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| Tuesday, August 10, 2010 09:35 AM |
| On the Viewer - Twelfth Night (1996) |
 by Fëanor |
Poppy requested this film adaptation of Shakespeare's famous cross-dressing comedy from the library and we watched it the other day. It's got a great cast: Ben Kingsley as Feste, who is the wise Fool for this play (Shakespeare did love his wise Fools); Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, the grieving lady who is the object of so many men's affections; Nigel Hawthorne as an actual fool, and the closest thing the play has to a villain, Malvolio; Mel Smith (the albino from The Princess Bride) as friend of the groundlings and notorious drunkard Sir Toby Belch; Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter) as the maid Maria; Richard E. Grant as the most ridiculous of Olivia's suitors, a gentleman named Sir Andrew Aguecheek; and Imogen Stubbs and Steven Mackintosh as Viola and Sebastian, the twin sister and brother at the heart of the play. These two very close siblings are split up by a shipwreck at the start of things. Shortly thereafter, for various reasons that don't bear explaining, Viola dons the garb of a man in order to enter the service of Duke Orsino, with whom she quickly falls in love. But Orsino has a desperate and unrequited love for Olivia, who promptly falls in love with Viola when she comes to woo her on the Duke's behalf. And when Sebastian finally makes it into town, looking exactly like Viola in her gentleman's disguise, the wackiness really gets started.
It's a really fun play. It's always surprising how well the humor in Shakespeare holds up, especially when it's acted well. When the truth is finally revealed at the end, and everybody's looking back and forth completely dumbfounded, and then everybody finally ends up with the person they're supposed to be with, it's really quite wonderful. Romantic comedy at its best!
The way the film plays with gender and sexuality is really quite interesting and even now rather provocative. Olivia falls in love with a man who is really a woman, and is constantly embracing her. Orsino and Viola nearly kiss when Viola is still dressed as a man, and it's only seconds after Viola is revealed to actually be a woman that Orsino proposes to her, suggesting that it was only convention that was holding him back before.
The film makes only one misstep. A comic subplot involves Sir Toby Belch and friends getting back at the stuck up butler, Malvolio, by tricking him into believing the lady of the house, Olivia, is in love with him, and that he must only smile and wear yellow garters (two things he never does, and which do not become him at all) to signal her that he feels the same. He falls for the scheme hook, line, and sinker, to the extent that his odd behavior is thought to be a symptom of insanity and he is locked in a dark cellar for his pains. Admittedly, Malvolio is tortured rather cruelly throughout this sequence, but this part of the story is clearly meant to be silly, and if it had been handled the right way, it could have been quite funny. Instead, director Trevor Nunn decides to interpret it in postmodern fashion, stressing the dark aspects, and turning the whole subplot into something quite unsettling and depressing. The conclusion of the Malvolio storyline puts a serious pall over what is supposed to be the very happy ending of the film.
Still, it's at least an interesting and vaguely valid interpretation, and the rest of the film is so good that it doesn't end up ruining the overall experience. If you're in the mood for a Shakespearean romantic comedy, the movie's definitely worth a look. |
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