Othello Project 2: That was easily sated

Well I'm surprised. I hadn't expected to like the Oliver Parker version of Othello all that much. For one, An Ideal Husband was pretty banal in my recollection. For another, I've heard some fairly divided reviews on the film, much of it centering around the "dumbing down" of the story through sloughing off about 1/2 the text and the (once considered, but this was the 90's) hyperactive cut-aways. It is definitely a film version of theatre that revels in being a film. It's actually quite good.

Kenneth Branaugh Iago better than anybody, mixing an incredible subtlety and facility with Elizabethan English that makes his lines trickle like honey from his lips, while a tiny twitch of some unidentifiable facial muscle communicates more than the words he uttered. Parker's choice of having him break the fourth wall and direct his monologues directly to the camera was a little risky, but it's quite effective. His portrayal is somewhat softer, more amiable, with an almost puckish undertone at times that contrast beautifully with his more menacing monologues, which in all their undercurrents of nastiness never cross the line into inhuman or unrelateable. Under Brannaugh, he is consumed with his inner demons of his own, which make him intensely sensitive to the weaknesses of others. This is really enhanced by brilliant performances from Iago's main victims: Emilia, Caspio, Roderigo, and of course Othello. Iago in this version is the catalyst, but each falls victim to themselves far more than him. Aside from Othello, the supporting characters become the heros of peripheral tragedies...

Then there's Fishborne's Othello. Othello's been played a million ways, and I've definitely heard criticisms levelled at any attempt to connect this character to a modern audience on the grounds that he embodies an unreflective racial stereotype. In its place, perhaps we imagine an Othello character better suited to the world of Scarface or The Wire. I'm ok with that, considering I think the relationship between Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell is inspired and least as deserving of a lit class dissection or fifty as your average Shakespeare play. Maybe I picture Othello as a bit of a cross-section of these sorts of characters - one who rises from a brutal world to the prominent sophisticated society where no matter his power or endeavors, he remains an outsider; one whose will be barred from actual acceptance by the very characteristics that brought him into the ethereal sphere of the elite. In Othello's case, that of the "super-subtle Venetians."

It's not easy to find a wife beater/murderer sympathetic (even had Desdemona been everything that Iago suggested, Othello's actions were horrific and reprehensible even to himself), yet Othello somehow manages to become extremely compelling in this version: a man desperately fighting his own savage nature and failing catastrophically. The love in which he seeks transcendence becomes both the victim and the catalyst of his own brutal past:

She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.

This, at least, is powerfully projected by Fishborne's charismatic and intimidating presence. His fluctuations between poise and madness, punctuated by full epileptic seizure, create a deeply human performance from a larger than life presence.

Then there's the sexual content: dialogues take place underneath fornicating revellers, detailed imagery of Othello and Desdemona's wedding night revels are deleriously juxtaposed with Othello's obtrusive fantasies of Desdemona's betrayals with Cassio, and Iago addresses the camera while tupping his wife. Apparently some "purists" object to this, but I can't follow this line of reasoning, considering it's a Shakespeare centering around sexual intrigue and jealousy. And I would add a delicate balance is created by Desdemona's very effective innocent wide-eyed look. Yes, she can't really speak english, but somehow that adds a halting quality to her speech that isn't altogether bad.

At any rate, the sets and costumes are beautiful, the acting is fantastic, and it's the first version that had any emotional resonance by the final scene, so I'm fairly satisfied altogether.