In my opinion, Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s most
undeservedly neglected plays. It’s got
all the moving tragic elements of all the great tragedies, and all of the
glorious political machinations of the histories, as well as some of the most
beautiful poetry in the English language.
I don’t know why it’s so overlooked, but for whatever reason, it
is. Fortunately, in the BBC’s Complete
Shakespeare series, they gave it the treatment it deserves, making this an
enormously effective film, despite a number of issues.
This was by no means a visually gorgeous film; like the rest
of the BBC series, it was done on a low budget.
However, what money they did have was put to good use, with the result
that it looked passable. The
“outdoors” shots were all done with blatantly and poorly painted backdrops, and
the indoors sets were usually tapestries with chairs in front of them, but it
wasn’t nearly as bare as many of the movies in the BBC’s Complete Works series
were. As if to make up for the near-lack
of sets, the costumes were well done, from Richard’s opulent gowns to
Bolingbroke’s practical breeches.
Richard seemed to wear a different gown in each scene, underlining both
his grandeur and his frivolity.
One major issue with the look of the film was the
darkness. Every shot was swathed in
blackness, making it appear that the entire play took place during night, as if
medieval England was a bizarre nocturnal culture. I’m not quite sure if it was an intentional
decision to set everything in the dark, or whether they simply didn’t have
sufficient lighting. Either way, I spent
most of the movie wishing I could turn the lights on and see what was
happening.
A lot of the visual metaphor in the play was also lost in
the low-budget look. The garden imagery,
so prevalent in the text, was undermined, even in the garden scene where there
was little, if any, greenery. In a play
so rich in verbal imagery, it was a disappointment to see so little of that
reflected in the visuals.
Fortunately, what it lacked in visual beauty was made up for
with a number of wonderful performances.
I’ve always found Bolingbroke to be a hard part to wrap my
head around, in part because his actions and his words seem so
irreconcilable. What does he want, and
at what point does he decide he wants it?
What are his real opinions? In a
play so invested in different ideas of kingship, why does one of the two kings
stay almost completely mute on the subject?
Why do his words and actions never match up? How does this man who lacks the grandeur and
claim of Richard as well as a clear alternative philosophy of his own manage to
attract nearly every noble in the country to his cause?
Jon Finch pulled Bolingbroke together brilliantly, making it
clear what kind of man he was from the very first scene. He was a masculine man of action, and
simultaneously a canny master of doublespeak.
Moreover, he didn’t have to justify his reign or present a clear philosophy
to draw nobles to his side: in contrast with Richard’s vain femininity, Henry’s
straightforward masculinity was an appealing alternative, without him having to
really say anything at all. In his first
scene when he returns to England, he sat down on the ground to stretch his
legs, and addressed his nobles from there.
It sure wasn’t kingly, but after years of Richard’s fussiness, this lack
of affectation was a powerful draw.
Even from the first scene, it was clear that he was a very
different kind of man than Mowbray.
Instead of a furious self-defense, Henry was making a very calculated
political move, and though he was quite determined, he measured every word he
said. The whole first scene of the play
relies on everybody on stage knowing that Henry is issuing a serious challenge
on the King, but behaving as if he is not.
Finch pulled off this double meaning perfectly, paying every respect to
Richard with his words and challenging his authority with every look on his
face that said, “I know exactly what I’m doing.” His disdain for Richard was almost completely
subliminal, but it surfaced once, in his
“Such is the word of Kings” speech, where his ironic respect revealed
his unquestionable contempt to everyone listening, without him once saying a
single inappropriate word.
Jon Finch continued the part of Bolingbroke in the Henry IV
movies from this series, and he began to set the stage for that character
towards the end of this movie. As soon
as the York family left the room, he threw his hands up and yelled in
frustration, foreshadowing Bolingbroke’s future trials at actually running the
country he had so easily won. It was a
small touch, but it did a good job of setting up the character as part of an
ensuing saga rather than leaving him on solid ground at the end of Richard
II.
John Gielgud’s John of Gaunt brimmed with gravitas and
wisdom, but I felt he held back too much during his confrontation with
Richard. That scene always seems like a
huge breaking point for the character; it’s not that he’s only just come to
think these things about Richard, it’s that until then, he hasn’t been able to
say them. Richard has destroyed
everything he loves, and he has sat by and watched, but in his dying minutes,
he snaps at it all pours out. I don’t
think he would have the sort of restraint that Gielgud had during that
scene. While he delivered it well, I
think having a toned-down Gaunt in that scene lowered the stakes of the ensuing
conflict, because the travesty of what Richard has done to England is less
immediate.
Charles Gray as the Duke of York and Mary Morris as the Duchess
of Gloucester rounded out the older generation, and they both really
delivered. Gray’s York was a
well-intentioned man, all hapless bluster.
He didn’t have the cause or character of his brother, Gaunt, and when he
chastised Richard, he had none of Gaunt’s quiet self-assurance: he was
terrified of repercussions. Morris’s
Duchess was a force to be reckoned with, and made quite an impression despite
only appearing in one scene. The three
of them together gave a powerful portrait of the older generation, struggling
to maintain their footing in this new world.
The minor characters of the younger generation were weaker
overall, with fewer knockout performances.
Charles Keating’s Aumerle completely faded into the background and made
almost no impression at all. Even when
his life was on the line in the final scenes, he seemed almost apathetic.
Janet Maw’s Queen
took heavily after her husband, treating her ladies and the gardener with the same
adolescent self-obsession that Richard treated everyone with, but she didn’t
really grab my emotional attention as strongly as she needed to in order to
really make an impression in two short scenes.
Her love for Richard isn’t only because her fate is tied to his, she
also has a genuine love for him as a man, and her interactions with him can be
very humanizing if she can manage to grab the audience’s sympathy in the few
lines she is given. Maw didn’t give a
bad performance, but she also didn’t have the vital immediacy necessary for the
Queen to be a truly effective character.
Of the younger characters, only Jeremy Bulloch as Henry
Percy made a strong impression. He
managed to seem every inch Hotspur for the single minute he was on screen, and
I wish I could see what he could have made of the character in Henry IV Part
1.
Of course, the most important part of Richard II is Richard
himself. It’s not one of those plays
with wide focus on several characters; at the center of almost every scene, and
delivering almost every major speech is Richard. Derek Jacobi has two of the most important
skills for any Richard: complete mastery of verse and wide emotional
range. Jacobi has a way of speaking
verse so that it sounds natural without losing the cadence or musical quality
it has. It’s a remarkable skill, and one
that is especially important for a part like Richard, who speaks entirely in
verse, rhymes frequently and engages in extended poetic wordplay. Jacobi made him sound natural without
sacrificing any of the beauty of the language.
Jacobi’s characterization of Richard showed him as vain,
delusional and petulantly childish, but, and I think this is very important,
not weak. Richard isn’t inherently a
weak man, as I think his behavior during the deposition scene shows. A weak man would have handed over the crown
and left at that point, but Richard insists on drawing out the ceremony, and
really takes control of the scene as he does so. It’s an “I’ll go, but I won’t go quietly!”
kind of attitude, and I think Jacobi hit that right on the head, portraying
Richard as a weak leader, but not a weak man.
Richard’s childishness was also very strong in his
performance, and I often found myself thinking that he was behaving awfully
like a thirteen year old kid. When Gaunt
was yelling at him, he turned his back, messed with his gloves, and did all he
could to not listen short of sticking his fingers in his ears. During the scene with his friends after the
banishment of Bolingbroke, he showed the unexamined cruelty that only kids of a
certain age have. They reminded me
strongly of a clique of teenagers bad-mouthing a kid they don’t like, without
any sense of consequences. At times,
Jacobi’s Richard was a petulant, overgrown teenager, and I thought the idea
that he had never managed to progress beyond that stage of maturity made for
very powerful characterization.
While for some people the debate about the divine right of
kings is interesting, I think the primary draw of this play nowadays is the
psychological process that Richard undergoes.
No matter how unsympathetic he is in the beginning, he grows towards
genuinely tragic stature by the end, as he develops both self-knowledge and
empathy. This is by no means an even
progress, and it doesn’t happen in a straight line, but by the time of his
death, he’s a very different man than he was in the beginning. Jacobi took him through the journey very
effectively, and by the end, his entire demeanor had changed. Even from the beginning, Jacobi’s Richard
wasn’t completely inhuman; before he entered the throne room in the very first
scene, he turned to the side and took a deep breath, in one motion giving away
his humanity and the effort required to act the part of King. I’ve always admired Jacobi’s ability to make
characters seem completely psychologically real, and his Richard showcased that
ability phenomenally.
My one complaint with his performance is that at times he
went over the top with his characterization, creating more a caricature than a
character. There’s a fine line between
the two, and he strayed very near it at several occasions, though I don’t think
he ever entirely crossed it. There were
several moments, particularly during the deposition scene where a more toned
down Richard might have been more effective.
While I liked his delivery of the final soliloquy, I was
less impressed with the way it was filmed.
It does done with frequent cuts, giving the illusion that hours or days had
passed over the course of the soliloquy.
I like the idea that the self-knowledge he gains over the course of that
soliloquy is something that happens gradually, over a period of time, but I
found the constant cuts distracting rather than illuminating. I wish that they had found a better way to
show that passage of time instead of just cutting every few lines to a shot of
him in a different position.
While it wasn’t flawless, and the aesthetics were far from
attractive, a handful of powerful performances really made this movie. In my opinion, the BBC Complete Works series
tends to shine the most in the less-loved plays, and this was no exception to
that trend.
No comments:
Post a Comment