I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after

[sovay]

I do not like the trailer for Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. Partly it's that I am not a Whedon person: I didn't fall in love with any of his shows (The Avengers surprised me), so the prospect of a cast stocked entirely from his regular company does not fill me with anticipation of old home week/the best crossover ever (Wesley and Fred and Mal Reynolds and Phil Coulson and Topher and Simon Tam and I had to look most of these people up) so much as a slight distrust, because the only actor in that parenthesis who ever really caught my eye was Clark Gregg and I don't consider him a Jossverse discovery. Mostly it's that five seconds into the trailer I was trying to figure out why the swing-themed black-and-white contemporary house porn and ten seconds after that I was ranting at derspatchel about the dialogue. I am hoping it's a function of the pull quotes, but everyone in the cast seems to have exactly one register of voice. I can't hear any resonance, any range. It's all the same dry kind of flat. And the wit and cut of the language is instantly lost. You can make a case for Much Ado About Nothing as the prototype of the screwball comedy, with unexpectedly sharp outcroppings of cruelty and loss. (Look closely at the Hero/Claudio plotline, honestly, and it starts edging out of romance into problem play.) It has verbal fireworks, it has whip-smart repartee, it has characters who are identifiable instantly by their speech patterns and I'm not talking only about Dogberry's malaprops. It has fantastic flyting and chilling seriousness. The actors have to be in tune with all of that. I don't mean that you can't play it naturalistically, but you cannot play it monotone—"By this day, she's a fair lady" cannot read the same as "By this hand, I love thee." And that's all I hear in the trailer. It's my hope I am mistaken, or it's a not very good trailer for a perfectly reasonable film. But right now I want either to rewatch scenes from the 1993 version (which I don't own) or get someone from the Anarchist Society of Shakespeareans to direct one. Other recommendations are welcome.

(As a form of self-medication, I am catching up on Tumblr. A couple of days ago, when I was distracted, handful_ofdust posted me a succession of Leslie Howard gifs from The Stand-In (1937), a wonderful meta-joke of a film I love (and wrote about clumsily, but sometimes that happens). I will never cease to appreciate his willingness to look like a total nerd—I like him in horn-rims, but they do him no favors. Henry Higgins has an even worse pair. I will never cease to be faintly amazed that all sorts of people who weren't me thought he was beautiful.)

Comments

[glaukopis]

I saw the trailer and was trying to figure out what was giving it a general aura of wrongness. "I know," I finally said to myself, "it's like a video from a subpar Kickstarter project." (The way the black and white is being used, I think, has a lot to do with it.)

[sovay]

(The way the black and white is being used, I think, has a lot to do with it.)

Speak further? There's a black-and-white discussion going on over at LJ; I'd love to know if yours is the same complaint or a different issue entirely.

[edit] Or farther down this page, once I remember to import comments. Sorry about that.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting your finger on why the trailer didn't hook me. I thought it was just that I am passionately attached to the 1993 version, and will automatically compare every other performance to that one, but yes -- the trailer made it seem all monotone. Possibly it's a bad trailer, or possibly that tone is meant to somehow be part of the setting, but either way, it doesn't work for me, and I hope the movie's better. Because I do like a lot of the Whedon company, and am interested to see them tackle one of my favorite plays.

Re: Hero/Claudio -- one of the great strengths of the 1993 version, at least for me, is that it convinces me to roll with that entire set of events. I credit this to Robert Sean Leonard, who sells me on Claudio as being precisely that kind of idiot, who is incapable of feeling any emotion at a volume less than eleventy billion. When I saw an inferior stage production, one which failed to drag me along willy-nilly, I found myself Very Annoyed Indeed by the entire affair. (This was not helped by the atrocity of playing Beatrice as a woman who is trying too hard and is not nearly as funny as she thinks she is.) Done right, though, I accept that part of the story, because it's the necessary weight that makes the comedy funnier to me: I am less entertained by straight-up laughs than by laughs with a darker foundation underneath. The way Emma Thompson delivers the line "Kill Claudio," and the way Kenneth Branagh responds, are just brilliant, and those are a vital component to all the lighter parts of the play.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I just want to add a huge "Me Too" to all this.

Except that I have the Branagh version on DVD where I can watch it whenever I want a picnic. That and the Kevin Kline Midsummer are my strongest examples of how you can too make Shakespeare work as film, and both of them do it by paying attention to the words.

[yendi]

The version BU put on some four years back remains my favorite -- true screwball stuff (with some great bits involving the guards, in particular), and some fascinating casting choices (Don John as an ice queen archetype converted her relationship with Borachio into something fascinating). They also didn't shy away from the problems with the Hero/Claudio plotline (which, like much of Taming of the Shrew, is something I prefer to see addressed than shrugged off).

As for Whedon's, since it's pitched as more of an adaptation/update (as well as something filmed loosely on a whim over a week), I'm not going to go in with too much prejudgement. I enjoyed, for example, the BBC updates from a few years back, and am a sucker for things like Scotland, PA in general.

And Nathan Fillion as Dogberry really does seem like inspired casting (not that we saw much of him in the trailer).

[larryhammer]

Urk -- whoever that is playing Benedict reads his lines horribly. Everyone else with words managed to sell me on the reading, but him: urk.

---L.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That was kind of underwhelming.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the Kline Midsummer - the fairies are not my favorite in that but OH the mechanicals. The lovely, sweet, sad mechanicals. Bill Irwin, call me!

Also with swan_tower about Robert Sean Leonard in the 93 Much Ado. His "turned up to 11" performance is just right. Oh, and the sun. I am usually anti-sun, but in that movie, it's so rich/golden/molten/relax.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

The only actor I recognized in there was the one who plays Phil Coulson. V much not my things, the works of Joss Whedon.

It's harder to shoot in black and white than in color, although the claim may be that the director didn't want to think about color. Nuh-uh. B&W is harder. You have to pay attention to all the tones and the light is unforgiving and you don't get any help from color in that work.

[sovay]

The only actor I recognized in there was the one who plays Phil Coulson.

That's Clark Gregg.

You have to pay attention to all the tones and the light is unforgiving and you don't get any help from color in that work.

Hah. Yes. I had an entire e-mail complaining about that to derspatchel. I couldn't pinpoint it the first time I watched the trailer, but nobody in it is dressed for black and white. The shots aren't composed for it. No one's taking any account of the tones or the contrast. Their faces wouldn't be whiting out in direct light if they were.

[edit] Filmed in black and white for exactly the reason you posit: "Black and white made life ten times easier. It was ultimately a creative decision but also practically it saved our lives because we didn't have to worry about painting things or the color of something clashing with something else. It made everybody look absolutely elegant which I very much wanted, and it's a noir."

Of course things clash in black and white! It is why one of my long-held wishes for a film project is to dress everyone and design sets for black-and-white film stock, then shoot it in color! You can get some pretty damn funny-looking color balances that way, I can tell you!

Also: "'And Amy [Acker] will fall down the stairs,' which, never not funny."

I SEE ONE OF THE PROBLEMS HERE.

[spatch]

You only watched after my play-by-play turned into all caps screaming!

The setting and the actors' line delivery make the film feel like a contemporary indie British domestic drama-comedy, where the upper-middle class flats look soooo good, life-shattering things happen at dinner parties, the men bond over drunken rambles home after hours, and the women bond over sidelong glances at each other. Wine flutes are involved, as are kitchen islands and tasteful couches. There's at least one ironic toast.

It's something, but it ain't Much Ado.

The film also seems like it's committing the worst sin a Shakespearean production can commit: that of actors who don't seem to understand the words that are coming out of their mouth. Without emotion in the delivery there's no conviction; without conviction there's no verisimilitude, and without verisimilitude there's no reason to be watching.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

A Tiny Bit of Ado About, Eh, Something-ish?

[sovay]

I enjoyed, for example, the BBC updates from a few years back, and am a sucker for things like Scotland, PA in general.

I have no argument with updated Shakespeare. My favorite Hamlet is Kozintsev's Russian period piece, but Patrick Stewart in a modern surveillance state is my definitive Claudius and the most painful Othello I've ever seen is a tossup between Trevor Nunn's Civil War and the Actors' Shakespeare Project's non-genre near future. Julie Taymor's Titus is an alternate history and I adore it. The gonzo awesome production of Measure for Measure I saw derspatchel in last year featured a vomiting sock puppet and a random courier in a green gorilla suit. Yes, I want to see a true screwball staging of Much Ado About Nothing sometime for all the reasons I've mentioned here and elsewhere (it just struck me that the panic over Hero's supposed unchastity is probably right in line with the Hays Code), but my problem with this trailer isn't that the film it's advertising isn't that. It's the voices, the handling of the words. There are ways in which the setting does not matter so long as the actors know what they're doing with the text. (Ian McKellen/Judi Dench black-box Macbeth.) I don't get that sense from this trailer, and the casualness of the contemporary setting and the filming makes me worry it is an aesthetic choice, not simply a matter of the actors being unequipped to handle the language, and that honestly, for me, would make it worse.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Do search "Desaturated Santa Santacon" (http://laughingsquid.com/desaturated-santa-at-san-francisco-santacon/).

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I love the 1993 version. It has plenty of flaws (ahem Keanu), but I can happily watch it over and over again. Oh Emma Thompson. Oh Imelda Staunton. And Denzel gets to be comic. Makes me so happy.

Right with you on not having any interest whatsoever in the Joss version. I have liked some of his stuff, but usually at the times he has only indirect control of it - the Buffy movie, which he didn't direct, the seasons of Angel when he was busy with Buffy and Tim Minear ran it, the parts of Firefly when he was busy and dear god not the movie which he had full control over. In Avengers, I liked the performance by Mark Ruffalo, which I credit to Mark Ruffalo.

I don't think Joss understands people very well, or what makes them heroic.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Sadly, agreed on the trailer. Flat, flashy, and not at all true black-and-white. The monochromatic palette is an empty allusion; the wit is a slack balloon.

I like this Benedick, though the Beatrice is flat.

The Globe is going for broad and rollicking, but I do enjoy their Beatrice, her face and body language.

I have fond memories of an all-female performance at Wellesley in about 1970. That Benedick had swagger.

And of a pretty summer performance under the elms at Harvard in 2005...Good heavens, I've found my review:

As it turned out, it was a fine Much Ado--a little ragged
about the edges, but well played. The director--a recent
graduate--did beautiful work with her gang of students.
Though it was billed as a staged reading, they acted without
book, and made free and confident use of their space: the
portico and steps of Mem. Church, with all the spring
blooming and twittering about their heads, and the audience
as arbor.

A good Benedick. His beard remained unshaven, but his
bearing changed. I could have wished that Beatrice had
showed a little more flash and sparkle in her opening
scenes, but she took fire: by "kill Claudio" she was
ablaze. A slow kindler, I guess. The whole "looks not like
a nuptial" scene was uncommonly effective; the grief and
anger of the women, almost Greek. Leonato was good; and the
Prince, handed the mitten, seemed genuinely wistful.

Nice touch: the watch were played by Beatrice, Hero, and
Ursula in cloaks, so they got to act their own Furies.

Oddly enough, this may have been the best Dogberry and
Verges I've seen. They're usually tedious, and not at all
brief. This Dogberry was a large fair curly-headed fellow,
like a poleaxed Bobby Shaftoe, and filled with the most
pinkly innocent complacency, plump and fragile, like a
balloon at the crotch. And neighbor Verges, Armin to his
Kemp, was played by a slip of a bitter-chocolate boy named
Krishna something. He was like a cross between Baldrick and
Ariel, with a dash of Titania's changeling boy: fool and
familiar, fiery steed, jade, crony, catamite, daw, and dog.
A lovely performance. Not all in the text: but it had that
shiver of the uncanny that you find in inspired clowning. I
would love to see him play a string of Shakespeare's
slighter fools.

Nine

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with you on black and white shooting being harder. You have to pay attention to rim lighting to get separation from the background, yes, but you save a lot in production design by not having to worry what color anything is. You can use mixed light. You can skip an entire postproduction step of color balancing. Shooting in black and white costs easily half as much and can be done with a smaller crew. It's also read as "Arty" and serious.

When I have no money and no time, I always default to black and white.

[gwynnega]

I'm a Joss fan, so I liked the trailer, though your criticism of the one-noteness of the vocal register is definitely valid.

I will never cease to be faintly amazed that all sorts of people who weren't me thought he was beautiful.

I have thought Leslie Howard was beautiful since the first time I saw Gone With the Wind as a kid and couldn't figure out why anyone was making a fuss about Clark Gable when Leslie Howard was in the film.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

From top to bottom, every word of this. Yes.

Yes.

[sovay]

Except that I have the Branagh version on DVD where I can watch it whenever I want a picnic.

At least I found the script while I was packing! With Branagh's notes at the end: "Prize for most time-consuming moment. Scene one. Shot one. Take 1. (No, make that a record-breaking take 29.) This move, from a first full-frame view of the painting, ending up on a close-up of Beatrice sitting in the tree, involved the perfect coordination of sun, actors, camera track and zoom, cleavage, bare chests, bread slicing, song lyrics, and donkey. It took a while." I am going to re-read it tonight.

That and the Kevin Kline Midsummer are my strongest examples of how you can too make Shakespeare work as film, and both of them do it by paying attention to the words.

I still need to see that. I started skipping Midsummers after I'd seen five or six and while I still think weirdquark and gaudior and the rest of us were right to walk out on Shakespeare on the Common's in 2007, that's how I missed seeing derspatchel and Socko together for the first time in 2011. In any case, I have never caught up on the Kevin Kline film. How do you feel about all of it? The only filmed Midsummer I've seen is the 1935 and that is a mixed bag except for James Cagney.

[sovay]

Bill Irwin, call me!

Hee. I saw him once onstage as Frosch in Die Fledermaus—a non-singing role, part (by tradition) improvised and pure clowning. There are rather too many footnotes in this writeup and I am kind of embarrassed about the siren line, but Irwin actually was that good. I still remember some of the physical comedy he did, including a bit with a seltzer bottle that had to be straight out of vaudeville. Also the filing cabinets.

I am usually anti-sun, but in that movie, it's so rich/golden/molten/relax.

What do you have against the sun usually?

[sovay]

Because I do like a lot of the Whedon company, and am interested to see them tackle one of my favorite plays.

I want a full report when you do!

I credit this to Robert Sean Leonard, who sells me on Claudio as being precisely that kind of idiot, who is incapable of feeling any emotion at a volume less than eleventy billion.

It's kind of amazing Brian Blessed is in that movie and he's not related to him at all.

because it's the necessary weight that makes the comedy funnier to me: I am less entertained by straight-up laughs than by laughs with a darker foundation underneath.

Agreed. Because this is one of the plays I keep writing about, I referred to that element once as "the way it presents love as a high-wire act over the very real possibility of getting hurt (and sooner or later, everyone who takes the risk must take a spill)"; Hero/Claudio is its darkest form. They're the sweet, shy, ardent innamorati who seem impossibly more innocent than Beatrice or Benedick ever could have been, but they're also the danger of that kind of unexamined love that flips from the sweetest lady that ever I looked on to an approved wanton with even scanter grounds for suspicion than the whole of Othello. There is no way to play that so it's nice and I don't think a production should. (I think it's just very hard to salvage the audience not wanting to kill Claudio afterward, too.)

[sovay]

Everyone else with words managed to sell me on the reading, but him: urk.

I wasn't sold by their Beatrice, either, but I did find myself typing things like "'Oh, God, sir, I cannot endure my Lady Tongue' gets worse every time I hear it."

I really hope he has better moments and the trailer is just not showing him to advantage. I just don't see why the trailer should do that.

[sovay]

That was kind of underwhelming.

I need a good stage production in my future.

[sovay]

Please find enclosed a pair of mutually contradictory responses:

You only watched after my play-by-play turned into all caps screaming!

I remember that! I'm holding you responsible for the trauma, then.

the worst sin a Shakespearean production can commit: that of actors who don't seem to understand the words that are coming out of their mouth. Without emotion in the delivery there's no conviction; without conviction there's no verisimilitude, and without verisimilitude there's no reason to be watching.

I do love you.