King Lear [1999]

Given the past three adaptations all failing to help me really understand the play — the 2018 version too preoccupied with catering to those who have seen & know it, the 1987 version doing whatever it wanted (mostly not The Play), and Kurosawa's 1985 version being so drastically transformed, I cracked the books on this; between The Folger's resources and the rabbit holes wikipedia lead me to I think I have a better handle on the story.

I don't know if King Lear [the play] is really a tragedy in the same way I think of, say, Macbeth; Or maybe I'm conflating a feeling of dramatized historicity in the latter with my understanding of 'tragedy', as King Lear feels much more moralizing, almost fable-like — a polemic against the parents who fall for flattery and nonsense, a warning before we become them, and even a warning against becoming the good child. Lear is "tragedy" in the sense that a romantic comedy, a modern one, is a romance and a comedy — truly, that's what's in there; asking for more on top of that is asking for too much. There are themes in Macbeth about power and succession, but they are given names and faces from history rather than played with directly.

John Danby suggests in his Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature, that King Lear is more of an examination of then-contemporary ideas behind the way power moves, in contrast to what Machiavelli was writing about in The Prince; Lear, Gloucester and their cohort are a naïve version of the then-consolidating idea of what a nation is, while Goneril and Regan are opportunists in the Machiavellian mode. Danby's tactic is to call these both Natures, which I find imprecise but I suppose that is more historically appropriate for a text from 1948. This then lets Cordelia be Francis Bacon's sythesized position of "group machiavellianism against Nature" [Nature in a Hobbesian sense this time] to attempt to reunify the Kingdom[s]. I won't pretend I got everything Danby was talking about in the text and I will freely admit I skimmed and skipped more than I ever did as an undergrad. The text was dense and unrewarding.

It feels so goofy to actually post this. "Yeah I talked to some people and told them how I didn't like it; they gave me a couple ways to look at the text different and I didn't like those either." Sometimes things aren't a good time.

Anyhow. 1999's King Lear, starring Brian Blessed.

This likely would've been the ideal one to start with — production values and acting chops can only improve from this, to say nothing of running time — but alas, it's last in the month. It is very much of a kind with what everyone was afraid would happen with The Lord Of The Rings films before they came out — something performed like a Sam Raimi picaresque series, lit like an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where they had to go to "castle times" on the holodeck. Brian Blessed's look & performance is honestly not that far from a modern Jack Black performance [to be clear, this is to its detriment], although his scenes where the soliloquy is done as voice over/"inner monologue" work extremely well.

That said, it does at least try to introduce its characters and let them actually emote during its speeches and soliloquies. Hildegard Neil does better here as The Fool than she did in Antony & Cleopatra as Cleopatra. Faint praise.

Really could've done with fewer songs. Like ideally zero songs; I just don't care for the "renfaire style" — see the other Brian Blessed joint, Much Ado About Nothing, to assure yourself this is a consistent position for me — in the same way I don't want to hear a sea shanty, a polka, or that stomp-clap-hey cosplay music from the 2010s. It does not fill me with a vivacious love for life the way it seems to for others.

Ultimately I think I simply do not vibe with the play. I get it, but I am unimpressed by what it is managing to take three hours to do; perhaps it would be better to see on a stage. The meta moves would land better, if nothing else. I'd also be interested in whatever the Teen Shakespeare style adaptation of it would be.

Ah well. Onward and upward - Hamlet next. The schedule is as follows:

• Next week, August 2: Hamlet [1996]
• August 9: Let the Devil Wear Black [1999] + The Lion King [1994]
• August 16: Hamlet [2000] + The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride [1998]
• August 23: Renaissance Man [1994] + Grand Theft Hamlet [2024]
• August 30: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead [1990] + Hamlet 2 [2008] + The Lion King 1½ [2004]

Thank you for reading along with My Year of Shakespeare.