Theater Review: Unkingly "Lear"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 09 May 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Grandage
Starring Derek Jacobi, Gina McKee, Justine Mitchell, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ron Cook, Alec Newman, Paul Jesson, Gwilym Lee, Gideon Turner, Tom Beard, Michael Hadley

King Lear, probably William Shakespeare’s greatest, most towering tragedy, has minefields galore for a director and actor hardy (or heedless) enough to undertake it.

First and foremost, it needs absolute balance between high drama and low comedy to become the unbearably moving tragedy that the playwright’s psychologically penetrating poetry points toward.

That Michael Grandage’s production, imported from London’s Donmar Warehouse to Brooklyn, is only intermittently satisfying is due to many things, but mainly because of Derek Jacobi’s Lear.

Obviously an accomplished Shakespearean, Jacobi curiously plays the king in an off-puttingly over-the-top manner, as if he can't believe that he lucked into this gig and so uses every trick at his disposal to show that he’s worthy of enacting Shakespeare’s most indelible tragic character.

From the start, when Lear enters pitting his daughters against one another in an egomaniacal bit of game-playing that foreshadows his madness, Jacobi makes odd acting choices. His exaggerated, cutesy mannerisms -- like pointing to his cheek to make sure eldest daughter Goneril (Gina McKee) plants a kiss there before saying how much she loves him -- grate from the get-go.

He puts inappropriate emphases while speaking famous lines. After saying "Let me wipe it first" as an obvious laugh line, he follows with, "It smells....of mortality`," his ill-timed pause ruining the overwhelming emotion of the scene. He also uses a weirdly high-pitched voice, and never physically degenerates when madness starts to unwind the king. 

Other lesser Lears I've seen (Christopher Plummer, Kevin Kline and F. Murray Abraham, to name three who also came a cropper in this role) managed to allow Lear's physical state to mirror his lost grasp of sanity.

By contrast, Jacobi, except for torn stockings and a crown made of twigs, remains refined and with no hair out of place, seeming singularly unaffected by the experience.

Jacobi does speak Shakespeare's language with clarity. He manages to howl with rage in the final scene, finding beautiful-sounding music in those five shattering "nevers" with which he climaxes his strangulated mourning over the body of his youngest and most beloved daughter Cordelia (Pippa Bennett-Warner). And in Lear’s final breath, he gives the most horrifying exhalation of air I’ve heard. Jacobi isn't a bad Lear, but that he's not a great one is maddening.

Jacobi's frustrating portrayal throws into sharp relief the rest of the cast. Gina McKee's Goneril and Justine Mitchell's Regan make formidable adversaries who look smashing in their elegant finery. Pippa Bennett-Warner‛s Cordelia is unimpressive.

Ron Cook's delightful Fool is perfectly situated between wisdom and lunacy, and Alec Newman's Edmund, though a tad obvious as the bastard villain, dashingly dispatches his devilishness against his father Gloucester, played by Paul Jesson with weighty world-weariness, and half-brother Edgar, played by a strong, articulate Gwilym Lee. If Gideon Turner’s Cornwall doesn't inspire much passion, Tom Beard's Albany and Michael Hadley’s Kent exude true goodness without resorting to clichés.

Brandage's direction of this swift-moving tragedy of broken families and psychological and physical casualties does nothing particularly egregious or outstanding. Hampered by Christopher Oram's unit set of whitewashed wooden planks that stand in for everything from Lear's and his daughter’s castles to the stormy heath and bloody battlefields, along with Oram’s monochromatic costumes of black, grey and white, the director makes Shakespeare’s all-encompassing tragedy a simple domestic melodrama.

Although we do get to hear Shakespeare's glorious language -- which becomes knottier and more labyrinthine as the play continues -- by superb-sounding British actors, it’s ultimately not enough to make this Lear more dynamic and compelling.

King Lear
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Opened May 4, 2011; closes June 5, 2011

Film Review: How to Live Forever

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 06 May 2011 05:00

Written by Marion DS Dreyfus

How to Live Forever
Directed by Mark Wexler
Written by Mark Wexler and Robert DeMaio

With the new documentary How to Live Forever, director Mark Wexler examines what it takes to live a long and fulfilling life -- physically, mentally, and spiritually. The one-two punch experiences of the death of his painter-mother and the arrival of his AARP card were the seeds of his filmic research, in which he explored the most fundamental of human connections to life.

As a Southern California native, Mark’s natural instinct was to live longer and, as Botox, surfing and "Hollyweird" attests, younger. In this film, he embarks on a global trek to investigate what it means to grow old and what it could mean to really live "forever." But whose advice should he take?

Does 94-year-old exercise guru Jack LaLanne have all the answers, or does British Buster, a now-103-year-old grizzled, chain-smoking, ale-guzzling marathoner? What about futurist Ray Kurzweil, or 90-year-old sci-fi guru Ray Bradbury, a "laughter yoga" maven?

What about an unassuming 74-year-old New Age Japanese recent porn-stud celeb, who chuckles, "I‛ve made what I think are 200 films since I became a porn star." Amazing clips of some of his starring vehicles expand the average viewer’s mental apparatus on what constitutes the upper regions of sexuality. (He is part of the growing industry of older porn that is apparently taking the Far East by storm.

Wexler explores the viewpoints of piquantly unusual characters, alongside those of health, fitness, and life-extension experts in this engaging doc, which by the final credits challenges our notions of youth and aging with sometimes-dour if often comic poignancy.

Begun as a study in life-extension -- studying beauty contests for the AARP-aged, wandering to Las Vegas for connubial ceremonies for the first-time married octogenarian set, then to cryogenic facilities for preservation of bodies ($150,000 a year) and "neurologies" (heads alone, a bargain $80,000/year) until medicine finds a way to re-vivify these preserves in their jet-age stainless steel cylinders -- Live Forever evolves into a thought-provoking examination of what gives life meaning.

One amusing sequence has Wexler confronting pierced and tatted teens through flinty centenarians, "If you had a pill that extended your life 500 years, would you take it?" Shades of the new sci-fi film Limitless, which energetically explores a similar concept, except expanding the brain’s capabilities to its maximal level.

As many people say no to the 5-century-pill offer, interestingly, as say yes. Even the quite young think a beat, then often say that life gets its seasoning from being limited.

One couple in their 80s is asked. The husband immediately assents to the idea: "Sure!" He agrees -- lots of things to do, learn, experience. His wife looks on, unperturbed. At her turn, she answers, "Why would I want to stay married [to him] another 500 years? No, please!"

In addition to Jack LaLanne (a year before his recent death at 95) and futurologist Kurzweil, the film also features zesty interviews with writer Ray Bradbury, the still hysterical (in both senses) Phyllis Diller, newsman/interviewer Willard Scott, exercise doyenne Suzanne Somers, and writer Pico Iyer (a former colleague from when we both worked at Time).

One physician, a surgeon, is still practicing surgery daily at 94. (He doesn’t look it.) He shares the amusing nugget that he "doesn’t often tell colleagues how old [he] is." He’s thinking of leaving the office next year, but enjoys the camaraderie of the "superior people" he encounters in his field, and regrets having to stop work, when and if.

Clearly, Wexler finds elderly who are both sensate and compos mentis in addition to being up there in moon count. It’s no great shakes being older than the galaxy if you aren’t also full of the life that could make use of the increasing years.

He dismisses the claims of many in exotic climes who stake their ages to high triple digits because they offer no proof, and suggests they are motivated by competition, cultural tendrils and other aspects of society to claim older years than they are entitled to by the clock.

The people Wexler does find -- among them, a 122-year-old who seems unsurprised and unimpressed by the news she is the world’s oldest person -- offer a mix of advice for staying alive: From "Get yourself good parents and genes" to "Drink a coupla glasses of vodka, eat lots of chocolate and meat every day" and "smoke yourself a pack or two of fags" just to stay in the game.

Some gerontologists might disagree -- but then again, how many of them can offer competing digits along with their advice and bromides to the longest lived?

For more information, visit www.liveforevermovie.com.

Marion DS Dreyfus
©2011

Kevin's May '11 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 06 May 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Blow Out 
(Criterion)
Brian DePalma’s 1981 thriller about a movie sound man’s accidental recording of a presidential candidate’s death owes much to Blow-Up but lacks Antonioni’s elegant construction and subtlety. DePalma is all surface, and Blow Out has too many sophomoric recreations of cheesy slasher movies; that the final punch line is an unfunny joke at its heroine’s expense is typical of this director.

John Travolta is a charismatic hero and John Lithgow a properly creepy villain, but Nancy Allen is a poor femme fatale. Although DePalma’s usual visual slickness helps, the big car chase is as ludicrous as they come. As always, Criterion has given the film a loving hi-def upgrade; extras include new DePalma, Allen and Steadicam operator Garrett Brown interviews and DePalma’s 1967 experimental film, Murder a la Mod.

Glee Encore
(Fox)
If you’re a Gleek who can’t get enough of the hit TV show’s alternately tongue-in-cheek and painfully earnest cover versions of various pop songs, then this 77-minute compilation (with 35 song-and-dance routines) is definitely for you.

For those who find Glee mainly an irritant can treasure the enormous vocal gifts and stage presence of Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison, both Broadway veterans who can even make goofy renditions of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Somebody to Love,” and various forgettable Journey and Madonna anthems momentarily pleasurable. The Blu-ray upgrade makes the show look sharper than before; there are no extras.

The Green Hornet
(Sony)

Michel Gondry’s big-screen take on the latest superhero has an appropriately silly attitude toward its subject, the least likely superhero imaginable, and Gondry has a skewed visual sense that doesn’t take itself too seriously either. But there’s a big “but”: Seth Rogen is an absolute disaster in the lead, a non-actor who thinks that snarling his dialogue makes him seem tough.

The supporting cast is on Gondry’s wavelength, but with such a black (green?) hole at the center, The Green Hornet doesn’t have much sting. Sony’s top-notch Blu-ray release has several extras: making-of featurettes, deleted scenes, a gag reel and Gondry’s commentary.

The Holy Mountain and El Topo
(Anchor Bay)
Cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s entire reputation is based on his 1989 Santa Sangre and these two films, from 1973 and 1970, respectively. In both, the director himself plays the strange anti-hero, first The Alchemist and then a gunslinger. Besides being bizarre dramas in their own right, these nearly inscrutable movies are also the ultimate head trips, with surreal sequences and symbolic imagery butting heads throughout.

Anchor Bay’s superb transfers give both movies an extra colorful “pop,” so even if you don’t know (or care) what the hell’s going on, you can still savor the outlandish visuals. Extras include Jodorowsky commentaries, interviews and deleted scenes.

Rabbit Hole
(LionsGate)
John Cameron Mitchell’s film of David Lindsay-Abaire’s overrated Pulitzer Prize-winning play about marrieds Becca and Howie coping with their son’s death consists of scenes like dumb bombs trained on single targets, exploding after making their point. Mitchell’s subdued sledgehammer direction uses soft lighting to make the movie look like an episode of “Army Wives” and slow motion after Becca’s flashback to the fatal accident.

Nicole Kidman’s somnambulant Becca pales next to Aaron Eckhart’s intense Howie, and the other actors—Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller and Sandra Oh—are given scant opportunity to become three-dimensional in a flimsy psychological study that makes a foolproof dramatic subject maudlin. While the hi-def image is excellent, the flimsy extras comprise Mitchell‘s commentary and two deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week
Marwencol
(Cinema Guild)
Mark Hogancamp’s ingenious, self-administered therapy after a vicious beating left him in a coma has been documented by director Jeff Malmberg in a startling portrait of a man living two lives, both in Kingston, NY and Marwencol, the fictional Belgian town he recreated in his backyard. The movie asks a probably unanswerable question: which town is Hogancamp’s “reality”? 

Hogancamp might have been turned into a kind of freak by a filmmaker with less sympathy, so Malmberg must be commended for exhaustively recording the steps that to mark Hogancamp’s painful recovery process. With impressive journalistic evenhandedness, Marwencol the movie transforms Marwencol the fictional town into a multi-layered real-life adventure. Extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.

Stonewall Uprising
(PBS)
In this engrossing documentary, several of the participants in the seminal June 28, 1969 riot of gays at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, following systemic targeting by the police, recount the events that led to this breaking open of the dam of equal rights for homosexuals.

Directors Kate Davis and David Heilbroner include interviews with men who were in Manhattan to find an atmosphere more amenable to their lifestyle, only to discover that they were still considered lawbreakers (homosexuality was still illegal), along with then-city councilman Ed Koch, journalists and a retired detective. Interspersed with archival footage that places us front and center in that historic era, Stonewall Uprising is another informative chronicle from PBS’s American Experience.

20th Century with Mike Wallace: America at War
(Athena)
Taken from the 1995 “History Channel” series, this three-disc set collects reporter Mike Wallace’s incisive episodes about America’s involvement in 20th century wars, primarily Vietnam, which takes up all four episodes of disc one, with classic footage like Wallace’s own incursions into enemy territory and Morley Safer’s damning on-location shoot that showed uncaring U.S. soldiers ill-treating Vietcong civilians and interviews with U.S. officials and authors like Neil Sheehan, who wrote the ultimate Vietnam book A Bright Shining Lie.

The other two discs include episodes on Korea, the first Gulf War, women in the military, America‘s elite forces and military debacles. This set is a memorably evenhanded journalistic approach to how wars were waged and covered in an era when everything could be (and was) caught on film.

CDs of the Week
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique/Cleopatre
(BIS)
Although we don’t need another recording of the Symphonie fantastique, there’s much to recommend this disc. First, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra alternates power and finesse under Yannick Nezet-Seguin’s sturdy baton, even making familiar passages like the final movement’s “Dies Irae” sound fresh.

Second, there’s another Berlioz work, the lyrical scene Cleopatre, 20 minutes of shimmering beauty sung by soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. And third, it’s been released on a splendid-sounding Super Audio CD on the BIS label, which continues its commitment to first-rate audio in an age of MP3s.

Stockhausen: Piano Music
(Scandinavian Classics)
This re-release of a 1999 recording by a fine contemporary music interpreter, Hungarian pianist Elisabeth Klein (who died in 2004 at age 93!), spotlights the piano music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Although famous (or infamous) for his groundbreaking and demanding orchestral and stage works, Stockhausen also composed equally revelatory keyboard works, which Klein demonstrates in her strategically-chosen program, from the opening Tierkreis to two separate versions of the seminal Klavierstuck XI, one of which closes this epic recital.