Much Ado about Nothing

Another foray into the world of Shakespeare in film! This time, I've watched the Emma Thompson version of Much Ado about Nothing, which has exquisite, exquisite, probably not-even-slightly historically accurate costumes, beautiful Tuscan scenery, and trademark harebrained Shakespeare plots.

The harebrained romance in Much Ado about Nothing features naive, sweetly flirtatious young Hero and her lover Claudio, played by tiny!Robert Sean Leonard when he was still young and beautiful.

Claudio is the worst romantic hero ever. First he repudiates his lady-love Hero on their wedding day, at the altar - in fact, he flings her against the altar, before tossing her off the dais, while shouting accusations of infidelity at her. All this, in front of everyone of any importance in the whole land of Italy, just to ensure that she cannot possibly have a second chance at happiness after ruining his life with her unfaithfulness.

But then! But then! After Hero pretends to commit suicide, in one of Shakespeare's patented "everything will be fine if someone pretends to die" plots (don't worry, it totally works out this time) - right after this pretend-suicide, which Claudio thinks is totally real, Hero's father is all, "Hey Claudio, you can marry my niece Beatrice!"

And Claudio, who but hours before was professing undying love for Hero and shedding everlasting tears over her supposed infidelity, is all, "Forsake my beloved Hero? Marry someone else? This very weekend, you say? Sure!"

And not in a "I'm sad about Hero's death, but I'm glad you forgive me, and if I have to marry someone purely for politics, then at least Beatrice is a nice person" kind of way. No, Claudio is all "This is AMAZING! I just drove my last girlfriend to kill herself (and now I know she's innocent, but it was an honest mistake, you can hardly hold it against me!), but I still get to marry a hottie with tons of political connections and loot! Woot woot!"

Yeah, his ruined life? Apparently lasted for about three days. Now he's ready for wedding bells!

Then of course they swap Hero in for Beatrice at the altar, so the lovers are reunited, happy end! Insofar as Hero marrying the man who repudiated her at the altar and then was so little effected by her suicide that he was ready to marry someone else within the week is a happy end, anyway. Okay then, Shakespeare!

The movie is nonetheless totally worth seeing for its sun-drenched cinematography, the aforementioned beautiful costumes (the men's coats are epic!), and Emma Thompson as Beatrice; but it really helps to tie up your critical faculties before going into it.

***

Next up on my Shakespeare adaptation list: carmarthen put me onto a version of Twelfth Night starring Parminder Nagra, who played Jess in Bend It Like Beckham, so of course I have to see it.

Gosford Park and Downton Abbey

One of the criticisms I've heard leveled against Downton Abbey is that it presents too rosy a view of the British class system: that the Crawleys are far too nice and the servants far too content with their places at the Abbey. I think this is an oversimplification, which I will explain by comparing Downton Abbey to one of its creator's earlier works, the country house murder mystery Gosford Park.

One thing you cannot possibly say about Gosford Park is that it has too rosy a view of the British class system. The aristocrats are bitter, brittle, bickering phonies, whose thin veneer of civility barely covers their selfishness. The impetus for the plot is the fact that one of them had a habit of impregnating the girls who worked in his factories, then dumping their babies in a hellish orphanage.

And the misery doesn't stop with the aristocrats. Their poor tempers and incessant demands trickle down to the servants, who take out their frustrations with their employers on each other. Moreover, the atmosphere of constant surveillance creates a feeling of pervasive distrust. Gosford Park is a miserable, miserable place.

This rotten atmosphere makes Gosford Park the perfect setting for a murder mystery - indeed, country house murders are a genre unto themselves, presumably in part because country houses could act as a hothouse for anger and suspicion. But it would make Gosford Park a very bad setting for a television series. Two hours of pervasive distrust and spite make a good murder mystery movie. Hour upon hour of it would make a soul-sucking TV series.

Thus, Downton Abbey is inhabited by a much nicer set of folks than Gosford Park. Rather than taking every opportunity to behave badly, the aristocrats strive (with varying levels of success) to fulfill their duty of being honorable, generous, and responsible - in short, to behave with noblesse oblige. The tone belowstairs is therefore much less distrustful and acrimonious than at Gosford Park; because the atmosphere is relatively open and trusting, Thomas and O'Brien's scheming can basically be contained without too much damage.

So: Downton Abbey, model of the British class system as it was meant to be. How well does it work? When the system is running as it should, does it make the people living in it happy?

Mary and Edith are both very, very angry. Sybil is less angry, but that's because she's been planning her escape from day one and has no intention of remaining trapped in this web. I wonder how much her activism was affected by watching Mary and Edith go away for the London Season and come back each year more brittle, angry, and - in Edith's case - despairing.

Belowstairs, many of the servants are similarly hungry for escape. I really don't know why people feel that the servants in Downton Abbey are too content being servants. Carson, it is true, has clearly found his vocation in the position of butler, and sees the Crawleys as a surrogate family - in particular, he sees Mary as a surrogate daughter. But he has an unusually prestigious, powerful job: of course he, as well as Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Patmore, identify more closely with their high-ranking positions than the lower-ranked workers do.

And most of those lower-ranked workers would clearly rather be elsewhere. William, though he never complains - because who complains about a position as plum as footman? - would really rather be working with horses somewhere. Thomas would clearly be gone in a heartbeat in the unlikely event that an easier, higher-paying, higher status job than footman fell in his lap.

Ethel, Gwen, and Branson all say upfront that they mean to leave Downton for better things, a goal that they all have difficulty completing because of society's rigidity. Ethel, of course, gets destroyed by the system. She breaks the rules, and society gives no second chances.

Gwen probably couldn't have gotten a job as a secretary without Sybil's patronage - she has hardly any time off when she could give interviews. Her despair over whether she'll ever be able to leave Downton is moving - a belowstairs mirror of Edith's similar fear.

And Anna and Bates, the two servant characters with the most extensive storyline? When they plan their glorious future together, they mean to leave Downton and start their own pub. Downton is just a way for them to save up enough money to make that happen. For them, as for most of the characters, service is a job. They aren't overjoyed to be there, but at the same time, there are much worse jobs they could be stuck with.

And then, of course, the vagaries of divorce law wreck their dreams.

It's not just the failure mode of the early twentieth-century British class system that ruins lives. Even when the class system runs as it's ideally supposed to, it leaves lots of its inmates miserable.