of that play. I haven't seen Branagh's Henry V but I love his Much Ado -- it is an utterly joyous production and left me feeling gloriously alive -- though I second [livejournal.com profile] smofbabe's caveat about Keaton's Dogberry. But then the part itself is badly overwritten. Branagh's As You Like It is also quite good and worth a look, despite a strangely untalkative Rosalind.

Date: 2009-10-27 01:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
According to my movie database we saw the '99 Dream together at the Guild 45th on May 23, 1999, which must have been your one viewing. I think it's well worth revisiting on DVD. I'll definitely have to check out those Branaghs.

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