Examination Day

[poliphilo]

So now we can put the Shakespeare books away. And the DVDs. How many versions of Hamlet do we own- is it four or five? There's Larry's and Mel's and Nicol's and Ken's. So four?  Yes, four.  I've really enjoyed this year.

We went to Stratford twice. Once for a workshop and once to watch David Tennant play Hamlet. We saw Lear at the Globe. We've watched film versions of Cymbeline, Richard II, Measure for Measure, Macbeth. 

The last thing we watched together was Kozintsev's Lear. I didn't like it much. It's got the commissars breathing down its neck.  The guy playing the king is like a little fluffy chick. I understand the director picked him out of a crowd of extras because he liked his eyes.

Ailz is in the front room now with her invigilator.  Every so often I can hear the rattle of her keyboard. It's good how the Open University allows disabled students to be examined in their homes. She's just taken a mini-break and I've carried in hot drinks.

Comments

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the Kozintsev Lear yet, though Ive read his making-of book. I remember it being somewhat profound but I was more impressionable back then. His Hamlet is sometimes said to to be the best film version, but Shakespeare in translation is not quite Shakespeare to me. Make sure to watch the Peter Brook Lear if you can find it on VHS.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Very few film versions of Shakespeare really work. I'm fond of Olivier's Hamlet- because it's so 1940s- but it's a pared down and very tendentiously Freudian version of the play. The one Shakespeare movie I unequivocally love is Orson Welles' mash-up of the Henry IV plays- Chimes at Midnight.