Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2012-10-13 03:21 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-10-13 03:21 pm
[ SECRET POST #2111 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2111 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 124 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-10-17 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)I didn't mind the setting - it was almost aggressively 'realistic'. They had to shoot everything on location in Britain (including, er, France) because it was part of the Cultural Olympiad, hence all the unimpressive castles and grey skies. I didn't mind that everyone wore something vaguely mediaevel. Ish. (Except I'm not sure they wore quite so much tailored leather and definitely more saggy non-lycra tights)
'Richard II' was beautifully-staged and had a strong aesthetic, as well as a willingness to include pet monkeys, St. Sebastian-via-Derek Jarman, pink tights and mossy bridges. They had firm notions about things such as 'whether Richard is gay or not' and stuck to them. Ben Whishaw was regal, embarrassing, needy and entirely believable and Patrick Stewart completely owned his showpiece 'sceptred isle' speech.
You knew 'Henry IV' was in creative trouble when you saw the set. Everything utterly literal. The king in a big, cold echoey castle surrounded by silly hats, the tavern looking like a Disney-cartoon Olde Englishe Taverne. Falstaff was jolly (actually, he did the pathos well enough), Quickly was cackly and Hal was a smug prick (which he's meant to be, but he was a soap-opera smug prick rather than a Shakespearean one). But it was all so obvious, like the way soaps are directed.
You knew it was in *desperate* creative trouble when you saw the sauna scene. It's certainly a kind of step forward to see men lounging about all sweaty and semi-nude to distract the eye rather than women but it's still kind of sad. I liked the idea of fighting in scrappy bits of melty British snow to make the blood redder, but the fights were oddly boring.
'Henry V' was more of the same plodding. The fights were cheaper-looking and less thrilling than the ones shot in 1944. Henry, possibly as an interpretation, looked miserable and out of his depth for most of it (I'd expect this in the pre-battle scenes or the night scene but he really should pull it together and pretend to be optimistic. The director had the Idea that he gave his two big speeches to small groups of friends, which is bizarre - why would Henry's family and colleagues need bucking up rather than The Plain Troops? (which is the whole point of the night scene - he is forcibly shown his responsibility to the whole of the soldiery and the country. That's why he's paid so much. And he needs to be shown it because he's not a ~natural king, but the son of a usurper. He can't possibly risk looking scared and tired). Also the face-caked-in-dirt stuff went from 'gritty and authentic' to 'annoying and unconvincing' after a while. He's a bloody king, someone can surely pass him a flannel.
There was a small bit I loved that was wrong for the scene but beautifully acted. At the end of 'Crispin', he sort of catches Erpingham's eye and deflates into near-mumbling and awkward silence, as if he can't sustain A Glorious Rally any longer in the face of such odds. Subtly-worked and performed, but poor TH deserved better direction.
The romance scene at the end wasn't either funny or transactional, and kind of needs to be a bit of both. He just sort of... flirted ineptly, like a boy at a sixth-form disco (and what the hell was that velvet tunic? He looked like a tube). Although the watery and useless French Princess was well within 'Henry V' tradition ;D
(and I say this as a big fan of broad/random/crazy/mainstream adaptations just as long as they work. Oh and I love the Hiddles. Generally)
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-10-18 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)Henry V is seen as cinematic gold because of the battle scenes but it starts with a Chorus apologising for not having visual effects, basically. There wouldn't have been hoards of soldiers on the stage of the Globe for Henry to address - and Shakespeare writes for the theatre of his time. So really, it's not a huge stretch to have the speeches addressed to small groups of people - why wouldn't the higher-ups need bucking up? They're the ones leading the charge.
I've also always read the wooing scene as intentionally inept and school disco-like. It's always going to be bathetic after the charge of the battle scenes, and there are some very sinister undertones: for all the playfulness, Katherine (who Henry diminished to Kate) doesn't really have a choice but must be bought and sold as part of a political bargain ('transactional', as you put it so well. In Hiddleston's performance, Henry was aware of this and caught between chivalry and pragmatism.
I really loved Henry V (it was my surprise favourite of the Hollow Crown series); all I'm saying is that you seem to be stating your objections as fact, when really it boils to this: it didn't match your interpretation or received ideas of what Henry V 'should be like'.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-10-22 01:35 am (UTC)(link)I found the acting to be excellent and a lot of the mood choices very good, but I was complaining from a more filmic and cinematographic point of view, which is possibly unfair for the budget - but I was so surprised by the visual freshness and bold little touches in 'Richard II', that the rest looked very conventional in comparison.
On rewatching, the 'tiny band' speeches work within the context of *this* play, possibly ('in my opinion', obviously - a phrase that shouldn't need continual restating among thinking people, surely). I think, hm, that it's a little off to have such downbeat speeches in such a traditionally-shot-and-costumed setting.
Because the mythical Henry was such a hero to people that a 'classical' interpretation of the play, as I would make from this BBC brief, would contain more stir and trumpet in the Big Two speeches. The hushed and tired speeches here are excellent in their own way but I think I would have found them more suited to a modern-dress production, or another alternative directorial concept.
Now, I know that these things exist on a continuum and that this is not conceived as a plain 'bung the play on tape for schools to use' version, but maybe it means I should re-watch it as less straight than it looks? Thanks for bringing me to considering it that way.
Basically, 'Richard II' was so brilliant that everything else fell in its shade.