Shakespearean Monologue

Relatively recently, I watched last year's film adaptation of Coriolanus.  As a general rule, I strive to read the source material before I see a movie based on any previously written work, but had not done so with Coriolanus, nor have I seen a performance of the play. Because of that, I cannot say with any qualification how good the movie is as an adaptation. As a movie, however, I must say that I enjoyed it, and I think that it is an auspicious directorial debut by Ralph (it's actually pronounced "Rafe") Fiennes, who also gave a hell of a performance as the titular tragic hero. But that is not really what I want to write about. Instead, I would like to bring up the inevitable complaints about the movie's use of antiquated language.

Sometimes, after seeing a movie, I'll go onto its IMDb page and see what other people thought about it. And with Coriolanus, a lot of the discussion was about "ye olde" English language. This didn't surprise me, because it is a rather common complaint about movies adapted from Shakespeare. For some reason, however, the complaints about Coriolanus struck a nerve. Most likely it was due to the inanity of some of them. The language was too out of place in the action scenes; the language made the film too difficult to follow; who the hell talks like that? One poster actually suggested that the movie's dialogue should have been "modern", but that the Coriolanus character would like to quote Shakespeare, which, if you realize that Coriolanus, in a movie titled Coriolanus, would be "quoting" lines given by a character also named Coriolanus, from a Shakespearean play also named Coriolanus, is something bizarrely meta.

I sympathize with people who have difficulty understanding Shakespeare. Watching a play of his, or a movie based on a play, can be very demanding on one's attention and interpretive ability. But criticizing an adaptation of Shakespeare for containing Shakespearean language betrays a certain callowness.

I am not an expert on Shakespeare. I have only read around a third of his plays. By no means do I think everything he wrote was a masterpiece. In fact, some of his plays are outright bad. (I'm looking at you, Two Gentlemen of Verona...) Sympathy aside, however, I have to make the following point boldly (and I mean that literally):

You cannot separate Shakespeare's words from his works.

Shakespeare wrote plays. If you are trying to adapt a Shakespearean play into a movie, and maintain a sense of it still being Shakespeare, it makes no sense to gut the language. Oh, you might (and probably should) abridge the play, or maybe alter some lines to make them easier to understand, but, if you do it right, the lyrical and metric qualities of the play's language will remain largely intact, and your adaptation will be suitably Shakespearean.

In an aside to this (suitable for a discussion on Shakespeare), there is something that may not be all that realized by the lay consumer of Shakespeare (if such a thing exists): many of his plays are derived from stories and plays previously written or recorded by other people. So, unless an adaptation is of one of his few wholly original works, it could conceivably be argued that it would be just as much an adaptation of the source material Shakespeare used.

There have been numerous adaptations of Shakespeare that have discarded his use of language. The musicals West Side Story and Kiss Me, Kate obviously discard his words and significantly alter the plays (Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, respectively) in order to make the transition to the stage musical medium. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think everyone would agree with me that neither musical can be called Shakespeare. Likewise, to counter the bizarrely meta suggestion mentioned above, 10 Things I Hate About You, also a modernized adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, would hardly be Shakespearean even if Patrick Verona quoted Petruchio. In fact, it would be a bit odd.

You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate,

And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;

But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,

Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,

For dainties are all cates: and therefore, Kate,

Take this of me, Kate of my consolation;

Horror-thon: Part II - Transylvanian Terror

The first two films I watched for my Oktoberfest of Horror were two versions of Dracula, the 1931 classic starring Bela Lugosi and the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring Gary Oldman.

As someone who has read the book,  I must say that the '31 adaptation doesn't stand up to the novel. In fact, that version of Dracula wasn't technically based off of the novel itself, but was instead the adaptation of a play based off of the book. It is one of the downsides of the movie that the plot is much too simplified. Granted, it dates back to the 1930s, when movie norms were quite different from what they are now, but when I compare the movie with the novel, I can't help but notice certain jarring simplifications. Easily the most unsettling is the treatment of the "White Lady." The audience is shown that one of Dracula's victims has become a vampire, and is preying on children. And then?.... Nothing. The main plot line continues on without any resolution whatsoever of what you would think would be an important issue. After all, this only means that there's a second vampire loose in London.

On the plus side, however, there is the superb performance of Bela Lugosi, who effuses a wonderfully sinister charm and charisma. It is commonly said that Lugosi, a Hungarian, had to learn his lines phonetically because he didn't speak English when the movie was made. This is actually incorrect, although there is an element of truth to it, as Lugosi had played Dracula for years in the stage version mentioned above and had to learn his lines phonetically because of his then-poor English.

The 1991 version adheres more closely to the novel. It still has multiple alterations, however, but it is far from the simple story of the original movie.  Perhaps the alteration that I most like is the movie's introduction, which provides the origin story of the dark count. In fact, the overall arc of the movies suggests that Dracula is not so much a horror villain as a tragic character, a man who, when confronted with immeasurable and eternal loss, chose to renounce both his soul and humanity, and suffers the consequences over the following centuries.

Definitely an old man...

Another distinction of this version is its quite overt sexuality. I generally think it works on multiple levels. It taps into the longstanding perception that, in the stuffy Victorian age, sexuality was tantamount to depravity. And few things are as depraved as the depiction of the undead slacking their lust for the living (and not just for their blood...).  Then there's the juxtaposition of the sexually repressed Jonathan, generally considered the hero of the story, with the aggressively sexual Dracula, which further questions the distinction between the living and the dead.

It goes without saying that Gary Oldman is fantastic as Dracula, and Anthony Hopkins is a riot to watch as a callously straight-forward Van Helsing. Keanu Reeves, on the other hand, is cringe-inducing, mostly because of his horrific attempt to use a British accent. Among other butcheries, he possibly committed the most laughable mispronunciation of Budapest, "Byudapest," during a voice-over narration. I don't know what Francis Ford Coppola was thinking when he cast him.

Horror-thon

In response to a complaint that I didn't have anything to blog about, a friend suggested that I blog about my recent spate of horror movie watching. The month of October has two inconveniently contradictory realities for students (or at least me): one, the existence of midterm exams and papers, and two, the overwhelming desire to sit around watching horror movies, at the likely expense of performing well on aforementioned midterms. As someone who has loved horror movies since I was a pre-teen, I've been spending a bit too much time on the latter, but I don't care.

Unfortunately, my ability to watch my favorite horror movies has been hampered by my recent severing of ties with Netflix's DVD mailing service, which means I'm limited to whatever's available on instant viewing, Hulu, or movies that I own. Unfortunately, this means I can't watch films like Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Halloween (1978), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), Ringu (1998), and Ju-On (2003). 

Nevertheless, I have made the best of a disappointing situation. So far this month, I've watched twelve horror movies, for a current average of one a day. (I've also had one in-class midterm, but the horror movies are obviously more important...) They are: Dracula (1931), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), The Lost Boys (1987), The Exorcist (1973), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Evil Dead (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), The Howling (1981), Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), and Scream (1996). I will be writing blog posts about most, if not all, of them and other horror movies in the near future...