{"id":17546,"date":"2021-12-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=17546"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:13:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:13:21","slug":"is-there-a-right-way-to-adapt-shakespeare-for-the-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/is-there-a-right-way-to-adapt-shakespeare-for-the-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Is There a “Right” Way to Adapt Shakespeare for the Screen?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month brings two high-profile films inspired by the works of William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth<\/em>, directed by Joel Coen, and the Steven Spielberg\/Tony Kushner revamp of West Side Story<\/em>, the Romeo and Juliet<\/em> variant previously transferred from Broadway to the silver screen six decades ago. One keeps the Bard\u2019s language intact while the other discards it entirely, only using the play\u2019s basic framework to fashion its story about star-crossed lovers caught between rival street gangs. Both approaches have their merits, but to weigh the benefits of choosing one or the other, it makes sense to examine an extreme example of each. On the side of the purists: Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Hamlet<\/em>. For the liberty-takers: Billy Morrissette\u2019s Scotland, Pa<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his early career on stage and screen, Branagh positioned himself as Laurence Olivier\u2019s heir apparent. His first feature as director and star was 1989\u2019s Henry V<\/em>, also the play with which Olivier made his directorial debut 45 years earlier. More Shakespeare films followed, including the star-studded Much Ado About Nothing<\/em> and Hamlet<\/em> (released 25 years ago this month), with the latter his most concerted attempt to one-up his hero, for while Olivier\u2019s Hamlet<\/em> won Best Picture and Actor at the Oscars (as well as the BAFTA for Best Film from Any Source), it was with a heavily truncated version of the play. Branagh, on the other hand, took the bold step of filming the complete text, resulting in a four-hour epic that required an intermission and looked like the millions of dollars poured into its making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the other end of the spectrum is the scrappy 2001 indie Scotland, Pa.<\/em>, which transposes the plot of Macbeth<\/em> to small-town Pennsylvania in the \u201970s and reconceives it as a fight over a fast-food restaurant. In this, writer\/director Morrissette followed in the footsteps of Akira Kurosawa\u2019s Throne of Blood<\/em> and 1990\u2019s Men of Respect<\/em> (starring John Turturro as a mafia hitman who kills his way up the ranks of his crime family). And that\u2019s not to forget the SCTV<\/em> spinoff Strange Brew<\/em>, which cast Bob and Doug McKenzie as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern figures in a Hamlet<\/em>-inspired conspiracy plot, and the off-kilter office comedy of Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s Hamlet Goes Business<\/em>. Morrissette\u2019s script pulls double duty, though, piling a host of \u201970s signifiers (the Bad Company-heavy classic rock soundtrack, a Magic 8-Ball, Yahtzee, fondue, Prince Spaghetti, Tab, even a streaker) on top of the expected Macbeth<\/em> callbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These start, naturally enough, with the character names. The protagonists, played by James Le Gros and Maura Tierney, are Joe (\u201cMac\u201d to his friends) and Pat McBeth. Both are in the employ of Norm Duncan (James Rebhorn), one-time donut czar who has gone into the burger business because he has some fresh ideas about how to distribute them. Duncan\u2019s surly sons are Malcolm (a rocker with no desire to inherit the family business) and the unambiguously gay Donald (who\u2019s more comfortable singing show tunes than playing football). Mac\u2019s best friend, meanwhile, is Anthony \u201cBanko\u201d Banconi (Kevin Corrigan, Le Gros\u2019s co-star from Living in Oblivion<\/em><\/a>), and the cop who gets called in when Duncan takes a header into the fryer during a robbery gone awry is Lt. McDuff (Christopher Walken), an avowed vegetarian. As for the \u201cweird sisters,\u201d they\u2019ve been reimagined as a trio of hippies (Amy Smart, Timothy \u201cSpeed\u201d Levitch, and Andy Dick) and do just as good a job of turning Mac\u2019s head as their medieval forebears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play\u2019s supernatural elements aren\u2019t entirely forgotten, though, since Morrissette sets key scenes in the Witch\u2019s Brew Tavern and Birnham Woods Hunting Grounds. The most pivotal ones, though, take place at Duncan\u2019s and, after it\u2019s been refurbished, McBeth\u2019s. As the restaurant changes hands, so do the fortunes of its owners, a state of affairs that brings to mind the jockeying for control of the Denmark Corporation in Michael Almereyda\u2019s modern-dress Hamlet<\/em><\/a>. By design, Branagh didn\u2019t have to jump through any such hoops when he embarked on his adaptation a few years earlier, though he did update the time period to the brightly lit 19th<\/sup> century, which helped set his film apart from Olivier\u2019s inky, black-and-white rendition, as well as the 1990 Mel Gibson starrer directed by Franco Zeffirelli, which was in the vanguard of \u201990s Shakespeare-related films along with Gus Van Sant\u2019s My Own Private Idaho<\/em><\/a> and Tom Stoppard\u2019s adaptation of his play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Olivier\u2019s Hamlet<\/em>, which eliminated entire subplots and characters (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to name two, are nowhere to be seen or heard from), Branagh\u2019s makes a virtue of reinstating all of the political intrigue with Norway and Fortinbras, along with the entire performance of The Murder of Gonzago<\/em>, only the dumbshow of which is seen in the earlier version. Branagh also makes liberal use of inserts and cutaways to illustrate and clarify certain lines, but refrains from doing so for Ophelia\u2019s report of Hamlet\u2019s visit to her bedchamber or Gertrude\u2019s description of Ophelia\u2019s death by drowning, both of which Olivier had depicted in his film. Perhaps the performances by Kate Winslet and Julie Christie convinced Branagh it wasn\u2019t necessary to cut away from them. They did the work for the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he had in Much Ado<\/em>, Branagh cast movie stars in a number of roles to make his Hamlet <\/em>more appealing to general audiences. (This is also why Richard Dreyfuss rubs shoulders with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern<\/em>.) In addition to Winslet, Christie, and the members of his ad-hoc repertory company (Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Richard Briers, Michael Maloney), he gave small parts to Billy Crystal, Gerard Depardieu, Charlton Heston, Jack Lemmon, and Robin Williams. If some of them have more facility with Shakespeare\u2019s language than others, that\u2019s part of the tradeoff, and it\u2019s one Branagh is acutely aware of in light of the film he wrote and directed right before Hamlet<\/em>, 1995\u2019s In the Bleak Midwinter<\/em> (renamed A Midwinter\u2019s Tale<\/em> in the States to avoid having \u201cbleak\u201d in the title). In it, a troupe of semi-professionals mounts a threadbare benefit production of Hamlet<\/em> over Christmas, with all the expected pitfalls. That it actually comes off qualifies as something of a miracle, almost on par with a Hollywood studio backing a four-hour Shakespeare extravaganza to the tune of $18 million. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScotland, Pa.\u201d is streaming on <\/em>a number of services<\/em><\/a>. Kenneth Branagh\u2019s \u201cHamlet\u201d is on Hoopla and available for rent from <\/em>the usual places<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenneth Branagh\u2019s \u201cHamlet\u201d hit theaters 25 years ago, while the freewheeling \u201cMacbeth\u201d adaptation \u201cScotland, PA\u201d just hit its 20 year anniversary. A look at their contrasting approaches to putting the Bard on film: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":17549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422],"class_list":["post-17546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22101,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546\/revisions\/22101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}