Richard III | Ian McKellen, Annette Bening

Richard III | Ian McKellen, Annette Bening | Absolute evil

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Richard III

	Richard III Ian McKellen, Annette Bening MGM (Video & DVD), 2000 average customer review:based on 117 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Villany Unveiled.

A gala ball: The York family celebrate their reascent to power; the War of Roses (named for the feuding houses' heraldic badges: Lancaster's red and York's white rose) is almost over. Actually, the year is 1471, but for present purposes, we're in the 1930s. A singer delivers a swinging "Come live with me and be my love." Richard of Gloucester (Sir Ian McKellen), the reinstated sickly King Edward IV's (John Wood's) youngest brother, moves through the crowd; observing, watching his second brother George, Duke of Clarence (Nigel Hawthorne) being quietly led off by Tower warden Brackenbury (Donald Sumpter) and his subalterns. With Clarence gone, Richard seizes the microphone, its discordant screech cutting through the singer's applause, and he, who himself made this night possible by killing King Henry VI of Lancaster and his son at Tewkesbury, begins a victory speech: "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York" (cut to Edward, who regally acknowledges the tribute). But when Richard mentions "grim-visaged war," who "smooth'd his wrinkled front," the camera closes in on his mouth, turning it into a grimace reminiscent of the legend known to any spectator in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre: that he wasn't just born "with his feet first" but also "with teeth in his mouth;" hence, not only crippled (though whether also hunchbacked is uncertain) but cursed from birth, his physical deformity merely outwardly representing his inner evil.

Then, mid-sentence, the image cuts again. Richard enters a bathroom; and as he continues his monologue we see that only now, relieving himself and talking - with narcissistic pleasure - to his own image in the mirror, he truly speaks his mind; contemptuously dismissing a war that's lost its menace and "capers nimbly in a lady's bedchamber," and determining that, since he now has no delight but to mock his own deformed shadow, and "cannot prove a lover," he'll "prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days."

Thus, Richard's first soliloquy, which actually opens the play on a London street, brilliantly demonstrates the signature elements of this movie's (and the preceding stage production's) success: not only its updated 20th century context but its creative use of settings and imagery; boldly cutting and rearranging Shakespeare's words without anytime, however, betraying his intent. Indeed, that pattern is already set with the prologue's murder of King Henry VI and his son, where following a telegraph report that "Richard of Gloucester is at hand - he holds his course toward Tewkesbury" (slightly altered lines from the preceding "King Henry VI"'s last scenes) Richard himself emerges from a tank breaking through the royal headquarters' wall, breathing heavily through a gas mask: As his shots ring out, riddling the prince with bullets, the blood-red letters R-I-C-H-A-R-D-III appear across the screen.

And as creatively it continues: Richard woos Lady Anne (Kristin Scott Thomas), Henry's daughter-in-law, in a morgue instead of a street (near her husband's casket), and later drives her into drug abuse. Henry's Cassandra-like widow Margaret is one of several characters omitted entirely; whereas foreign-born Queen Elizabeth is purposely cast with an American (Annette Benning), whose performance has equally purposeful overtones of Wallis Simpson; and whose playboy-brother Earl Rivers (Robert Downey Jr.) dies "in the act." Clarence is murdered while the rest of the family sits down to a lavish (although discordant) dinner. When upon Richard's ally Lord Buckingham's (Jim Broadbent's) machinations, he is "persuaded" to take the crown, he emerges from a veritable film star's dressing room complete with full-sized mirror and manicurists (sold to the attending crowd outside as "two deep divines" praying with him). Tyrrell (Adrian Dunbar), already one of Clarence's murderers, quickly rises through uniformed ranks as he further bloodies his hands. Richard's and Elizabeth's final spar over her daughter's hand takes place in the train-wagon serving as his field headquarters; and we actually see that same princess wed to his arch-enemy Richmond (Dominic West), King Henry VII-to-be and founder of the Tudor dynasty, with lines taken from Richmond's closing monologue. Perhaps most importantly, we also witness Richard's coronation, which Shakespeare himself - honoring that ceremony's perception as holy - decided not to show; although even here it is presented not as a glorious procedure of state but only in a brief snippet rerun immediately from the distance of a private, black-and-white film shown only for Richard's and his entourage's benefit.

And challenging as this project is, its stellar cast - also including Maggie Smith (a formidable Duchess of York), Jim Carter (Prime Minister Lord Hastings), Roger Hammond (the Archbishop), and Tim McInnerny and Bill Paterson (Richard's underlings Catesby and Ratcliffe) - uniformly prove themselves more than up to the task.

Even if the temporal setting didn't already spell out the allegory on the universality of evil that McKellen and director Richard Loncraine obviously intend, you'd have to be blind to miss the visual references to fascism: the uniforms, the gathering modeled on the infamous Nuremberg Reichsparteitag, the long red banners with a black boar in a white circle (playing up the image of the boar Shakespeare himself uses: similarly, Richard's and Tyrrell's first meeting is set in a pig-sty, and Lord Stanley's [Edward Hardwicke's] prophetic dream follows an incident where Richard, for a split-second, loses his self-control). But the imagery goes even further: Richard's narcissism is reminiscent of Chaplin's "Great Dictator;" and you don't have to watch this movie contemporaneously with the latest "Star Wars" installment to visualize Darth Vader during his gas mask-endowed entry in the first scene.

"[T]hus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; and seem a saint when most I play the devil," Richard comments in the play: if there's one line I regret to see cut it's the one so clearly encompassing the way many a modern despot assumes power, too; by cloaking his true intent in the veneer of formal legality. Even so: this is a highlight among the recent Shakespeare adaptations; under no circumstances to be missed.

Also recommended:
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
Olivier's Shakespeare - Criterion Collection (Hamlet / Henry V / Richard III)
BBC Shakespeare Histories (Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III) DVD Giftbox
BBC Shakespeare Tragedies DVD Giftbox
Henry V
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet
Hamlet
Peter Brook's King Lear
Julius Caesar

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Absolute evil

Ian McKellen does an incredible job creating one of the most despicable characters ever on stage. There are lots of other good roles played, but McKellen's Richard dominated every scene.

The scenes supported him well, too. The script translated smoothly into a fictionalized London, somewhere between the two World Wars. This worked exceptionally well in a few places. For one, it was the last period when horse were still in common use. Without that fact, "My kingdom for a horse" would have fallen flat. It was also around the time when Hitler was starting to come to power, even if only later history knew what that truly meant. The director used that double anachronism with frightening effect, covering Richard in the uniforms and militaristic pageantry of that evil time.

I have to admit, this is not a play I know very well in any other presentation. It's not a part of English history that I know, either. In other words, I'm not a person who would normally have been drawn to this play. It drew me, though, and drew me in. Perhaps some absolute purist would only let this script be played in its native period - I am glad that the director did not suffer such narrowness of vision.

This is an exceptional staging of Richard III. It's the one to pick if you have a reluctant viewer. The British actors handle the language beautifully (even if some of the Americans don't), and the visual presentation is flawless.

//wiredweird

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One of my twelve films in this decade!

Consider the impressive number of great films that were exhibited all along this fertile and creative decade.
Locraine directed a very unusual version of this well known Shakespeare's tragedy in the middle of the War.
This Shakesperian rapture brights all along with lighting grandness, showing us once more that Shakespeare's gaze is nowadays, more actuallized than ever.

The human being just only has changed the medium of making the war but in what the basic instincts who feed his soul and thoughts keep absolutely intact. And that is not precisely an aspect to be proud but it reveals by itself the huge ethic deficit we still have.

Watch for this fabulous and ravishing stage. Ian Mc Kellen is splendid for this role, making us to forget by brief moments the colossal and much more classic approach of Olivier of 1955.

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The War of The Roses in 1939

Richard Loncraine's adaptation of Shakespeare's famous play adapted to a setting in World War II. The setting of Richard III in a fascist England is a clever piece indeed whose arrangement and settings work much better than Julie Taymor's pretentious adaptation of Titus Andronicus.

Ian McKellen plays the conniving Richard III quite well as he hatches new and devious plots to eliminate his family and enemies. The setting is quite ingenious and, unlike Taymor, Loncraine doesn't try to superimpose imagery of settings two thousand years apart into the same scene. The acting is great, particularly Ian McKellen, Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. playing the other leading roles.

In terms of a modern adaptation of Shakespeare I think this is probably the best one as Taymor's work is quite frankly nothing more than pseudo-intellectual imagery drowning even the brilliant talents of Anthony Hopkins. In this film, the setting doesn't interfere with the story itself or the role of the actors. This is a good film to rent or own.

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Ian McKellen is the perfect Richard

Right after I had seen the movie, I started wondering whether it was ok to create this Third Reich atmosphere for a Shakespeare play. Being German, I am quite sensitive when it comes to Nazi decorations and images. However, after reading loads of secondary literature on Richard III, I realized how close the image of Richard in Shakespeare's time was to our image of Hitler. The fact that Richard is a perfect Machiavelli-Charakter reveals best in this version and one can easily feel the terror that developed in the British's minds during Richard's rule. Still, there is a trace of sympathy which you will eventually feel for the character of the 'hunchback'. This shows a bit how little certain we can be whether Richard III actually was an evil man or whether he was only made an evil man by historians...
All in all this movie is fantastic and the cast including Robert Downey jr. and Annette Bening is marvellous.

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