"Boring Macbeth" Should Be an Oxymoron

I've put off writing this post because I knew it would be no fun to write.  Roman Polanski's Macbeth was a big let down.  It's boring.  The scenery was boring, the acting was boring, even Lady Macbeth was boring.  Even her "famous nude sleepwalking scene", as touted on the Netflix slipcase and elsewhere, was about as shocking or moving as it was exposing (that is, hardly at all).  On the other hand, you get an eye full of old naked witches huddled in a basement as if it were an alternate ending to The Blair Witch Project.  Gross.  To be fair, I may have missed the really good parts since I couldn't help dozing off here and there.  But I doubt it.  So, hopefully it's on to better things with Twelfth Night.  I'm excited about this one because the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is performing Twelfth Night this year.  (On a side note, "twelfth" is about the weirdest word in the English language if you repeat it a few times.)

Shakespeare Movies: Throne of Blood

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a clever, deliberately paced, and broodingly shot adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.  The plot is quite true to the play, and where it deviates it does so creatively.  It's only fair to admit that I'm not a fan of this sort of movie.  I've tried watching Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, and was too bored to get through it.  For anyone familiar with the Macbeth story, however, Throne of Blood is entertaining enough, even in it's dull moments.  For example, when Washizu and Miki (the Macbeth and Banquo characters, respectively) ride their horses back and forth through the fog for what seems like an eternity, just to show us how lost they are, you've got to laugh.
While music abounds in a number of Shakespeare plays, it's absent from his Macbeth.  In Kurosawa's version, though, songs contribute effectively.  Some of the events are moved around a bit, and it works.  The hand-washing scene takes place only after the enemy troops have begun to approach the castle, for instance.  "Lady Macbeth" not only manages to retain her sanity a bit longer, but is much more logical throughout.  Instead of attacking her husband's manhood to move him to regicide, she builds a logical argument based on the fear that Miki will betray the prophecy to the Great Lord (the King Duncan character).  More examples are present, but I won't give them all away.
The ending is also quite different, and I'm not going to give that away, either, because it's really the big payoff.  If you're going to watch the film, you'll want to that to be a surprise.  Overall, it's a satisfying take on Macbeth.  Some of the introspective monologues are lacking, replaced by moody scenery and visual symbols that are not as effective, but are interesting in themselves.  Evil Spirit, Kurosawa's version of the witches, was my favorite part.  Now, I'm looking forward to jumping ahead in time and seeing another version of Macbeth.

Shakespeare Movies: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935

My exploration into the "deep cuts" of Shakespeare movies begins with Reinhardt and Dierterle's 1935 rendition of  A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I was impressed.  This is a beautifully designed and shot movie with wonderful special effects.  And it is very, very funny.  
When watching old movies, I find that it takes me a while to get used to the acting, or over-acting.  At nearly two and a half hours, A Midsummer Night's Dream allows time for that.  So, things that were annoying at the beginning, like Puck's spastic laughter, had become charming by the end.  A few scenes, especially the pre-dawn fairy round-up, could have been edited down significantly, but these scenes allowed the film-makers to indulge their whimsy, creating truly magical illusions of fairies floating on the mist or disappearing into the starry night sky.  Still, "brevity is the soul of wit."
It is impossible not to compare this movie to Michael Hoffman's 1999 A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my absolute favorites.  As is typical, the acting in the more contemporary movie is much more subdued.  The actors in the 1935 movie often sound like they are reciting, not acting.  This is also typical, as the prevailing philosophy about Shakespearean acting has shifted over time to a more natural, less formal, style.  This is most evident, I think, in the character of Oberon, whose style follows his costume.  Making use of the black and white pallet, Reinhardt and Dierterele dress him up in a shiny black body suit and oversized crown of glittering sticks.  Hoffman, on the other hand, dressed Oberon down, way down, to almost nothing.  While overdressed Victory Jory nearly sings his lines, Rupert Everett speaks his lines effortlessly, almost sleepily.  
The performance of Helena is another study in contrasts.  Jean Muir, in Reinhardt and Diertle's movie, responds to Demetrius' rejection with helpless sobbing.  Calista Flockhart, however, is  highly entertaining in Hoffman's movie as a spiteful, obstinate mess of emotions (and hair), who makes the bicycle prop an integral part of her character.  Only Stanley Tucci as Puck uses it as well, and it helps his character even more.  After seeing the 14-year-old Mickey Rooney as Puck (pictured above), however, I have to say that a young Puck makes more sense.  The innocent, playful energy that Rooney brings to the part is electrifying, once you get used to it.  He steals the show.
In Hoffman's movie, Bottom is the center.  With additional brief action scenes, backstory, and exceptional acting by Kevin Kline, the character attains a nuanced, heroic quality.  While Kline grips your heart in his "Bottom's Dream" soliloquy, James Cagney laughs his way through it.  But that works, too.  It's a traditional take on the character, a sympathetic fool.  And while there's nothing wrong with that, Kline's performance is, in my opinion, transcendent.
Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream is worth watching, if for nothing else, for the cinematic artistry.  It's so impressive what these folks were able to do with film, real physical film.  It's both innovative for it's time and true to the original play.  It's exactly what it should be: comedy.

Shakespeare Movies

I love Shakespeare movies.  Live plays are even better.  And reading them is great, too, even reading about them.  It was the movies that got me hooked, though.  I watched Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close when I was a senior in high school.  But I didn't watch it at school, I watched it in my living room at home. I don't even remember why I chose to do that.  At school they made us watch two movies: first, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet, which I thought was OK aside from Juliet's annoying voice; and, second, his 1967  Taming of the Shrew, which I hated.  (I'm sorry, but Elizabeth Taylor will never be more than the White Diamonds lady to me.)  This Hamlet movie was serious, though, and Elsinore felt like my living room at home: isolated and restricting.
Something else happened my senior year of high school: someone besides Franco Zeffirelli made a popular Shakespeare movie.  By casting Claire Danes as Juliet, Baz Luhrman ensured that my girlfriend, a huge My So-Called Life fan would have to see Romeo + Juliet.  We took our seats in the theater completely unprepared for what was about to happen.  They had guns, but they said "sword".  They spoke in iambic pentameter while blowing up gas stations.  Mercutio was a drag queen on ecstasy.  I had only vague notions of what a drag queen was and no idea about ecstasy at this point in my life.  It was different.  Really different.  And awesome.
In college, I had a fantastic Shakespeare professor who, in addition to taking me to my first two Shakespeare plays, introduced me to Kenneth Branagh's contemporary cinematic renaissance.  I clearly remember watching Henry V in her class, completely surprised by how much I liked it.  Today, one of the greatest pleasures I take in teaching high school is showing my students great Shakespeare movies.  Recently, I picked up Studying Shakespeare on Film by Maurice Hindle at a used book store.  Browsing it's pages got me feeling like I've limited myself by watching the same Shakespeare movies over and over again.  So, here's what I'm going to do: watch some more of them and blog about it.  To begin, let me disclose my current preferences by dividing up those films I've seen into three categories: Like, OK, and Don't Like.

Like
Branagh's Henry V (1989)
Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990)
Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)
Branagh's As You Like It (2006)

OK
Olivier's Hamlet (1948)
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Burge's Julius Caesar (1970)
Radford's Merchant of Venice (2004)
Taymor's The Tempest (2010)

Don't Like
Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

After some research, I came up with the following list of films that I will watch in chronological order.

1. Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
2. Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957)
3. Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971)
4. Oliver Parker's Othello (1995)
5. Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996)
6. Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000)

I realize that I am leaving out some important films, specifically the following:
1. The entire silent era
2. All films by Orson Welles
3. Kozintsev's Hamlet
4. Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Perhaps one day I'll get around to those, but for the sake of time and not annoying my wife too much, I've got to draw the line somewhere.  Here we go.

Risk and Reward

I might as well rename my contemporary literature class, and call it something like "humanity at its worst".  The course description would read something like this: "explore the very worst regions of possible human experience through literature--cannibalism, rape, suicide, infanticide, starvation and more!"
What sort of teacher am I to drag my students through the monstrous, mysterious, post-apocalyptic world of The Road, only to follow it with The Kite Runner, a book so heart-breakingly shame-soaked it's infuriating at times?  Well, the thing is, I'm not actually dragging them; they're enthusiastically charging ahead at full speed.
My original idea for the second half of this class was to focus on the theme of coping with disaster, beginning with Life of Pi, then The Hunger Games, and following up with the books mentioned above.  I expected The Road and The Kite Runner to be challenges, the former for its bleak, spare narrative style and shocking content, and the later for its drawn-out emotional story telling and foreign-ness.  I realize now, however, that I had not given much consideration to the agony, the darkness and depravity in which we would be miring ourselves for a whole quarter.
Would I change it now if I could?  No way.  Once again, my students have shown me that they are not to be underestimated.  As 17 and 18-year-olds they are ready for this stuff, actually hungry for it.   They're hungry for some serious conversation and for a brutally honest writer like Cormac McCarthy to balance out the romanticizing of young adult literature like The Hunger Games.  I've seen more visceral reactions to these books among my students than I could have ever anticipated.  They have cared about these characters, placed themselves in their shoes and really thought about what it would mean to lose everything they cared about.
So, I guess what I'm getting at here is that I'm grateful to my students for taking this challenge and running with it.  I'm grateful for writers like Yann Martel, Cormac McCarthy, Suzanne Collins, and Khaled Hosseini.  I'm grateful for the opportunity I have as a teacher to spend my time connecting these young people with these books.  After my experiences this semester, I will always be willing to stand up for teachers who are willing to take intelligent risks in the face of censorship and thoughtless standardization.

NY Times Article on The Hunger Games

This article asks a great question, who is the audience for The Hunger Games?  It's complicated to answer, and demonstrates a fascinating development in the book-to-movie world.  Also, at the end, writer Pamela Paul compares HG to Star Wars:  


"Mr. Levithan also likens “The Hunger Games” to the 1977 demographic-defying “Star Wars,” another teenager-against-the-world (or universe) film. “To say that ‘The Hunger Games’ is a teen movie is like saying ‘Star Wars’ is a teen movie because it involves a teenager,” Mr. Levithan argued."

The Hunger Games part 2: Pandemonium & Myth

It's Hunger Games mania at school right now!  We had a haphazard Hunger Games book club meeting at lunch, which involved a lot of "what's your favorite part" and "who would you be" type discussions.  The poor representative from our yearbook publisher walked into the middle of an intense Gale vs. Peeta argument in my publications class, and got a lot of  "Oh my God, you haven't read it!  You have to read it!"
It's a phenomenon.  Every morning I'm getting updates like, "I stayed up until one in the morning to finish Catching Fire!"  It's affecting students' performance in their other classes, because I'm also getting periodic updates like, "I read chapter 12 in band, and I can't believe..."  I feel like I've betrayed the college prep English teacher, who just assigned Crime and Punishment.  Many students will not have the first 100 pages read by Friday.
That said, here's the post I was planning on writing.  One aspect of The Hunger Games that I love is how Collins has created a story where a classic heroine is placed in a conflict that is so relevant to contemporary society.  To explain, I'll have to employ a Star Wars metaphor via Joseph Campbell.
In The Power of Myth, Campbell discusses Darth Vader, saying that he is "living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system.  This is the threat to our lives that we all face today...How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it?"  Campbell's answer to his own question: "By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you."
So, what does Campbell mean by "the system"?  We all have institutions vying for our loyalty and imposing systems on us--government, religion, workplace, school--and we all make decisions about how we will go about being an individual in relation to these institutions.  To paraphrase Campbell, our challenge is to find how we, as individuals, can use the system to benefit ourselves and others, instead of being consumed by it.
Katniss is slow to figure out where she stands in relationship to the system, the institutions of Panem and, later, of District 13.  She did not intend to become the leader of a revolution, but she eventually accepts her role.  She accepts it on her own terms, though, and never fully gives herself to the politicians and masterminds behind the revolution.  Her ultimate act of autonomy is the murder of President Coin.
So, if myths are metaphors for the journey of ordinary life, what are we to take from this?  We could start by asking ourselves if we are using the system or if it is using us.  Of course, what "the system" means to each of us will be different.
There is also the consideration of the community.  Heroes are not selfish.  Their victories are supposed to benefit others, as well.  Theseus, though he certainly had fame and fortune on his mind, slew the Cretan Minotaur to end the sacrificial slaughtering of Athenian youths.  Sound like a familiar scenario?  To facilitate this discussion, my contemporary literature class watched Jim Henson's version of the tale.  (Full disclosure, I got this idea from Wikipedia.)  We also charted Katniss' journey according to Campbell's model, which is here in simplified form.  We also discussed comparisons to The Iliad, Lord of the Rings, and others.
I feel like I'm gushing over The Hunger Games, perhaps exaggerating it's quality.  I don't know, I guess time will tell as far as that goes.