A Few Words about Shakespeare on Film
Although I have taught the plays, sonnets and narrative poems of Shakespeare at various universities over past years, my interest in Shakespeare on film did not really begin until the early 1990s. In 1993 when it came out I saw Ken Branagh's highly successful Much Ado About Nothing and became fascinated by the possibilities of the way Shakespeare plays might be made both accessible and entertaining to a popular movie audience. In turn, Loncraine & McKellen's Richard III in 1995 and Michael Almereyda's 2000 'Manhattan' Hamlet (with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet) demonstrated to me how effectively Shakespeare's dramas could be 'updated' into modern social and cultural settings for the movie screen, if sufficient creative cinematic flair and imagination were applied to the challenge.
But as Ian McKellen has so rightly said, Shakespeare is up to date anyway. By this he means that it is up to us to reflect imaginatively on how the insights of his characters and plots might be applied to our lives in the cultures and societies of today. However 'advanced' and 'progressive' we think we are now, we are still animated by the same human passions and made vulnerable by the same frailties that Shakespeare explored and exposed through the characters he created for his plays. Lovers and politicians are as foolish and driven now as they were when presented in these dramas, written and performed four hundred years ago in London. When it comes to uncovering and exposing the emotional essentials of human interaction, there is no 'then' - only 'now'.
Virtually no stage or film production of a Shakespeare play nowadays is performed using the 'men in tights' costumes of the playwright's own time. Rather than being obsessively concerned to provide the spuriously 'authentic' productions which so frequently failed or bored us to death in the past by treating Shakespeare reverentially, like some archaeological or religious treasure, the directors and screenwriters of today are far more interested in making productions that will communicate effectively with audiences. Interested audiences both in live and movie theatres around the world are now much more culturally sophisticated than they used to be. The best stage and film productions for some time now have been educating as well as entertaining audiences who are often as fascinated by the techniques of creating dramatic communication as they are in the content of the dramas they are watching.
That is why I am so interested in the world of Shakespeare on film. Although a fairly narrow range of his plays has been adapted thus far on film, I see no reason why all 37 dramas will not eventually be brought to the movie screen. With an increasingly talented range of actors and sophisticated movie technologies to draw on, 21st century writers and directors of vision and imagination face the best prospects there have ever been for bringing Shakespeare's own visions into our visual lives.
(c) 2007 Maurice Hindle