Shakespeare on Screen

Can Americans do Shakespeare? That seems to me the real question behind Al Pacino's quest to understand and make accessible, William Shakespeare's play Richard III. As you can guess I am a fan of Shakespeare and particularly Shakespeare on film. As one of the scholar's in this documentary explains, film allows an actor to forgo the problem of projection and instead focus on the feeling and meaning within the words. The ability to whisper is the defining difference between stage and celluloid. To hear Shakespeare's characters actually soliloquize to themselves, to feel that this really is a secret between the character and the audience, to have intimate conversation played in an intimate way, allows people who would normally not "follow" Shakespeare's lines to get a better feeling of what is really being said and done. Of course I don't deny the power of stage productions, but film allows Shakespeare to reach a greater audience and introduce new generations to the wonderful worlds that The Bard presents.

Another wonderful point that Mr. Pacino (and I told my niece this years ago when we saw Shakespeare in the Park)makes is that it's not necessary to understand every word that is uttered but instead to allow the story to unfold, to see the bigger picture and be swept along with the story. For this and many reason's I wish Looking for Richard, made in 1996, was available back when I was in High School. There was nothing worse than reading Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, or King Lear,. These are plays and meant to be said aloud, meant to be acted out.

Anyway, can Americans do Shakespeare? Well, of course they can, I mean it's a free country, but the way in which Americans approach a play like Richard III will be quite different from a British production. England has the luxury of history, William Shakespeare wrote his plays there in the late sixteenth, early seventeenth century, you can still see where he was born, where his plays were originally produced, and Richard III was a real monarch of the realm. These facts, I feel, allow the British to feel at easy with the language, to feel a communal history for not only the playwright but his subjects as well. Americans no longer share in this history (well, haven't for a while!)but have created their own. In Looking for Richard I enjoyed hearing Richard and his supporters described as gangsters and mob bosses. In fact throughout the documentary scenes from the play are acted out by well known American actors, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder and Kevin Spacey for example, and they bring to Shakespeare's world a certain, well, New York, LA attitude that in no way hinders the storytelling but certainly changes it, giving the story a new casualness. Let's face it, Americans simple don't have the posture!

Overall, this is a favourite of mine, and represents a turn point in my opinion
of Al Pacino. Scarface, Serpico, The Godfather were all I really knew of him, oh and the one were he's blind and sniffs women. But in my elitist and snobby mind any actor willing to tackle Shakespeare and especially Richard III is worth consideration. I was happy to see him as Shylock in the film version of The Merchant of Venice, and I enjoy the idea of an actor known for his "tough guy" roles who can slip so easily into Shakespeare's vulnerable, selfish and flawed characters.

J.