troisoiseaux

Joss Whedon's Artsy Modern Much Ado About Nothing is actually way more charming than I remember it being??? I saw it when it came out and apparently I enjoyed it at the time (my mom loves this movie, though, so she might be biased in remembering this) but I think the fact that the overall concept just feels soooo pretentious— it's filmed in black and white, at Whedon's house, with a cast of, basically, Whedon's friends, and has a very early-2010s boho-bougie vibe; very Anthropologie— and also, well, the Unfortunately, Joss Whedon of it all soured my memory of it. But, hey! Turns out it is in fact quite charming! Shakespeare's language feels completely natural in this cast's toned-down, conversational delivery - if you muted the movie, you wouldn't guess they were "heigh ho"- and "by my troth"-ing - and although I prefer my B'n'Bs less polished (maybe my biggest complaint is that Alexis Denisof's Benedick takes a solid -10 charisma hit when he shaves his beard) and more chaotic than this adaptation's, they did have some delightfully silly moments, such as Benedick doing pushups throughout the "Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner" conversation, and Beatrice (Amy Acker) falling down a flight of stairs in surprise when she overhears Hero and Ursula discussing Benedick's love for her. Clark Gregg as Leonato stole the show - his "funny goofy dad" vibes and his heel-turn when Hero is jilted and his confrontation of Claudio when Hero's name is cleared but they're still pretending she's dead were all *chef's kiss* - although honorable mentions go to the bumbling buddy-cop duo of Nathan Fillion's completely deadpan Dogberry and Tom Lenk's goofier Verges, and also to the random wedding photographer who kept taking pictures when Claudio objected at his own wedding.

Other notes/random thoughts: this adaptation made one of Don John's henchmen into his girlfriend and so had a certainly novel staging of Act 1, Scene 3, in that Don John's conversation with Conrade was literal pillow talk; this is also the only version of Much Ado I've ever seen where Leonato's line referring to Beatrice as "almost the copy of" Hero is actually accurate.

muccamukk pointed out in the comments of my post on STC's modern-day Much Ado set in a TV news studio that the BBC had actually done it first, as part of its 2005 "ShakespeaRe-Told" series of short TV film adaptions. (Macbeth, set in the cutthroat kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant and starring James McAvoy and Richard Armitage, also caught my eye.)

The overall concept and vibe is very similar to the STC production, actually, although it's a retelling rather than an actual film of the play— a handful of original lines slipped through the re-writes, but it significantly reworked the Hero-and-Claudio ("Claude") subplot in a way that made it work better in a modern setting, among other things. Its solution for the Problem of Don John was to make "Don's" motivation his own (obsessive, stalkerish) love for Hero, and jealousy of Claude, who he tricks into thinking that he (Don) and Hero are having an affair, and what was wildly satisfying about this adaption is that, although it still works in the "Hero almost dying and Claudio realizing his error" thing, it doesn't go the whole hog with the fake death plan. Instead, Hero gets to confront Don and Claude for what they did to her! The movie ends with Hero and Claude discussing whether she'll give him another shot, and Hero to choosing to focus on herself for a while! It's satisfying to have it work out that way, just once, you know?

Cast-wise, Sarah Parish and Damian Lewis were INCREDIBLY charming as Beatrice and Benedick— I'd rank them above the production I just saw but... I was going to say below Catherine Tate and David Tennant, but honestly, depending on how we're scoring this? They can't beat Tate and Tennant on comedy, but I gotta say, they win on romance. (Then again, they got a new scene based around Sonnet 116 and, if not a full-on "there was only bed" situation, at least its cousin "adjoining hotel rooms", so this might have skewed the results.) It was a stacked cast, overall: Billie Piper as Hero, Olivia Coleman and Nina Sosanya as station employees, and although I didn't know them by sight, Martin Jarvis as Leonard (Leonato) and Lucifer's Tom Ellis as Claude.

Genuinely curious to what extent this was a case of convergent evolution vs. STC director Simon Godwin going "hey you know what I saw 17 years ago?" The fact that Hero and Claudio's jobs are swapped in this vs. the STC version (weather and sports, in this one, and visa-versa in the STC's) is definitely not the piece of evidence I'm going full-on Pepe Silvia about. Definitely not! That would be ridiculous. BUT WHAT DOES IT MEEEEAN.

I’ve been spiraling about David Tennant slightly less than I have about Michael Sheen since seeing them both in Good Omens only by virtue of the fact I have a steady foundation of adoring David Tennant since I was 14-15 to keep me from completely hitting rock bottom, so I picked up my every-episode-in-chronological-order of post-2005 Doctor Who watch where I left off: season 3, ep. 4 and 5, a two-episode storyline where the Doctor and Martha travel to 1930s NYC to stop the Daleks from using the newly-built Empire State Building to turn everybody else into Daleks.

On one hand, I feel like this arc was actually pretty serious and genuinely moving – the commentary on inequality and the ep. 4 plotline about how people were disappearing from Hooverville, because the Daleks’ human agent was able to prey on their desperation for work and the police didn’t care about poor people going missing; the dalek-human hybrids’ ability to feel emotions and question orders; the Doctor working to save the last of the dalek's slaves because “there’s been enough death today. Brand new creatures, wise old men and age old enemies!”, etc. – but. BUT. It also featured baby Andrew Garfield with a Southern accent distinctly à la Forrest Gump and just generally, there was something amusingly disorienting about watching a story set in 1930s New York created by a British TV show with all British actors. There was a whole grab bag of emotions here, is what I’m saying.

This past week, I also watched the 2011 Wyndham Theater production of Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, which is available on YouTube (act 1, act 2.) It’s every bit as enjoyable as the Tennant-and-Tate casting suggests; the best possible description of their vibe in this production is a post I saw on Tumblr that described Tennant’s Benedick and Tate’s Beatrice as “two Kinsey 5s making it work.” Tennant also gets to use his Scottish accent, which is definitely a plus.

( Assorted thoughts )