TITUS - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2014.

Imagine a time when we all thought Julie Taymor was going to be a bold, important voice in world cinema. It wasn't that long ago. In 1999, she was the heir apparent to Baz Luhrmann, a mad-hatted Kenneth Branagh with a grasp of classic drama and a vivid aesthetic that combined art house gravitas with midnight movie hallucinations. She had come off a successful, innovative stage adaptation of Disney's Lion King to direct a film version of one of Shakespeare's least known and oddest plays, Titus Andronicus, shortened here to Titus. It's bloody and melodramatic and twisted and mythical and Taymor's envisioning of it is magic.

Anthony Hopkins stars as Andronicus, a Roman general who returns home a champion after defeating the Goths. He brings their queen, Tamora (the fiercest Jessica Lange you ever did see), and her sons as tribute to the newly crowned emperor Saturninus (Alan Cumming), but when the ruler is denied Adronicus' daughter Lavinia (Breaking Bad's Laura Fraser) as a bride, things go south rather quickly. Lavinia is betrothed to Saturninus' younger brother Bassianus (James Frain, True Blood). The spiteful and spurned Emperor marries Tamora instead, setting the stage for the vengeful queen to turn her attention on Andronicus' family and, presumably, Rome itself.

Titus is a bizarre play, full of extremes. Villains rage hard and the wronged wail in unquenchable pain. Bad deeds are undertaken with a dark imagination. Tamara's sons (one of TV's most recent Draculas, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and star of The Americans, Matthew Rhys) are depicted as animals straight out of a 1980s heavy metal video, and they visit unspeakable horrors upon Lavinia. Tamara's lover Aaron (Harry Lennix, Dollhouse [review]), a Moor amongst the white aristocrats, schemes and plots and double crosses, all the while remaining unrepentant. (Lennix is amazing in his final scenes, spitting vitriol all over the screen.) The biggest perversion, however, is saved for Andronicus, who cooks up something wicked for his tormentors.

Taymor doesn't shy away from the grotesquery, nor does she iron out Shakespeare's more clunky plot devices. Severed heads and limbs are common props, and in one crucial scene, Tamara and her sons disguise themselves as Revenge, Rape, and Murder personified in order to make Andronicus think he is hallucinating. Taymor outfits them in goofy costumes, entering the scene via one of her gonzo interstitials, playing on the dark humor and absurdity with a relish few filmmakers could manage. Her overall approach is to push everything as over the top as possible, blending timeframes, cultures, and techniques to create an elaborate costume ball. The production team, which includes the great Dante Ferretti (Fellini's Satyricon), worked overtime to pack every scene with detail. Like Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, you are expected to gorge yourself on everything you see, and to emerge from the viewing exhausted.

Titus is still quite fantastic. Some of the special effects show their age, but even those work because they come off as stagey and rickety and play like a nod to the tale's theatrical origins. As indulgent as it sometimes can be, and with the bulk of the original text intact, Titus is still engrossing and far from feeling bloated. Though nearly three hours long, it passes in a blink.

Julie Taymor went on to make the middling biopic Frida a few years later, before helming the terrible bomb Across the Universe and her now infamous Spider-Man musical on Broadway. The Tempest [review], her 2010 return to Shakespeare, showed she could curtail some of the excess the had overtaken the preceding productions, but the movie possesses little of the vision that makes Titus so vital and invigorating. It remains to be seen if her film debut was just a fluke--she may still have another trick up her sleeve--but even if that's how things turn out, what a hell of a fluke it is.

TEMPEST - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2007.

I remember seeing the trailer for Paul Mazursky's Tempest when I was ten years old and thinking it looked like a really weird movie. It was clearly too adult for me, and it showed me things from the grown-up world that I didn't understand. It made some kind of impression on me, however, because I've never forgotten it. It was always one of those films I meant to look up, and actually did a while back when I discovered the movies of John Cassavetes. All I knew was that he and Gena Rowlands were in it and that it must have some kind of relationship to Shakespeare, but I'll be damned if I could find the video anywhere.

Well, it's only taken me twenty-five years, but I've finally seen Tempest. I've finally been able to take a gander at what that trailer was all about...

...and I'm still perplexed.

Cassavetes plays Phillip Dimitrius, a world-famous architect in the middle of a mid-life crisis. When we are introduced to him, he is waking up on an unnamed Greek island where he lives with a dog, a girlfriend (a very young Susan Sarandon), his daughter (an even younger Molly Ringwald in her first film role), and the crazy goat herder Kalibanos (Raul Julia). They have been living alone in Phil's idea of paradise for a year now, eating feta cheese and building an outdoor theater for reasons that never really get explained. It may not matter, as it's been long enough that they've all got a little bit of Island Fever. Don't be surprised if someone breaks into a song and dance number. They've got no entertainment, nothing to do. Kalibanos even dances with his goats.

Through a series of well-structured flashbacks, we see Phil's life as it stood eighteen months prior. He's in business with a gangster (Vittorio Gassman), and together they're building a casino. It's a hollow endeavor for a once proud, creative man. Phil can't take it anymore. Only, just as he wants to get out, his wife Antonia (Rowlands) wants to go back into acting. He wants to break free, but she's looking to stay put. They've reached an impasse.

Then one day Phil sees Antonia making woo with the gangster, and suddenly things are far more clear-cut. He and his daughter, Miranda, head to Greece for a little summer vacation, and that's where they meet Aretha (Sarandon), a free-spirited singer who is working her way back to New York. When the summer ends, rather than send Miranda back home to her mother, the three of them--along with Aretha's dog, Nino--agree to go into hiding instead, finding their out-of-the-way island and the freaky shepherd who lives there. Time passes, and paradise has started to lose its charm a little. Only, Phil seems to be waiting for something. He talks of recurring dreams and apparently has a plan for the future, but he has yet to tell anyone else what it is.

It's always a treat to watch John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands act together. In the independent movies they made together in the '60s and '70s, the husband and wife team developed a naturalistic acting style that delivered on all the promises of method acting and the Strasberg method. John directed more than he acted in those days, and so it's wonderful to see him take over the screen. He's a master with a subtle gesture, and he uses a distracted demeanor to bring a sense of vitality to Phil. Though he's very much in the scene, he often looks like his mind is elsewhere. He's walking and talking in the moment, but always dreaming of the future. Whether he and Gena are cooing at one another or having a heavy argument, they make every line seem spontaneous, like Mazursky snuck up to them in their home and secretly filmed what was really going on. If it's true that real-life lovers have no chemistry on screen, this pair is the exception that proves the rule.

Also fun to watch is Raul Julia, who may have been the perfect actor for Mazursky. The director has a pretty active cornball streak, and Julia is one of the best hams there ever was. Kalibanos is an outlandish character. He's lecherous and greedy and not very bright, more pitiable than sympathetic. Yet, Raul Julia is so likable, you adore him even when he plays unlikable.

So, what's my problem with Tempest? Well, it spends about two-hours building up to whatever Phil is planning for his island hideaway, and when his visions finally come to life, the remaining twenty minutes of the movie play more like a shortcut to the closing credits rather than a legitimate resolution.

Mazursky, along with Leon Capetanos, wrote a smart and complicated script that establishes a strong cast of characters and builds an intriguing scenario for them to inhabit, only to toss all that out and go for an easy wrap-up. Eventually, everything that Phil is running away from is going to catch up with him. That's inevitable. Rather than have it be a matter of convenience or lucky coincidence, Mazursky indulges in a little magical realism, suggesting that Phil somehow willed all of this, just as he also brings a storm to life in order to shipwreck everyone on his private chunk of rock. All of that plays fine, even hearkening back to the Shakespeare inspiration. If Phil is to be Prospero, then he is a wizard, after all.

Except now that everyone is gathered together, Mazursky stops short of confronting any of the issues. Though Phil greets the people he left behind with malice, all that anger and hatred melts away and everyone becomes friends again. Okay, maybe it's still magic at work, but nothing really communicates that. No one even acknowledges the quick change. Everyone accepts it as if it's absolutely normal, and that's that.

Except after such a lengthy build-up, after gathering so many dark clouds and priming us for a real storm of emotion, for Tempest to just drizzle out like that, it's not very satisfying. Back in 1982, at all of ten years old, my impression of the movie was an accurate one. This is a grown-up film that wrestles with issues that only make sense with age, but rather than deal with these issues in a real adult way, Paul Mazursky ducks out of the responsibility. Instead, he goes for a crowd-pleasing ending full of laughs and those cornball jokes he can't resist, and he lets the wind out of his own sails. There's a lot of huffing and puffing, but when Tempest is revealed as a house of straw, its coming down is more sad than impressive.

OTHELLO - #870

Anton Corbijn made a music video for Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” back in 1988 that, whether he intended it or not, is reminsicent of the opening scenes from Orson Welles’ masterful 1950s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Which is an odd way to enter into an old, whispery black-and-white film, thoughts of one of Ian Curtis’ most doomy and gloomy songs hanging out in the back of my brain, but such it is. Welles was goth before goth. The sequence is a flash-forward to a funeral, all pomp and dark circumstance. The slanted angles are ominous, and they let you know this is not right, this should not be happening. The quick zoom on Iago in his cage is urgent, furious, frustrated--you know immediately that he’s the villain. He did this. It’s a crazy smart way to set up a story that the filmmaker can presume everyone knows. Because now you’re intrigued. You want to know who is dead and how that evil dude got stuck in that jail.

This Othello may be the least stagey film adaptation of Shakespeare ever made. Infamous in Welles lore for being shot over three years, with Welles pausing production to rush off and take bit parts in other movies to raise cash, and then returning to Italy to resume his work. Just look at those scenes once the story proper begins. The camera moves up and over the different levels of Venice, from the canals to the windows on the upper floors, then down spiral stairs chasing an angry mob carrying torches. It’s all inertia, all movement, and at the same time, there are indications of class represented via each player’s position in the construct. Later, there are spectacular fights and chases below ground. The violence in this movie is invigorated with the chaos of its production. So much so, in fact, that sometimes, ingeniously, the dizzying pursuits hide how the disparate pieces, shot months and even years apart, are stitched together. Welles never loses the plot--neither figuratively nor literally.

The balance of setting and the use of exterior vs. interior is also a reflection of the physical and the internal. Like in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth [review], the players are tiny in comparison to the architecture (though, I guess it should be that Polanski is like Welles). And to be fair, it’s petty concerns that set the tragedy of Othello in motion. For those who don’t know the story, Othello--played by Welles himself--is a general in the Venetian army. He is also a Moor--a term for Muslims living in the area in the middle ages--a fact that sets him apart from his comrades. When Othello elopes with Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), a politician’s daughter, eyebrows are raised. Othello’s lieutenant, the silver-tongued Iago (Micheál MacLiammóir), sees the opportunity for advancement and takes advantage of Othello’s position as an outsider, convincing him that Desdemona is cheating on him and setting everyone on a path of destruction.

Up until Welles made this film, the tradition was for white actors in the Othello role to wear blackface, a tradition Welles upholds--albeit not to the exaggerated fashion we tend to think of when we hear the term. The irony here is that despite such a regressive decision, Welles embraces the progressive subtext in the play. There is a fascinating racial commentary at work, particularly in how Othello and Desdemona defend their marriage to her father. And already, there is a suggestion that a black man must be even better than his white counterparts.

When we consider the dynamic between Othello and Desdemona, and the violent outcome of his suspicion, Shakespeare was ahead of his time in giving us a perfect portrait of toxic masculinity. Othello’s jealousy is fueled by pride. In his performance, Welles is deceptively two-note: repression of rage and rage. Yet, there is more to his control here; again, he is the black man who has to be better, who has to always show composure, even when the façade means he can’t have a reasonable discussion and ferret out the truth. As his foil, Iago is so matter-of-fact, eschewing the obvious mustache twirling and greasy machinations, pulling off his tricks by merely being present. There is a Zen koan about how water is the most powerful force in the known world because of how it gradually erodes rock; this is MacLiammóir’s Iago. His is not as sinister a performance as tends to be the norm with this, one of Shakespeare’s oiliest villains. MacLiammóir is more considered, passive-aggressive, almost as if he doesn’t care. There’s a hint of a sociopath in the portrayal, so little moves him.

While I am dazzled by the filmmaking overall, one downside of knowing Welles history and struggle is I am often too aware of his technique. My eyes drift from an actor to the artfully placed shadow on the wall, for instance, or to clock the depth of field, how close one element is and how far the other, seeing how expertly the shot was constructed. And, of course, there’s how many times you note that the dubbed voice of some bit player is Welles himself, making up for perceived bad performances or just poor sound due to shooting on the fly.  I suppose this isn’t really that tough a problem to have. There’s so much virtuosity in Welles’ mis-en-scene, one should never become immune to it. Just look at the construction and the edits when Othello returns home after first being incepted by Iago. The quick cuts and askew angles pull the whole thing together with such emotional kineticism, it’s like watching Eddie Van Halen play classical music on his guitar; you can’t help but notice that human hands should not be able to create art in that way.

In that scene, and throughout the film, Welles’ montage is about scale vs. intimacy. When Othello and Desdemona go to their marriage bed, they are rendered as just shadows on the wall, but their shadows are huge. We are at once with them and outside, but the marriage consummation casts a pall over everything else. Interestingly Iago is more intimate with Othello than even his wife. The framing gets tighter the deeper we get into his machinations. When Othello and Iago make their sinister pact, the close-ups are so tight, their conversation can’t even share a frame, they are too large within their individual screens. Then the next deal is made in a sauna, arguably a place where all are vulnerable, and where trust is meant to be at the utmost. I mean, where else do you go and get naked and perfectly relaxed around total strangers? (Answers neither requested nor required.)

It’s of no small significance that it’s in the sauna where Iago actually resorts to murder himself. Welles lights his eyes almost as if to give him a supervillain mask...or to suggest he’s enlightened? I mean, Iago has a curly white dog years ahead of James Bond villains popularizing cats, and decades ahead of Paris Hilton and other modern social scoundrels carrying around their pooches in purses. It also feels like 1950s shorthand for homosexuality, which could suggest much about Iago’s true motivations were we to take that onboard. His own love of Othello is even more forbidden than Othello’s love for Desdemona.

The most intimate moment in Welles’ Othello, however, is also the most  harrowing: the murder of Desdemona. The sheet Othello wraps over her face inadvertently highlights her whiteness, an intentional emphasis on her innocence, but also a horrific reminder of how black men are portrayed in the media. The last kiss between them, passed through the death shroud, appears more to suck out her final breath than connect her with her homicidal husband. It’s legitimately uncomfortable to watch. Immediately after, Othello imprisons himself, locking the door to their chambers, speaking to the crowd through bars--Welles visually shows his guilt before the character is ready to admit it. Or to modern eyes, we can divine that he knows this is the fate society has always imagined for him...

...and if there’s one thing Shakespeare’s tragic figures can’t escape, it’s fate.

MACBETH (1971) - #726

“Blunt not the heart, enrage it!”

If any line from Shakespeare’s Scottish play resonated with Roman Polanski when making Macbeth, the first film he directed following the murder of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Family, it surely was this. Because if there is anything the director brings to the oft-told tale, it’s more passion, more violence, and definitely more blood. No dull emotions here, only fire.

It feels almost silly to review Shakespeare adaptations and haggle over the plot. The stories themselves are so well-known, we are better off looking at the choices the filmmakers settle on, the aesthetic they establish: the audacious modernism of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet [review], the remodeling of Richard III as a World War II cautionary tale by Sir Ian McKellen [review], or the outlandish whatever-it-is of Julie Taymor’s Titus [review] all spring to mind as films that dared to change the shape of the source material in ways we’d never seen. In my review of Orson Welles’ 1948 staging of Macbeth, I focused on his use of cheap sets from a cowboy picture to create a surreal horror film and a more impressionistic, pointed examination of the play.

By contrast, Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth is far more grounded. Realistic locations, sparsely decorated, provide the dirt and the grime of the actual times and marries them to 1970s filmmaking. Like Welles, Polanski also leans into the spookiness of the piece, complete with a supernatural dagger and a trippy hallucination that, once decoded, ultimately hoists Macbeth on his own hubris. These elaborate visual flourishes really stand out, given more impact by the director’s restraint most everywhere else. Likewise, the gore. When violence does erupt and blood flows, it can be shocking. Yet, being a student of horror, Polanski also knows when an off-screen atrocity can be more effective. This Macbeth’s most unsettling scene is the murder of Macduff’s family. Polanski isolates us with the mother and her favorite son while they listen to the terrified screams of those being slaughtered throughout the castle.

Jon Finch, whom that same year would feature in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Hitchcock’s Frenzy, plays Macbeth. He at first appears younger than expected, his long hair and chiseled features making him appear more like a Shakespearean pin-up than a grizzled warrior. He is a brooding, romantic figure at this stage, showing flashes of ambition, but mostly indecisive. The change that comes after his murdering King Duncan (Nicolas Selby) is most pronounced. Polanski chooses to show the actual regicide here, so we can see that when Macbeth does finally make up his mind, it’s in the spur of the moment. His transformative action is not a decisive one. Even so, when we do see him wearing the crown, he is a changed man. His clothes are brighter, his grooming more considered, and even his posture is improved. It’s like a 1960s heartthrob reverting to a classic Hollywood leading man. Finch gives the elevated Macbeth more swagger, more confidence. He does, after all, believe himself to be charmed, the words of the three witches who prophesized these events giving him the false hope that all tragedies thrive on.

The aftermath of Duncan’s murder is another great moment of Polanski’s. He uses the emptiness of the castle and the quiet of night to amplify the paranoia of the Macbeths. With everyone else asleep, every stray noise, every cry of a distant owl, resonates with an undeniable volume. As Lady Macbeth, Francesca Annis (who was also Lady Jessica in David Lynch’s Dune) matches Finch’s own uncertainty to start with a single-minded drive, only to switch with him later on when she descends into madness. The framing regularly places them in the foreground, but centered and low, so that the massive stone castle that surrounds them just goes to show us how tiny this royal pair really is.

Roman Polanski’s Macbeth is real achievement. It manages to present Shakespeare’s drama as contemporary and vital without sacrificing any of the source. It’s as faithful as you’re likely to get, and yet very much it’s own thing, which is why it still remains as engrossing and disturbing even now.

JUBAL - #656

“You know, sometimes I think it’s giving the good Lord the worst of it to say He invented people.”

Loosely based on Othello, the 1956 western Jubal is a cowboy picture of intimate proportions. It focuses on Jubal Troop (Glenn Ford, Gilda [review]), a self-described victim of bad luck, who finds one good turn, only to be undone by another. From the sound of it, this is his circle of life. Same sheep dip, different day.

The script by director Delmer Daves (3:10 toYuma) and Russell S. Hughes, based on a novel by Paul I. Wellman, opens with a surprising image of a man falling down a mountain and onto the open road, where he is found nearly frozen to death before being taken to a nearby ranch to warm-up. This is Jubal, a lone wolf who left a gig sheepherding--a lowly position in the eyes of the other ranch hands--and stumbled into hard times on his search for someplace to hang his hat. The owner of the ranch, Shep (Ernest Borgnine, From Here to Eternity, and the star of the Marty motion picture) takes pity on the lost soul and offers him a job, despite the protest of one of his men, the acerbic Pinky (Rod Steiger, On the Waterfront, and star of the television version of Marty [review]). I suppose it’s just good instincts that make Pinky hate Jubal from the get-go, and not just the smell of lamb on him. Jubal is as honest as Pinky is craven, he is as hard-working as Pinky is shiftless.

So it is that Shep’s young wife Mae (Valerie French, The 27th Day) fails to seduce the new employee the way she did Pinky. Not that the truth matters. Pinky will later use the idea of an affair to turn his boss against his rival. He is the Iago who plants doubts in Othello’s head, only this time Desdemona has much to answer for, and the would-be Cassio takes center stage.

I would say that Daves works in broad strokes, but the charm of Jubal is not just how simple the plot  but how complex the characters. The landscape is wide, but the people are small and driven by specific mechanics. There is plenty of life being lived here, on the screen and off. Shep and Mae have a complex relationship, where he loves his wife completely, perhaps partially because he knows he is a bit of a Frog Prince and no one expected him to be the man she’d end up with--though, given that this is Borgnine performing at his most gregarious, we don’t begrudge him this good fortune. Jubal is the straight man, but he is also a bit of a brooding anti-hero, running from a trauma in his childhood, caught between the femme fatale and the sweet blonde who could give him a happy life (Felicia Farr, Kiss Me, Stupid). And just what the hell is wrong with Pinky? Steiger plays the bad guy with an indefinable weirdness. He has a certain charm, yet like everything else about him, it’s impermanent. Pinky is a chameleon of convenience, his lies transforming with such ease, no one around him seems to notice he is changing his story.

Even amongst the “Rawhiders,” ultra-religious nomads that end up on Shep’s property, Daves doesn’t paint an exact picture of moral goodness. In fact, their leader, Shem (Basil Ruysdael), named for the son of Noah who’s lineage gave birth to Abraham, notes that following the commandment of “love thy neighbor” is the hardest to stick to. The struggle of the characters in Jubal is to do right by one another. Jealousy, greed, and ego all threaten to knock man and woman alike from the proper path. Outside of the religious camp--which itself features dissenters and sinners--the most true to his code is Reb (Charles Bronson, Once Upon a Time in theWest). Even Jubal faces temptation and blinks (though just barely). Reb tells him, “You don’t have to play every hand you’re dealt,” yet Reb never once attempts to turn in his own cards and take care of himself first.

The ability to show how insignificant man is compared to the rest of the world is arguably exclusive to two genres: war films and westerns. In both, the landscape can overtake the individual, and the natural world tends to carry on while humans cut each other down. In Jubal, Daves and director of photography Charles Lawton Jr. take time to step back and enjoy the countryside. The widescreen photography shows the Wyoming wilderness in its full breadth, extending far beyond the petty concerns of the men who work it. Though we never see the characters going against the elements, there are hints of it, particularly how these transplanted predators are left to fear the unseen native predator, a mountain lion that is attacking their livestock. Pinky plays the wolf in sheep’s clothing when rescuing a calf whose mother has been taken down (maybe he’s the one who really stinks of sheep dip), and the cat is also used as a ruse to get Jubal alone with Mae on the night when it all goes wrong. But is that Mother Nature having the last laugh, or once again man using her as an excuse to do bad things?

The ending of Jubal has some predictable elements, but also some darker details. Punishment is meted out to just about all who’ve earned it (though Shep doesn’t really deserve his fate, and Mae’s comeuppance is disproportionate to her misdeeds, the usual outcome for a femme fatale), and happiness comes to those who deserve it, too. In that, it avoids being the sort of tragedy that gave the script its jumping-off point, but I guess that’s the Hollywood innovation on the classic, the addition of the American Dream to Shakespearian formula: in the saddle, the good guys usually win.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT - #830

Like most of Orson Welles’ later films, Chimes atMidnight has probably been discussed more than it’s been seen. A lengthy, troubled production, followed by a dicey release, the 1966 Shakespearean adaptation has been mostly out of print, seen only at rare screenings and occasionally available on dodgy foreign DVDs. When you could get your hands on it, the copies were plagued with sound problems, the poetry of the original verse lost in hiss and garble. Picture quality was poor, editing choppy--you were lucky to see it, but you never felt like you were really seeing it.

Until last year when Janus Films sent a brand-new restoration out on tour, promising that the best efforts had been made to put Humpty Dumpty back together again; the result was nothing short of remarkable. I managed to catch Chimes at Midnight as a double-feature with Othello, another of the great director’s Shakespeare pictures, itself having gone through its own ordeals. I was astonished by how different the experience was. Finally, here was a Chimes at Midnight I could see and hear clearly and actually absorb.

And it’s that same Chimes that now ends up on Blu-ray/DVD. The image is sharp and rendered with care. The audio is still a bit unnatural sounding, but that’s the fault of Welles’ unorthodox methods. At least every word can now be discerned. And more than ever, Welles aficionados can play that game where they try to guess how many voices in a given scene were dubbed by the maestro himself. There’s a certain tone you can pick up on if you know to listen for it.

But why all the fuss? What is so special about Chimes at Midnight?

Well, besides being Welles’ final fully realized film--as good as it is, F For Fake [review] is more of an experimental lark than a true narrative feature--Chimes at Midnight is a fascinating work of heart and wit, combining bits of multiple Shakespeare plays to make a single, linear story about John Falstaff, one of the Bard’s most enduring characters, a tragic buffoon who steers the early life of Prince Harry, soon to be King Henry V, and has his heart broken when the crown lands on his young pupil’s head. (Fans of My Own Private Idaho will recognize this story as the one Gus Van Sant lifted for his picture.)

Welles himself takes the role of Falstaff, a boozer and a raconteur, a rapscallion and a cad, but also a friend when chips are down. And the butt of many jokes. Young Harry (Keith Foster) spends idle time traveling with Falstaff as a way of avoiding responsibility, sowing his wild oats far from the watchful eye of his father, King Henry IV (Sir John Gielgud, Richard III). When a temperamental rival, Sir Harry “Hotspur” Percy (Norman Rodway), makes a move against the throne, the errant prince must give up childish things and take his rightful position. It’s a job he’s suited for, even if there are a few stumbles still to be had.

In fashioning his script, Welles pulls out all the dualities, the disparity between Falstaff and the King and the similarities between the two Harrys, to create one tale of fathers and sons. The prince is trapped in an adolescent conundrum. He wants to be his own man, but he also wants his father to be proud of him, and so he lashes out in such a way that pretty much makes neither of those things possible. He’s a thoughtless boy who, by the end of the picture, must become a thoughtful man. His opposite, Hotspur, is an example of what happens when you feel too much--even if he is also the jockish all-American every dad supposedly wants. Both sons can’t succeed, but it’s even worse for the fathers: in order for their shared child to proceed, they must, in many senses of the word, die.

At the center of this family drama, nestled between Harry’s pranks and Falstaff’s boasts, Welles enacts a tremendous battle. The two armies meet on a muddy field, coming on horseback and on foot, swinging sword and axes, laying waste to one another with little sense of order or skill. Welles shows the dirty chaos of combat, juxtaposing the brutal consequences with the dark comic relief of Falstaff, stuffed into his heavy armor, getting in over his head. Falstaff brings chaos wherever he goes. War is no different. It’s just no longer can he pantomime his prowess or create the illusion of royal bearing; here, the effects are real and inescapable.

Welles makes Falstaff a well-rounded character. He is funny and laughable, yet also true. He feels deeply, and the excess of his activity matches those feelings. Though often as overbearing as his fictional avatar, Welles can also be a generous performer. His reactions while others speak can embolden their performances in a way only a good director likely knows how. He’s servicing the story and not himself. Watch, for instance, his interaction with Jeanne Moreau (The Lovers [review]), who plays the whore Doll Tearsheet, and how his love and concern for her makes her seem all the more real. Their romance aches. Thus, when Falstaff’s heart gets broken, ours breaks a little too. Even if we know he kind of deserves it after how he tried to embarrass Harry and take credit for his accomplishments in front of the Prince’s true father.

Welles’ agile style keeps Chimes at Midnight from being a stodgy retelling. He crafts a Shakespeare that moves. In many of the best scenes, he balances the opposing sides, placing the camera high or low based on who is in power. When Hotspur addresses his troops, they must look up, as if he towers over them. Likewise, during the coronation scene, Welles and his cameraman, Edmond Richmond (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [review]), exaggerate the distance and height between the new King Henry V and his onetime mentor to show how low Falstaff has fallen, and how far apart the pair have swiftly become. There is also a great use of back and forth, particularly in the battle sequences, when we have two sides rushing from opposite ends, and Falstaff hilariously charging back and forth between. Welles understands the size of the screen, be it a wide survey of a battlefield or an extreme close-up in the most intimate of moments (death), he fills it with essential detail.

And for additional details on the production, the Criterion disc of Chimes at Midnight comes with new interviews, including chats with Keith Baxter (Prince Harry) and Orson’s daughter Beatrice, who appeared in the film as a child and worked on the reconstruction. Critical and scholarly features include two interviews with Welles biographers and a new audio commentary. The man himself shows up in a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show.

The return of Chimes at Midnight is another victory of the DVD age, another case of a film thought lost restored to its full power. Don’t take this for granted. Many have been waiting decades for just a glimpse of Orson Welles’ great masterwork, and now here it is at your fingertips. Grab a good drink, hit play, and enjoy.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 6/13

While I was neglecting this site, I was still watching a lot of movies. Here's proof.

Oh, and I was also redesigning my other site! Have a look. See what I'm working on. Buy some signed books. confessions123.com

IN THEATRES...

* Before Midnight, the latest in the ongoing relationship series is its deepest and most emotionally fraught, and quite easily the best. Once again starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, directed by Richard Linklater.

 * The Bling Ring, the latest from Sofia Coppola, telling a tale of disaffected Bonnies and their tagalong Clyde.

* Byzantium, Neil Jordan's all-too-serious return to the vampire genre.

* Dirty Wars, a documentary about the covert strikes happening outside the approved combat zones in the War on Teror.

* Man of Steel, is neither worth loving or hating. It's boring and fun and long and loud and dazzling and doltish all at the same time.  

* Monsters University, a Pixar prequel that's funny, if not as fresh as the original.

* Much Ado About Nothing, Joss Whedon's backyard retelling of the Bard.

* Some Girl(s), starring Adam Brody as a writer lacking in self-awareness taking a tour of his old flames. From a script by Neil LaBute.

My Oregonian columns...

* June 14: French animation gets arty in The Painting;  Disney's Pete's Dragon flies back to the big screen; and a life re-examined in Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal.

* June 21: Another visit with Andre Gregory in Before and After Dinner, the nuclear power doc Pandora's Promise, and a sleazy Italian slasher flick from 1973, Torso.

* June 28: the dark Australian comedy 100 Bloody Acres; Doin' it in the Park's wild history of NYC pick-up basketball; and a revival of the classic Grant/Hepburn crime/romance hybrid Charade.

ON BD/DVD....

* Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, documenting the history of the great Jewish songwriters of the American stage.

*  First Family, a tepid 1980 White House satire from writer/director Buck Henry and star Bob Newhart that lacks any political bite.

* Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film, a worthy introduction to the more abstract side of cinema.

* The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan, a short BBC documentary about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his best-known novel. Bonus: a 1975 teleplay with David Hemmings as the author.

* Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, Werner Herzog's refashioning of a longer documentary looking at the life of fur trappers in Siberia.

* The Key, a dark wartime drama from Carol Reed. With William Holden and Sophia Loren.

* A Night to Remember, a screwball mystery with Loretta Young, released in 1942.

* Second-Hand Hearts, a romantic flop that kicked off the '80s for Hal Ashby. 

* Whoopee! A good-time musical with Eddie Cantor. Two-strip Technicolar from 1930!

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 12/10

Other movies I reviewed over the last month...

IN THEATRES...

* Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's artfully chilling mind-bender.

* I Love You Phillip Morris isn't entirely loveable, but it's got its moments.

* Made in Dagenham, starring Sally Hawkins as feminist strike leader in 1960s England. A feel-good movie you don't have to feel bad for liking. Plus, a great soundtrack.

* Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's emotionally compelling fourth film goes in some new directions, but also hits a familiar stride.

* The Tempest, Julie Taymor injects a boring play with visual pleasures.

* Tiny Furniture, a whiny indie comedy about being bored with privileges in upper class New York. Writer/director/star Lena Dunham shows promise, but this one is tough to sit through.

* The Tourist, in which pretty people have a pretty boring vacation. And I type Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck as many times as I can.

* Tron: Legacy. In my top 3 worst movies of the year.

* True Grit, the Coen Bros. remake John Wayne and come up with a damned perfect movie.

ON DVD/BD...

* The Black Pirate, an entertaining silent adventure with Douglas Fairbanks. Relased in 1926, this is the oldest color film available on Blu-Ray.

* Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor and Other Fantastic Films by Koji Yamamura, a collection of experimental short films by the Japanese animator.

* LennoNYC, a marvelous documentary about John and Yoko and the Big Apple.

* Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's love story is a modern classic.

* The Mission, Roland Joffé's 1986 drama is kind of a stick in the mud despite fine performances from Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons as monks trying to bring Christianity to the rainforest.

* The Sicilian Girl, a true-story drama about a Mafia daughter going against the family. A smart movie with an amazing lead performance.

* Soul Kitchen, intense German director Faith Akin tries his hand at comedy, yielding mixed results.

* Walt & El Grupo, in which we go back to the vacation jokes: Walt Disney went to South America, and all I got was this lousy documentary.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 10/10

Below are other movies I reviewed over the last month.

But first, some belated Hausu-themed artwork by Nicolas Hitori De, featuring characters from our comic book Spell Checkers. I figured you all might get a kick out of it.

IN THEATRES...

* The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the Swedish crime trilogy yawns and stretches to completion.

* Hereafter, Clint Eastwood's meditation on the afterlife fails on nearly every level. A serious contender for worst movie of the year--or at least the most boring.

* Never Let Me Go, an undercooked contender. I was really underwhelmed by this. Needed more of the story explained and more character material.

ON DVD/BD...

* Agora, a thought-provoking historical epic about the Christian takeover of Alexandria in 4 AD. Starring Rachel Weisz.

* Eccentricitie's of a Blonde-Haired Girl, Manoel de Oliveira's not-so-eccentric literary adaptation.

* The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford's astonishing adaptation of John Steinbeck, with Henry Fonda in the lead. Repackaged, not reissued.

* I Am Love, melodrama as a sumptuous feast. Starring Tilda Swinton.

* Kisses, an excellent Irish drama about two kids on the run from the abusive lives. A fairy tale, both light and dark.

* The Pacific, the television miniseries about the campaign against Japan in WWII. The follow-up to Band of Brothers.

* Richard III, Ian McKellan's inspired take on the Shakespeare classic, reset in fascist pre-War Britain.

* Samurai Vendetta, a tepid swordplay story that is strangely light on the revenge.

* Theater of War, an uneven documentary about the 2006 staging of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage starring Meryl Streep. It's best when it's just about Brecht himself.

* William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann's innovative modern adaptation of the classic doomed romance.

RAN - #316

Stillness and silence.

These are the things that we first experience at the start of Ran, and they could be said to define the movie. The very first shot of the film shows a hunting party on horseback, and for the first few seconds, no one moves, there is barely a sound. Until one of the figures finally shifts just after the director’s credit, it almost looks like a still photograph or a painting.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 masterpiece is a loose retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Transplanted to 16th-century Japan, it is the story of aging feudal lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Realizing that his powers are flagging, Hidetora decides to put his oldest son, Taro (Akira Terao), in charge of his land. When his youngest, Saburo (Daisuke Ryu), raises concerns about this decision, his father banishes him from the kingdom. Sensing that the boy was right and appreciating his forthrightness, one of the Ichimonjis’s neighbors, Lord Fujimaki (Hitoshi Ueki), invites him to come live at his castle and marry his daughter. Exit Saburo, stage left.

Saburo’s fears quickly turn to reality once he is gone. Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), has a deep resentment of her father in law. He destroyed her family and took their land, and so this Japanese Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to curb his father’s remaining status. Deeply offended, Hidetora takes his retinue and goes, seeking shelter with his middle child, Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu). Jiro has other ideas, however; he’d rather be in charge and so he also embarrasses his dad, suggesting the old man should live far more humbly than he is accustomed to. Enraged, Hidetora leaves again, heading to Saburo’s abandoned castle. The exiled son’s army has already left it, heading toward Fujimaki’s province to rejoin their commander.

Ran is a colorful spectacle. It’s an historical drama that may take its story cues from Shakespeare but its quiet nature is more reminiscent of traditional Japanese theatre. Kurosawa and his trio of photographers (Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, and Asakazu Nakai) frame the proceedings ceremonially, viewing the political debates and wicked scheming from a respectable middle distance. The acts of men are small and contained, whereas the world and nature itself is larger than they are. He shows the hunters on a hillside that takes up 80% of the screen, leaving them to share the remaining 20% with the sky. When Hidetora and his fool (Peter) are at their lowest, we see them lying against opposite walls in a chasm, photographed from above to show how far they have fallen. The final shot of the film is of a man standing on a rock wall built out of a hillside, the camera leaping farther and farther away from him until he is indistinguishable from any other object on the hill. For all their bluster and their perceived indignities, these humble players are but tiny specks in a universe that would rather flick them away than indulge their cries of pain.

Themes of sin and redemption begin to emerge when Hidetora goes to visit Jiro. The wife of the second son is Sué (Yoshiko Miyazaki), and she is another spoil of Hidetora’s many wars. In opposition to Kaede, Sué is kind and sweet, a practicing Buddhist, and she inspires guilt in a surprisingly compassionate Hidetora. Having his sons treat him so poorly is forcing the old man to look at how he conducted his life. If they have grown up to be so disrespectful, clearly his choices were not as sound as he once thought. Fittingly, then, when Hidetora and the fool end up hiding out in the ruins of Sué’s childhood home, the Lord calls it the final circle of Hell.

Hidetora is experiencing a Hell on Earth all around him, and it’s a product of his own misdeeds and of his madness. Signs of senility are shown to us shortly after the hunt that starts Ran. Though the movie’s title card is preceded by a sharp and ruthless Hidetora taking down a wild beast with his bow and arrow, his meeting with his sons and his political rivals immediately after shows a different kind of ruler. His mind wanders, and he falls asleep while they are talking. This is why he cannot recognize that Saburo or his aide Tango (Masayuki Yui) are really on his side. Saburo is the only child who cares about his father, masterfully illustrated by his chopping down leafy branches and making a shade for the sleeping man so he won’t get sick in the sun.

Yet, when Hidetora awakes, he doesn’t notice the kind gesture. Instead, he comes bursting through the partition they have set up out in the grassy fields, unsure of where he is, and frightened. This foreshadows the full-blown mental break he will suffer later in the picture, shortly after his square-off with Jiro.

The siege of Castle Three is the most memorable of the many visually astonishing sequences in Ran. Not long after Hidetora has set up camp and gone to rest at the uppermost tower in Saburo’s palace, both Taro and Jiro attack. Outmanned and outgunned, Hidetora’s meager forces fall under the full armies brought to battle by his sons. It’s also where Jiro makes his move, and brother betrays brother. It’s significant that this is the only sequence in the movie where the silence is completely broken and music is used in full. There were hints of an orchestral score in the opening credits and in transition scenes prior, but the rest of the scenes are shown without any musical accompaniment. When the soldiers storm the palace gates, Toru Takemitsu’s score takes over completely. The bloody battle plays out like a silent movie. We don’t hear the cries of the many dead, we only hear the mournful music. The orchestra is stopped by a gunshot, one single explosion giving away to a cacophony of murder. The title Ran can be translated to mean either “chaos” or “revolt”--both of which are at work here.

The fool warns his master that Hell is all around, and this metaphor detonates during this battle scene. The grotesque images of death and anguish, the fire-engine red of the blood staining the black soil of Saburo’s land, makes the interior of the castle look like a dumping ground for tortured souls. Hidetora is high above it, but he is not immune to it, and when Hell blossoms, so too does his madness come into full. Kurosawa has loaded up on the symbolism here. Hidetora must descend down into the carnage, leaving his armor behind to burn as the castle falls. When he emerges from the dark smoke, he looks like the undead. His skin is pale, but his wrinkles and the circles under his eyes are dark. The armies part to let him pass. No one wants to mess with a restless zombie.

There is no underestimating actor Tatsuya Nakadai’s importance to the success of Ran, or as part of Kurosawa’s 1980s renaissance, which began with Kagemusha, starring Nakadai as a king and a pauper. He is a long way from his 1960s roles for Kurosawa, playing Toshiro Mifune’s nemesis in Yojimbo and Sanuro. Though only just past 50 at the time of shooting Ran, Nakadai doesn’t appear to be putting on an act by playing the older Lord Hidetora. His make-up gets exaggerated midway through the movie as the man goes looney tunes, but in the early scenes, the actor’s face accepts the more realistic aging process quite naturally. This is made all the more convincing by his manner. His gait and his bearing is one that speaks of experience. His posture is strong and commanding, and as Hidetora loses his grip, Nakadai lets his carriage deteriorate, practically folding in on himself. The intensified aging make-up is meant to enforce the notion that Hidetora is the walking dead. He is literally decaying his way into the grave. When his robe blows open, we see his spindly, skeletal legs. He is becoming a bag of crazy bones.

As in Lear, the very weather is attuned to the ruler’s madness. Clouds roll in, wind and rain lash at the people and the ground below, and for the rest of the movie, even when the rains have subsided, Kurosawa employs some remarkably realistic lighting effects where the exterior dims and brightens and then dims again, replicating the clouds passing by the sun and obscuring its light. As another auditory cue, Kurosawa also uses the sound of cicadas to create a buzz around Hidetora, as if their clicks and clacks are the noise in his head.

If we consider what I wrote above about nature overpowering mankind, however, then we also must view this “madness storm” in a different way. It’s not that Hidetora is in tune with the weather, it’s that he’s out of tune with the natural world, with what is proper. After he disappears from Castle Three, Hidetora is out in a field trying to gather wild flowers. While this is kind of a traditional signifier of a madman in literature--often they wear flowers in their hair--it can also be seen as Hidetora directly trying to reconnect. It also recalls the last kindness he has seen, Saburo building him the leafy shelter. The fool distorts that kindness by building his Lord a new helmet out of weeds and reeds, practically putting the flowers in his hair for him. The withering old man wearing the jester’s cap is a sad, far cry from the armor that was turned to ash by his boys.

It’s interesting to consider that during all of this, the fool, whose name is actually Kyoami, is wearing clothes outfitted with a dragonfly pattern. Dragonflies can be seen as symbolizing multiple things. Ironically, in Japanese art, they were often meant to show positive change and joy, the absolute opposite of what is going on in Ran. Equally ironic in the case of poor Hidetora, for older people, dragonflies are supposed to signify mental clarity. These insects tend to be associated with transformation, not dissimilar to butterflies. In some representations, they are said to inhabit two worlds, because they begin their life in water and then take flight. If the fool and his master are stuck in a Hell on Earth, this would make some sense. Likewise, the fool’s function is to operate as both a faithful servant and as someone who mocks whom he serves, and he is both himself and another character. In an enlightening real-life parallel, the actor who plays the fool goes by Peter because as a young man his tight outfits and style of dancing in nightclubs earned him the nickname “Peter Pan.” The boy who wouldn’t grow up is forced to be damn serious by the end of Ran.

Another major theme of the movie is how truth has been subverted by lies. The fool notes that the whole world has gone topsy-turvy. Saburo and Tango are exiled for speaking their minds, while Jiro and Taro use deceit to bring reward. Jiro is also sunk by the lies of Kaede, who is easily the most deceitful and evil character in Ran. She continually calls for the death of Sué, who is her moral opposite, and when Jiro’s right-hand man, Ogura (Norio Matsui), tries to stop her, he risks the same fate as Tango. This would be something he would have brought on himself, however, as the true mastermind behind Jiro betraying his elder brother and the one who fired the assassin’s bullet. When truth is punished, it makes room for the lies, and there is little a man can do to correct his blunder. As Ogura discovers, there are too many people willing to exploit the hole you’ve opened in the defenses. Let one falsehood in, and a battalion of them come flooding through. His only choice is a very Japanese one: step up and take your death honorably.

Hidetora is also incapable of righting the wrongs he has done. Even returning to the scene of his greatest crime, tearing down Sué’s home, brings him little succor. Ran in this way is a very cynical movie. Saburo may maintain his core values and continue to do the right thing, but he must pay the ultimate price. That is the nature of a tragedy: all the players, good or bad, must be taken off the field before the game can be reset. A famous quote from the film comes in response to Hidetora crying out that he is lost. The fool tells him, “That is the human condition.” We could conjecture then, that the last man standing, the blind man (Takeshi Nomura), is the stand-in for all of us. He’s the one who becomes so small as to be indistinct, trapped on a precipice with no idea how to get off.

We are left with another frozen shot. Stillness. And silence returns in that moment when the screen blinks black.

On a personal side note, Ran is the first Akira Kurosawa film I ever saw. I caught it on PBS, my guess is around 1986 or so. It was a part of an education I was giving myself in film. I had basic cable in my room, and so had access to TNT and AMC back when they showed classic films. But it was PBS that introduced me to Japanese movies, including more Kurosawa to follow and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu. Ran is now the second of Kurosawa’s films I have seen on a big screen, and this review was written after viewing a new print at Portland’s legendary Cinema 21. It looked and sounded amazing, and if you’re in the area, Ran is booked at the theatre starting on April 9.

The Criterion of Ran is, alas, out of print, replaced by a not-so-hot Lionsgate/Studio Canal Blu-Ray. Buy this version if you can get your hands on it.