waiting to sail your worries away

[lotesse]

Abigail Nussbaum has a cool article up on three stagings of Much Ado About Nothing: the Branagh film, the Whedon film, and the Tennant/Tate production.

Although I liked the Whedon adaptation more than she apparently did, and saw it as definitely expressing an interpretation, albeit a nihilistic and chaotic one. I was struck by the way Whedon's characters stumbled from scene to scene, how drunk and out of control they all were, how random their choices are - in contrast to the Branagh film, where you see Beatrice and Benedick warming to the thought of one another and genuinely deciding to match themselves, I saw Whedon's characters as very much the victims of their friends' tricks, tricked into sex and love and marriage and betrayal and penance and forgiveness, tricked into doing wrong and tricked into doing right.

I suppose it also doesn't help, in my case, that looking at Sean Maher's little faaaaaaace makes me go all melty and trusting, whereas I don't trust Reed Diamond as far as I can pitch him.

Comments

[esteven]

Only recently I took the Branagh film from the shelves again, Whether it's a good adaptation or not, for me it has all the makings of a "Feel-good" movie. The characters are wonderful, the actors are very good and seemed to have enjoyed themselves doing the movie, the scenery is breathtaking.

[lotesse]

It's one of my absolute faves - I've spent entire afternoons watching it several times over, end to end. Much Ado is my pet play, because it's the one with the Mouthy Girl triumphant, and the one where a dude stands in solidarity with women in the face of homosocial pressure.

also, you know, see icon. I have a thing.

[esteven]

I can well understand that. :) Usually I am not in favour of Shakespeare's comedies. They do not grip me, but the way Much Ado was done, I could not but feel elated after I first watched it. I also love the soundtrack.

[abigail_n.livejournal.com]

I saw Whedon's characters as very much the victims of their friends' tricks, tricked into sex and love and marriage and betrayal and penance and forgiveness, tricked into doing wrong and tricked into doing right

That's a really interesting interpretation. I wish I could see it in Whedon's film... Because the truth is, what Don Pedro does - whether it's lying to Benedick and Beatrice to bring them together, courting Hero as Claudio, or participating in Claudio's humiliation of his good friend and host's daughter - is weird, and in its own way just as manipulative and thoughtless as what Don John does. And then Leonato turns around and acts just as weird to him and Claudio. There's definitely space for a production that stresses that manipulation and treats the whole cast as each other's puppets, but Whedon's film, I thought, was too caught up in romantic comedy conventions to make that statement with any real force. Or, to put it another way, I see the stumbling from scene to scene as a bug rather than a feature.

[lotesse]

I've only seen the Whedon film once, so I feel a bit on shaky grounds making claims - but in its support, I'll say that as a big fan of the play I hadn't previously noticed Don Pedro's weirdness. Denzel plays him as such a genuinue, noble figure, wronged rather than in the wrong - and in that case I wonder if race isn't also relevant. I know it's a classic example of race-blind casting, but as a viewer I can't and won't be race-blind; watching a white man playing the role, Don Pedro's massive privileged weirdness is much more apparent, and I felt that Whedon's film opened a new interpretive avenue there.

[abigail_n.livejournal.com]

in its support, I'll say that as a big fan of the play I hadn't previously noticed Don Pedro's weirdness

It's true that Whedon acknowledges this more than Branagh does (one of the few touches I genuinely liked was Claudio's confused "what the hell are you talking about?" expression when Don Pedro offers to court Hero for him), but here, as I say in my essay, he suffers from my having watched the NT production before his film. That play doesn't quite suggest that there's something wrong with Don Pedro, but it does take seriously the idea that he's unhappy and not blameless in what happens to Hero, and commits to it more strongly than Whedon, who seems to forget about it fairly early on.

Denzel plays him as such a genuinue, noble figure, wronged rather than in the wrong - and in that case I wonder if race isn't also relevant

Possibly, though I think another factor is that, excellent as it is, Branagh's film hasn't really got much subtext, and doesn't interrogate its characters. The text says that Don Pedro is good while Don John is evil, so that's how Branagh has Wahsington and Reeves play them.