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Who Doesn't Like Will?
By Mary Shaffer More than any other art form, films reveal how universal and timeless Shakespeare's plays are. Modern filmmakers have transformed his 400-year-old plays into tales of urban American juvenile gangs and Mafioso, Japanese samurai warriors and warlords, warring families, and ancient Roman and modern fascist dictators. In Shakespeare's plays, the best actors and directors found insights into human behavior, culture and values that are true everywhere and always. They converted the "Romeo and Juliet" drama about star-crossed young lovers and ancient Italian family rivalries into "West Side Story," a 1961 musical about ethnic conflict in the American melting pot. They took the story of "The Tempest" and Prospero's magic and made the science-fiction classic "Forbidden Planet" (1956) about a space expedition attacked by "monsters from the id." "Macbeth" has been a violent but traditional drama (director Roman Polanski's first film after his wife was murdered), a feudal Japanese power struggle in Akira Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" (1957), and the rise and fall of a contemporary Mafia hit man (John Turturro) in "Men of Respect" (1991). Shakespeare's plots and characters are as relevant today as they were to Elizabethan England, and no one has written it better before or since. In every culture and time, people have succumbed to ambition and revenge, been destroyed by guilt, battled bad luck and random chance, betrayed friends, schemed and murdered to get ahead and suffered the consequences. Great actors seem drawn to Shakespeare, to speak the English language in its most eloquent and perceptive form of poetry. His lyrics have attracted such diverse talents as Mel Gibson, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Winona Ryder, Robin Williams, Denzel Washington, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, Kevin Branagh and Laurence Olivier. The Internet Movie Database lists more than 250 film and TV adaptations of Shakespeare, with every play filmed at least once and tragedies more popular than comedies. "Hamlet" leads with 36 versions, followed by "Othello" and "Macbeth" with more than 20 and "King Lear" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with 16. Shakespeare films have been produced in 11 languages and earned critical praise and the industry's highest awards. Sixteen of them have earned a total of 63 Oscar nominations and won 26 times, including two of seven for Best Picture, four of 14 for acting, and one of six for directing. But they are more likely to reap rewards in lesser categories: half of the films ever nominated won Oscars for costume design and/or art direction. Shakespeare seemed to be everywhere on the screen last year with new versions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Twelfth Night" and could net nominations Tuesday for Al Pacino and Kenneth Branagh. Pacino, who won a Best Actor Oscar in 1992 for "Scent of a Woman," could be nominated as the director of "Looking for Richard," a documentary about actors trying to understand and interpret the villainous and deformed king, "Richard III." Branagh, nominated for acting and directing "Henry V" (1989), could repeat in both categories for "Hamlet," the first time the entire play has been filmed and the second longest film ever. Branagh is this generation's Olivier. Both actors are linked to Shakespeare and often compared with each other. Near the end of World War II, Olivier's spectacular version of "Henry V" was a bright, rousing, patriotic call to arms, a celebration of victory over the Nazi threat in Europe. Fifty years later, in the wake of Vietnam and with the Cold War ending, Branagh used the same play to portray a much darker, more realistic and somber view of war as a costly but necessary means to restore order. Olivier also starred in "Othello" (1965) and produced, adapted, directed and starred in "Richard III" (1956) and "Hamlet" (1948), earning seven nominations and three Oscars for his efforts, including "special achievement" for "Henry V." Branagh produced, directed, wrote and starred in "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993), played Iago in "Othello" (1995), but varies distinctly from Olivier's brooding, Freudian Hamlet. Instead of being "a man who could not make up his own mind," Branagh says his Hamlet "knows all along what he must do." According to Branagh, "You have ground to stand on as a Shakespearean interpreter for the camera only if you're doing it differently from what was done before." As long as there are actors to take that challenge, there will be Shakespeare on screen for audiences to experience anew.Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a news reporter for the Telegram-Tribune. |