Much Ado About Nothing

[jack]

The much ado about nothing film is genuinely hilarious. Further random thoughts:

* Here is a helpful catalogue of all famous actors ever
* It takes a while to become used to the language; somehow I find it easier to accept language which sounds stilted to me in tragedy than comedy
* Everyone looks the part incredibly much; the men are marvellously charactrised simply by the opening shot of them riding back from the war in uniforms, looking bold
* Poor Keanu Reeves. I can see where his character is supposed to be coming from, and he looks the part, but he sounds so much more stilted than everyone else

Comments

[jack]

Yes, it was really, really pretty. I agree Emma Thompson was incredibly lovely.

And I liked Branagh, even if I didn't fancy him. For that matter, I felt there was a good character behind Reeves somewhere: my mind is doing the Shakespeare fanfic thing of spinning out all the possible histories and motivations for him, and the beard was very appropriate. He just wasn't _convincing_ which is obviously bad as an actor.

I was confused by Denzil Washington and Keanu Reeves being (half?) brothers. I know it's incredibly contentious whether you have play actors of different age or sex or skin colour to the traditional character, but somehow I would have found it easier to keep the characters straight if the brothers had been clearly the same race. (If they're half-siblings, I suppose it's by no means impossible, and I certainly approved of Denzil Washington -- he did a great job of giving the prince both gravitas and also a sense of fun.)

And I was really scared that Hero was actually dead, but I had a pretty good idea that in a comedy she was going to turn out not to be, rather than the other way round.

But I loved that when they were intriguing to get Benedik and Beatrice to overhear them, I was actually laughing.

I think the plot also makes sense if you imagine Hero's infidelity as a sort of crime that nowadays would be unimaginable -- certainly many people would react that way to infidelity, but the plot seems more consistent if everyone has some reason other than being complete bastards to automatically discount Hero.