Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream 1999

[poliphilo]

According to this essay I've been reading (by Jay Halio) Kevin Kline was originally slated to play Oberon- but then the director had a brainwave and moved him sideways into the role of Bottom.  The director's brainwave was that the story should be rejigged so it's Bottom who's doing the dreaming. Well, some of this comes across on screen, but it's only half-realised- because if this is Bottom's dream what are Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius doing in it? There are interpolated- wordless- scenes that establish Bottom as a melancholy, small town poseur with a nagging wife- but the production is too mainstream to attempt the radical editing of the text that would have been necessary to make the concept stick. Kline's Bottom seems sensitive and intelligent and the clowning the script demands of him out of character.   To muddle and confuse things further the action has been explicitly moved to early 20th century Italy- which allows for grand opera on the soundtrack and some happy business with bicycles and gramophone records but means- again- that certain things Shakespeare wrote just don't fit. Did Italian cities in this era have local laws on the books that condemned daughters to death for disobeying their fathers? I don't think so. And why are we crossing our selves and saying a Hail Mary at one moment and invoking Diana the next?

The fairies are fun; they're modelled after the fairies in the paintings of English Victorian artists like Dadd and Noel Stratton. The lovers are all very pretty- Callista Flockhart plays Helena, Christian Bale is Demetrius- but maybe they'd have been funnier if they hadn't been such icons of physical perfection.  Rupert Everett is menacing as Oberon, Michelle Pfeiffer oddly underwhelming as Titania. Roger Rees as Quince projects the decency and dignity of a workingclass autodidact.  Stanley Tucci's Puck-  part Pan, part Mephistopheles--  two little horns and a quizzical air- is the the best thing in the movie.  

Comments

[sovay]

You make his performance sound wonderful. I've always liked Cagney- though I don't suppose I've seen him play anything except gangsters.

I saw him first in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), which may be his other best-known non-gangster role; it's the reason I know he can sing. For his sake I want to see the rest of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I think the one I most want to see is Peter Hall's 1968 version- with the young Judy Dench as a feral and scantily clad Titania.

Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, Ian Richardson . . . Definitely! Will you provide a full report?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whatever the role, Cagney goes at it with enough energy to light a suburb. I particularly love his psychopathic mommy's boy in Raoul Walsh's White Heat.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I'll go you one - I saw the 1970's Peter Brook Production with Alan Howard as Oberon, Sara Kestelman as Titania, John Kane as Puck, Mary Rutherford as Hermia, Christopher Gable as Lysander, Frances de la Tour as Helena, Ben Kingsley as Demetrius. It remains to this day the single most thrilling theatrical experience of my life. After we came out of the theatre I felt as if I was flying and that effervescence stayed with me for hours.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh wow- that's perhaps the single most celebrated stage production of the last century. Lucky you!

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

It was awesome. I felt as if I were being electrocuted. I've never seen actors - before or since defy gravity the way these did.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have been there.