raincitygirl | (no subject)

Saw Much Ado About Nothing with

kerri and

wanderer yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. We had to trek out to the only theatre in Vancouver that was playing it, naturally. And my feet hurt because I was wearing shoes I'd discovered at the back of the cupboard. I had totally forgotten why I stopped wearing those shoes in the first place: they give me blisters. But enough about my feet, back to the movie. Cutting for rambling thoughts:

The black and white was disorienting at first. I'm not used to seeing iPhones and so forth in black and white. I get why they did it that way, though: The low production values are probably less visible in black and white than in colour.

Personally, I think Alexis Denisof looked better with the beard than without. Which is odd, because i don't usually like beards on men, but he has a great beard face. I was sad when he shaved it off.

Amy Acker was great. I never really liked her as Fred (too much of a manic pixie dreamgirl), but loved her as Illyria. And her turn as Doctor Saunders was one of the bright spots in Dollhouse.

I want Joss Whedon's house! I am officially jealous of him having that house. Apparently he's married to an architect and she designed the house. Come, Mrs. Whedon, design a house for me. But do it pro bono, please. I think it would be slightly weird, though, to be living in that house and know that moviegoers all over the world now know exactly what your house looks like, inside and out. That KITCHEN, though. I don't even like to cook, but I would so change my mind if I could cook in a kitchen like that.

I loved the arrangement for the song "Sigh No More", and the fancy dress party scene in general, particularly the thing with the acrobats.

That was a *very* white cast. Also, they could have easily cut that line of Claudio's about the Ethiope.

I think it was on Twitter, but it might have been LJ, someone remarked that so much about the characters' poor life choices could be explained by the fact that they're all serious alcoholics. There was a WHOLE lotta drinking going on.

The hard drinking actually worked for me. For instance, having Don Pedro semi-propose to Beatrice while literally falling down drunk, and thus obviously not being serious about it. That was one thing that didn't work for me in the Kenneth Branagh version, having Beatrice turn him down so quickly when he's an insanely good catch. Also a dick, but she doesn't know that yet when she shuts down his hints.

I think it was

nwhepcat who observed that Claudio is actually semi-sympathetic in this version, about which I was extremely doubtful going in. Having seen the Branagh version and a staged version, plus having read the play back in the dark ages, I hated both Claudios with the power of a thousand burning suns, and I couldn't see how any actor could possibly make Claudio not be a dick. But she's right, Kranz kinda sorta pulls it off. The key factor for me was that when Hero faints after he repulses her at the wedding, he pauses and tries to go back. Don Pedro has to remind him to keep going. It suggested that he was weak, easily led, and pathologically jealous, but not quite as cold-hearted as he's usually portrayed. So Claudio was still a dick, but less so than usual. Not that I have high hopes of him and Hero having a happy marriage.

I have to say the Reed Diamond Don Pedro worked better for me than the Denzel Washington Don Pedro, because Washington seemed to be playing it like Don Pedro was a good guy. Diamond has no compunction about letting Don Pedro be a dick. Oh, and I loved Claudio's befuddlement when he hears Don Pedro's plan to woo Hero in his place. Because really it's a stupid plan, and if it weren't his boss proposing it, clearly Claudio would've said so.

Dogberry was actually FUNNY! I have never seen a version of Dogberry that I actually found funny, but Whedon and Nathan Fillion made me like him, and his bumbling crew of incompetent watchmen. He's just so earnest. Someone observed that it's the Dunning-Kruger effect at work. Dogberry is incompetent, but is genuinely convinced he's a good watchman.

I loved the wedding photographer frantically snapping shots even at the most inappropriate moments.

Speaking of inappropriate, Beatrice getting repeatedly groped by the nameless party guest as she tried to talk to her friends was weird. Funny, but weird. I suspect it was in there to show how little power Beatrice and Hero have compared with the men in their lives. And Acker was great when Beatrice raged against the system in her "if I were a man" speech.

I actually liked that Beatrice and Benedick had a drunken one-night stand long before the events of the movie. It was a nice touch to have Beatrice pretending like mad to be fast asleep the morning after, as Benedick sits there, obviously debating with himself over whether to wake her up or just slip out and pretend it never happened.

Of course, that bit of backstory conflicts mightily with the whole "Hero is impure" plot. But I'm willing to overlook that, and pretend Claudio's anger is more about Hero supposedly fucking another man the night before their wedding, and less about her being passed off as a virgin. Also, I swear they cut some of Leonato's lines later on in that scene when he turns on Hero. Doesn't make it any less of a dick move on Leonato's part to believe Claudio and Don Pedro over his own daughter, but softens him a tiny little bit.

As for Hero, the modern dress actually hurt the plausibility factor there because it's easier to imagine a woman living in a pre-modern society actually taking Claudio back than one who lives in the twenty-first century and has options. Not saying it couldn't happen now, but it seems rather less like a foregone conclusion. Of course, the movie exists in a weird anomalous space: they have iGadgets and cars and chlorinated swimming pools, but women are still second class citizens with no power.

I liked Sean Maher as Don John, especially the look on his face when he's at the wedding and everything's going to hell in a whisky-soaked hand basket. Speaking of looks at the wedding, Denisof has Benedick give a great "What the fuck is going ON?" look when the handbasket is careening down towards hell. Of course, me liking Maher's Don John could be partly down to Keanu Reeves being so spectacularly awful in the same role in the Branagh version. I have no memories, either bad or good, of Don John in the one staged version I saw.

But ultimately this is Beatrice and Benedick's show, and the rest are just providing plot for them to react to. Denisof and Acker have great chemistry, which is the main thing.

I'm not saying it's a perfect adaptation. It definitely has some rough spots, and might have benefited from more rehearsal time and more takes. But I highly doubt Whedon could have gotten the movie made if he hadn't been funding it himself, and there's a limit to how much money even a rich man is going to be prepared to throw at a niche project like this one. Certainly he couldn't have made the movie with this cast if he'd gone in for studio funding. We'd have Jennifer Aniston or someone as Beatrice, to bring in the box office. Which would be a shame, because I liked this cast, and thought they did a good job with the play.

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Yes, I've been thinking a lot about that strange between-space that they find themselves in - updating the trappings, but keeping the social aspects of a much more stratified, class- and gender-oriented society. I ended up having to forcibly remind myself that Beatrice has to ask Benedick to act on her behalf after Hero's 'death' and that Hero probably couldn't just tell Claudio to go to hell. (Sorry - not even this version of Claudio was sympathetic for me. If anything, he was even more slimey and cringe-inducing simply because he made it clear he was so easily led and without a spine of his own!)

And yes, a great deal of the farce can be explained by the raging drunks participating! The groping at the party was an uncomfortable scene, and I suspect it was intentional. Beatrice just takes it as part and parcel of being there, and deals with it as well as she can without making a scene, and he ignores her not-at-all-subtle removals of his hand, proving that she really has no power to force him to respect her.

Loved Maher's Don John and Fillion's Dogberry, neither of whom I can stand in any other production. Loved Amy Acker, too, and I was surprised at how much she and Alexis Denisof sold the comedy of it. Like you said, it's B&B's show, and if they hadn't pulled it off, the movie would have fallen flat.

Just below,

legionseagle has pointed out that there's very little real-life incompatibility between iGadgets and chlorinated swimming pools, on the one hand, and a culture viciously micromanaging women and their sexuality on the other. Yeah, some things have changed for the better since Shakespeare's time, but not everything. The movie is still in a weird in-between space, mind you (good way of describing it).

I have never before attended a Much Ado About Nothing, whether on stage or screen, where the audience actually laughed at Dogberry - definitely the first funny one ever.

I wondered a bit about the Ethiope line, but the looks of shocked disapproval underlined the characterisation of Claudio, that he makes such a comment (and not just in the way that he meant it.

I want to see it again. I want the DVD so that I can watch it repeatedly. And I want to win the Lottery so I can have a house like that.

Yeah, I probably need to see it again to judge the Ethiope line better. And as luck would have it, I raved about it to my sister enough that now she wants to go and see it with me, so I'm going again this coming weekend. Assuming it's still on. There weren't many people in the theatre at the matinee we went to.

I'm so with you on wanting it on DVD. Unfortunately it's not even available for pre-order yet on Amazon. They're saying the release date is October 1 (in North America, anyway), which is a ridiculous amount of time to wait. I WANT IT NOW!

WIth you on the house thing, as well.

Edited 2013-07-01 22:09 (UTC)

I wish I could believe this to be true

As for Hero, the modern dress actually hurt the plausibility factor there because it's easier to imagine a woman living in a pre-modern society actually taking Claudio back than one who lives in the twenty-first century and has options. Not saying it couldn't happen now, but it seems rather less like a foregone conclusion. Of course, the movie exists in a weird anomalous space: they have iGadgets and cars and chlorinated swimming pools, but women are still second class citizens with no power.

but you only have to read the comments (I know, I know) appearing below news reports below things like Charles Saatchi choking Nigella Lawson (and the comments by people like the Deputy Prime Minister for that matter) or on the underlying issues behind the Wendy Davis filibuster to see that iGadgets and cars and chlorinated swimming pools are perfectly compatible with a climate of micro-managing female sexuality and using violence and the threat of violence as a control mechanism. Which is what I thought the pawing of Beatrice highlighted beautifully; that's going on at this very moment with yet another high profile groping in the SFF community coming to light (see the comments on Scalzi's blog that he hasn't got to yet with his mallet for showing institutional bias against women complaining of harassment).

For a classic example of what I meant, just in off my Twitter feed, see this . Reasoning Don Pedro, Leonnato and Claudio would be absolutely comfortable with.

Edited 2013-07-01 11:07 (UTC)

you only have to read the comments (I know, I know) appearing below news reports below things like Charles Saatchi choking Nigella Lawson (and the comments by people like the Deputy Prime Minister for that matter) or on the underlying issues behind the Wendy Davis filibuster to see that iGadgets and cars and chlorinated swimming pools are perfectly compatible with a climate of micro-managing female sexuality and using violence and the threat of violence as a control mechanism. Which is what I thought the pawing of Beatrice highlighted beautifully; that's going on at this very moment with yet another high profile groping in the SFF community coming to light (see the comments on Scalzi's blog that he hasn't got to yet with his mallet for showing institutional bias against women complaining of harassment).

You know, when you're right, you're right. I think I was looking at the real world the way I'd like it to be, rather than the way it really is.

As for that girl getting kicked off the football team, there are no words.

Incidentally, I don't know if you've seen Bride and Prejudice? I think it's rather good, but it's someone handling the issues of "a woman's reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful" within the context of an upper-middle class Indian family with links to both India and Britain and their American and British friends. Which also has all the trappings of modernity (a beach resort in Goa stands in for Brighton camp, for example). I think it works (at least, it works for me) because it's done by an Indian director working within two cinematic traditions, but I think it's the sort of updating which could be very Othering if done by someone like - say - Whedon because it would be too comfortably distancing.

Which is to say; I can see both the argument that his Much Ado is too white and that if you want to see what a moral turd Claudio is, portraying him as a racist as well as a sexual bully whose sexual and racial bullying is actively supported by those with power in his society actively works to underline his creepitude.

Edited (Missing words) 2013-07-02 19:24 (UTC)

Incidentally, I don't know if you've seen Bride and Prejudice? I think it's rather good, but it's someone handling the issues of "a woman's reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful" within the context of an upper-middle class Indian family with links to both India and Britain and their American and British friends. Which also has all the trappings of modernity (a beach resort in Goa stands in for Brighton camp, for example). I think it works (at least, it works for me) because it's done by an Indian director working within two cinematic traditions, but I think it's the sort of updating which could be very Othering if done by someone like - say - Whedon because it would be too comfortably distancing.

I’ve heard of it but not seen it. That’s the one directed by the same woman who did Bend It Like Beckham, isn’t it? I will have to Netflix it.

Which is to say; I can see both the argument that his Much Ado is too white and that if you want to see what a moral turd Claudio is, portraying him as a racist as well as a sexual bully whose sexual and racial bullying is actively supported by those with power in his society actively works to underline his creepitude.

Good point.

I was thinking some more about what you said in your other reply, about how the trappings of modernity are no impediment to repression of women. And it’s absolutely true, but a little scary, because I’d much rather believe it wasn’t true.