OTHELLO
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth
Branagh bring the classic tale of suspicion and
betrayal to the screen. The production is handsome
but much cut down from the play and does not have
the caliber of acting we have seen in other recent
productions of Shakespeare plays. Rating: +1 (-4
to +4)
When adapting Shakespeare to the screen there are conflicts involved that the Bard never knew about. He wrote in an artificially poetic Elizabethan English that conveys better to a 20th century audience than many people realize, but still requires acting skill to help get the idea across. He also intended his plays to be an afternoon's entertainment that would last a lot longer than a standard film. Most film adaptations are nowhere near accurate representations of the plays. They are usually trimmed down, and often lines and even scenes are given out of order. There seems to be a particular respect for Shakespearean actors because it is no easy matter to make the original prose flow naturally. Orson Welles was a master filmmaker who had more experience than perhaps anyone else did at adapting the great works of literature to other media. But if you look at his own adaptation of OTHELLO one sees a tremendous visual style and only the barest respect getting the original play on film.
Kenneth Branagh has a better understanding than most about how to do cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare and did about as good a job as is possible for any director in his MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. As an actor he has an expressive face and conveys by just slight exaggeration many of the ideas in his face. It takes extreme skill to do that without making the performance hammy and unrealistic, but Branagh is has the kind of face that allows him to convey much of the meaning. In MUCH ADO and now in OTHELLO one can almost tell what he is saying without hearing the words.
Unfortunately, in OTHELLO he is not directing, so is responsible for only his own performance. His acting is not shared by the other performers in OTHELLO making the understanding of this film much more labored than that of MUCH ADO. Laurence Fishburne does a reasonable but much more traditional Othello, conveying all the emotion, but without Branagh's articulation.
Unfortunately acting honors go only to these two. For once the two name actors really are the best thing on the screen. Irene Jacob is fetching as Desdemona, but her line readings are uninspiring. Much of the end of the play should work on pity for the wrongly accused Desdemona, but she just does not convey enough emotion to have us feel a lot of sympathy for her character. Other performances, with the possible exception of Anna Patrick as Emilia, get the lines read but are indifferent.
The play has moments of visual style as we might expect from Oliver Parker. Parker does not have much experience as director but is a familiar face acting in Clive Barker horror films, which themselves depend more on visual impact than on story. Occasionally we wonder why Parker dwells so long on a single scene. Even the very first scene, a gondola slowly making its way past the camera, seems to go on too long and then pay off with only a very trite image. Feeling the need for a little action he adds a minor chase scene, apprehending Iago, at the end.
This is a film that will be remembered as "1995's OTHELLO," not "The OTHELLO" in the same sense that MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is the interpretation for our generation. I give it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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