Much Ado About Nothing
Sep. 7th, 2013 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe university screened Joss Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing for freeeeeeeee, so of course Emma and Rick and I went to see it.
I liked it! As much as I am ever going to like Much Ado about Nothing, anyway. I love Beatrice and Benedick (and how hilarious were they, sneaking around trying to listen as their friends and relations discuss how in love with each other they are? The physical comedy here is great), but Claudio will always be an unmitigated ass.
He’s less physically violent in Whedon’s version than Branagh’s, but he still shames Hero so badly - at the altar, no less! In front of the whole city! - that her only recourse is to pretend to be dead.
I’m always kind of gunning for Hero to throw him over at the end.
However, that is Shakespeare’s fault and not Whedon’s. And, in fact, I think Whedon did mitigate Claudio’s horridness somewhat. In the play, after Hero’s “death”, her father Leonato suggests that he and Claudio should repair their alliance by having Claudio marry Hero’s cousin Beatrice, and Claudio is all “AWESOME,” because apparently women are interchangeable to him provided they are pretty.
And in Whedon’s version, he does agree; but you can see by his acting that he doesn’t really want to. He thinks he has to agree to it in order to make it up to Leonato and head off a feud between their families.
Now, I still think that if Claudio and Beatrice married under those circumstances, it would go badly - well, it would go badly under any circumstances; she would talk rings around him, and he would hate that. But “wanting to avoid a blood feud” is more sympathetic than being happy to marry any pretty and rich girl offered to him.
Otherwise this is a charming and stylish production - although I couldn’t tell if this was the film itself or just our projector, but the characters’ heads kept getting lobbed off by the top of the screen. The modern setting is lovely, although it’s ultimately just set-dressing that’s good for a few gags: there’s very much a sense that these are period people in modern dress.
Possibly that’s necessary for any adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that hews closely to the last two acts of the play. While there are definitely modern American parents who might tell a daughter they wished she was dead rather than losing her virginity before marriage, I just can’t see a modern American parent being all, “My daughter is dead, but here, marry her cousin instead!” We don’t - even very conservative people like members of the Quiverful movement don’t - see marriage in terms that would make that proposal seem anything but preposterous.
How would you update Much Ado about Nothing to be modern in attitude as well as dress? What could Don John frame Hero for that would make Claudio's publicly shaming her at her own wedding seem like an appropriate response, a mistake that their relationship could recover from? Or - and I am sort of leaning toward this - would you have to change the last two acts so much that the resulting story could hardly be called an adaptation anymore?
Or maybe you could just adapt it so Hero does throw him over at the end. I would be okay with that.
I liked it! As much as I am ever going to like Much Ado about Nothing, anyway. I love Beatrice and Benedick (and how hilarious were they, sneaking around trying to listen as their friends and relations discuss how in love with each other they are? The physical comedy here is great), but Claudio will always be an unmitigated ass.
He’s less physically violent in Whedon’s version than Branagh’s, but he still shames Hero so badly - at the altar, no less! In front of the whole city! - that her only recourse is to pretend to be dead.
I’m always kind of gunning for Hero to throw him over at the end.
However, that is Shakespeare’s fault and not Whedon’s. And, in fact, I think Whedon did mitigate Claudio’s horridness somewhat. In the play, after Hero’s “death”, her father Leonato suggests that he and Claudio should repair their alliance by having Claudio marry Hero’s cousin Beatrice, and Claudio is all “AWESOME,” because apparently women are interchangeable to him provided they are pretty.
And in Whedon’s version, he does agree; but you can see by his acting that he doesn’t really want to. He thinks he has to agree to it in order to make it up to Leonato and head off a feud between their families.
Now, I still think that if Claudio and Beatrice married under those circumstances, it would go badly - well, it would go badly under any circumstances; she would talk rings around him, and he would hate that. But “wanting to avoid a blood feud” is more sympathetic than being happy to marry any pretty and rich girl offered to him.
Otherwise this is a charming and stylish production - although I couldn’t tell if this was the film itself or just our projector, but the characters’ heads kept getting lobbed off by the top of the screen. The modern setting is lovely, although it’s ultimately just set-dressing that’s good for a few gags: there’s very much a sense that these are period people in modern dress.
Possibly that’s necessary for any adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that hews closely to the last two acts of the play. While there are definitely modern American parents who might tell a daughter they wished she was dead rather than losing her virginity before marriage, I just can’t see a modern American parent being all, “My daughter is dead, but here, marry her cousin instead!” We don’t - even very conservative people like members of the Quiverful movement don’t - see marriage in terms that would make that proposal seem anything but preposterous.
How would you update Much Ado about Nothing to be modern in attitude as well as dress? What could Don John frame Hero for that would make Claudio's publicly shaming her at her own wedding seem like an appropriate response, a mistake that their relationship could recover from? Or - and I am sort of leaning toward this - would you have to change the last two acts so much that the resulting story could hardly be called an adaptation anymore?
Or maybe you could just adapt it so Hero does throw him over at the end. I would be okay with that.
