Much Ado About Nothing (4/5 Stars)

“Thou and I were made too wise to woo peaceably.”

- Shakespeare

Among a multitude of others things, what is also great about Shakespeare is that it is supremely low budget. Production value can be added but it is not needed. After all, Shakespeare originally produced all of his plays on the bare stage of the Globe Theater. He had no sets, no furniture, and no curtains. The only things added to his words were generally props and costumes. Think about that. It means that anyone anywhere in the world could adapt a play with minimal cost and it could turn out to be just as the Bard originally intended. There aren’t even any intellectual property rights to buy. The whole catalog belongs to the world. The best Shakespeare I have seen (a performance of Richard II) wasn’t even in a theater. A bunch of actors just got together and put on a show for free in a park field, (Yes I tipped). The writing is so descriptive the lack of visual aid hardly ever matters. You want to know what it looked like when Ophelia committed suicide, just give a listen. Shakespeare makes his characters speak for uncharacteristically long lengths in order to compensate for the lack of visual aid. And perhaps to compensate for the rowdy crowds and not very good actors (both common staples of Globe Theater and amateur community theater nowadays) he marks his characters without the slightest trace of subtlety. It is very hard to screw up a performance in Shakespeare because the dialogue is so brazenly truthful, profound, and above all articulate. Given some patient translation you start to notice with startling clarity that what is being said are things we all think but rarely ever have the time, patience, or bravery to figure out how to actually say (even almost 500 years later!)

Unfortunately there is generally the impulse for modern moviemakers to add all those pretty things money and technology make possible even though Shakespeare made it all superfluous. This is sometimes done to an absurd degree. There are plenty of high-school movies that are adapted from Shakespeare but the only thing used is the plot. Even the words are ditched in favor of “accessibility.” Fie! I bite my thumb at thee! Directors need to have much more faith in the audience. Let us now consider director Joss Whedon’s take on “Much Ado About Nothing.” It is my opinion that this is how Shakespeare should be done and what is more, you can do it too. We all can.

The story of how this production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” is well known now. Joss Whedon had just finished production of a huge tent-pole movie named “The Avengers” and had two months before post-production started. He was in a funk. (As he probably should have been. See my review of “The Avengers”). His wife noticed this and counseled to instead of taking a planned vacation to spend the time doing one of his favorite hobbies, putting on a Shakespeare at his home. This has apparently been a long-time Whedon thing. To wind down after working on TV series all day, he would invite his company of actors over to his house and they would read through Shakespeare for fun. This time however, Whedon got out his digital camera and made a movie over a period of a couple of weeks. The result feels so Shakespeare. The entire thing takes place in a mansion. There is no production design besides the original architecture of the place. The cast is dressed in simple modern costume. The actors, all having worked with Whedon before and now on a movie not really intended for an audience beyond themselves, are friendly and relaxed. And the movie is shot in black and white, a perfect choice given that it allows the audience to not be overly distracted from the words. You can really focus in on them here, and like almost all Shakespeare, it is incredible stuff.

“Much Ado About Nothing” is a comedy about two pairs of lovers, one serious and the other comic. The serious romance concerns that of Claudio (played by Fran Kranz) and Hero (played by Jillian Morgese). In serious romance tradition, their love is perfect but besieged upon by outside forces intent on breaking them apart. In this case the subterfuge and sinister behavior of Don John (played by Sean Maher) who is at odds with Hero’s father Leonato (played by Clark Gregg). The comic romance concerns that of Benedick (played by Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice (played by Amy Acker). In comic romance tradition, the only thing keeping Beatrice and Benedick from each other is their own combative personalities. Benedick takes it with some pride that he won’t ever fall for a woman and Beatrice, a dormant feminist, doesn’t think much of men. Their relationship is marked by sharp patter, sharp jabs wit, and finally a smoldering recognition that each may have finally met their match in the other. A conspiracy is formed against them as well, however, it is hatched for the purpose of getting them together. Wicked lies are spread that each is secretly in love with the other! And….hilarity ensues.

All of this takes place at Leonato’s mansion over a weekend that contains a party that I would seriously have wanted to attend. What’s more, near the end, Nathan Fillion shows up as the incompetent yet very proud police chief Dogberry, and is hilarious for each and every second he is on the screen. All and all, this is a great piece of community theater that is sure to be much valued within the Wheedon-verse. It is a delight to be able to crash the party. If only the “The Avengers” was this good.

p.s. I have been inspired to put “Firefly” in my Netflix queue.

The Great Gatsby (5/5 Stars)

Those familiar with the art of director Baz Luhrman have generally had to meet him halfway. For many artists the old ‘meet halfway” is usually not worth the trip. Greatness or the lack thereof though not entirely causal is highly correlated with accessibility. But Baz is one of those exceptions; the shortcomings of his movies (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge) in terms of believable human emotion and orderly plot rhythm are oftentimes successfully offset by the larger than life ambition of his musical numbers and the overall gorgeousness of the production (costumes, sets, cast, and etc.) One cannot say that his approach makes perfect movies. Moulin Rouge, being a very good example, has as many awkward transitions and stilted drama as incredible moments of inspired grandeur. The silly and great existed not only in the same movie but also sometimes within the same scene for instance when two middle-aged men sing and dance Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” surely one of the more unforgettable scenes I have ever seen.

It is my pleasure then to announce that The Great Gatsby largely avoids Baz’s regular pitfalls and it does so by strictly adhering to the superior writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose book this movie very faithfully adapts. It is not much to say that F. Scott Fitzgerald is a better writer than Baz Luhrman. Most everybody is. It means far more to say that Fitzgerald’s words can complement the visual ambitions of Baz because like Moulin Rouge and his previous movies, The Great Gatsby is something of an orgiastic delight of colorful sensations, including an extended look at one of the more incredible parties I have ever witnessed in a movie. (For those that thought the Miami sleaze-fest in this year’s Spring Breakers looked like fun, they need to take a gander at what a real party looks like. Sure the version of Jay Gatsby’s continual party at his long island mansion is probably unapproachable in real life, but it still contains several nostalgic elements we seem to have completely lost in the 21^st century i.e. parties where people dress up and not way-way down and actually know how to dance.) There is an especially inspired moment in The Great Gatsby that introduces the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) after much hype to the climatic swell of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while a multitude of fireworks explode in the distance. As far as first impressions a la Baz go, I would rate it just as high as when Romeo first spies Juliet through a fish aquarium in Romeo +Juliet.

The best of Fitzgerald’s writing is preserved through the narration of Nick Caraway (played by Tobey Maguire) and seamlessly interweaves itself with the extremely restless camera of Baz as it does such 3D contortions as starting at the top of the Empire State Building and descending till it ends with a close up on Nick Caraway’s upward looking gaze on the street. At another time the camera will travel unbrokenly between Jay Gatsby’s nouveu riche mansion to across the bay where his romantic obsession Daisy Buchanan lives with her aristocratic husband (played by Joel Edgerton) in her own mansion. This may seem a bit much, but on the other hand it is not like Baz is adapting Ernest Hemingway here. If you want to see a Hemingway-esque movie, go see Jeff Nichol’s Mud. Here we are adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose books unapologetically overflow with the kind of flowery vocabulary that makes it a perfect fit for what Baz likes to do.

I suppose now it is the point of the review where I rewrite my high school book report. I will try to do a better job of it this time. I cannot recall saying anything that insightful back then.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by a young man named Nick Caraway who moves to New York City during the roaring twenties and takes a Wall Street job. Right next door to Nick is the Gatsby estate where endless parties go on almost every night though no one quite sure knows why. Gatsby is a ghost at his parties. Most partiers never see him. One day, Nick gets an invitation. Weirdly when he shows up, he finds he is the only person to get an invitation. What’s more is that the reclusive Gatsby wants to meet him. Gatsby puts on quite a show and story for Nick. Gatsby is from a highly respectable family who are all dead now that sent him to the best schools and such. Then he went to war in WWI and became a war hero. Nick, who unbeknownst to Gatsby is a down to earth guy, is surprised even more to find out the reason he is being treated to such a display. Jay Gatsby is in love with his cousin Daisy Buchanan, a woman who rejected him once because he was too poor. He wants Nick to ask Daisy to meet him for tea, nothing else. That is what all the parties were for. He was throwing them just to entice Daisy to show up. And when she never did, he invited Nick. There is a great scene where an especially nervous Jay finally asks Nick to ask Daisy to tea and thinks it is necessary to sweeten the deal by offering Nick connections to all his Wall Street buddies. But Nick declines the offer. He will do it as a favor. Imagine Jay’s surprise. Nobody in the “respectable society” he is so desperately trying to shoehorn into never once did anything for free or as a friend.

What are we to think of Gatsby? This is a question that the whole country wants each and every young citizen to contemplate. Here is a man that embodies so many of the contradictory values of America. He comes from a poor family and worked hard to make his fortune, but he lies about his past and presents a consumerist façade of aristocracy and easy living. His great ambition and individuality have led to success, but it is accomplished by being a bootlegger with shady acquaintances. He is driven by love, hope, and idealism, but his dreams are unrealistic and ultimately illusory.  He is rich. He is kind. He is handsome. He is a criminal. He is a home wrecker. He is a phony. But importantly, F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to write of Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Caraway, a character whose realness is undeterred by the sound and fury of the Roaring Twenties. We see Gatsby clearly through Nick the way no other person in the story does. Gatsby does much that is corrupt but his ultimate purpose is incorruptible. Everything he does, he does for love, and this he proves beyond a doubt when he is prepared to take a manslaughter charge for an undeserving woman right after she rejects him. There is much about Gatsby that we may sneer at but Nick Caraway remembers his father’s advice once passed down to him a long time ago, to always look for the good in people. And that special type of good Nick sees in Gatsby stands tall amidst all the fucking shit he imposed on his life and all that life imposed on him. That is what made the man Great.