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looking for richard |
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PG-13. 118 minutes, 1996, Director - Al Pacino, Writers - William Shakespeare, Al Pacino & Frederic Kimball, Producers - Michael Hadge & Al Pacino Starring - Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, F. Murray Abraham, Estelle Parsons, Richard Cox, Kevin Conway, Penelope Allen, Harris Yulin, James Colby, Bruce MacVittie, Paul Guilfoyle, Viveca Lindfors, Dominic Chianese (Junior Soprano!), etc. As themselves - Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Rosemary Harris, Emrys Jones, Peter Brook, Barbara Everett, Derek Jacobi. Filmed at the Globe Theatre in London, The Cloisters in NYC and Montreal & Quebec Canada. |
Bonesaw thinks
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And what a fine effort it is. I honestly can say that after seeing this film, I look forward to more works by Shakespeare. I truly feel that I'll understand. Now Al is not stupid. He wants to pull you in by whatever means possible and for him, that's star power. Take a look up there at the endless list of actors that appear either in character or as themselves in this documentary film. Hell, Shakespeare himself even appears to intimidate Mr. Pacino which provides a very funny moment at the beginning. We're taken through the process of presenting Richard the III for a free performance of New York's "Shakespeare in The Park." Al walks around Manhattan and London attempting to put his finger on the pulse of our modern day appetite for Shakespeare, that is if he can find it. In London, a man exclaims, "What the fuck do you know about Shakespeare?!" One of the film's most profound moments is when he does find it, in Manhattan from a toothless, homeless man who says, "Intelligence is hooked with language. And when we speak with no feeling we get nothing out of our society. We should speak like Shakespeare. We should introduce Shakespeare into the academics. Know why? Because then the kids would have feelings. We have no feelings. That's why it's easy for us to get a gun and shoot each other. We don't feel for each other. But if we were taught to feel, we wouldn't be so violent as a people." Al asks, "And you think Shakespeare helps us with that?" The man replies, "He did more than help us, he instructed us." Why do we have so much trouble with Shakespeare, especially Richard the III? That's what this film reveals. The language is really no different than modern day rap or slang. You have to get used to it, "your ear has to tune up" to it. Al feels that you shouldn't have to understand every single word that's spoken but that you should just trust the story, all will become clear in the end. And it's such a great story. It's about corruption and the need for power to fill up the black hole left behind by the random mutations of birth. About a walking wreck of a man who is so accustomed to fighting wars that he will do anything to make it continue. And my favorite lesson, the politician's total contempt for the things they promised in order to be in power.
Quotes & Stuff Al Pacino: What's this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare? Al as Richard III: Was ever a woman in this humor, wooed? Was ever a woman in this humor won? I'll have her, but I will not keep her long. Vanessa Redgrave: In England you have had centuries when words are totally divorced from truth. Richard the III is the world's most popular play, performed more than Hamlet. |
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Have you ever felt cowed by Shakespeare? Never quite understood it or cared to? Al Pacino had a dream, "It has always been a dream of mine to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people. So I asked my friends to join me and by taking this one play, Richard the III, analyzing it, approaching it from different angles, putting on costumes, playing out scenes, we could communicate both our passion for it, our understanding that we've come to and in doing that communicate a Shakespeare that is about how we feel and how we think today. Now that's the effort we're gonna give it here."
I so enjoyed watching everyone work their craft, especially Pacino with his monstrous transformation into the hunchback, Richard the III. They explained this story and all the complex relationships between the characters in terms that I could understand. I am forever in their debt.