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Set in Japan in the 19th
Century after the country was opened to the West as a trading partner,
the royalty of England have been reinvented as wealthy merchants living
on the Japanese seacoast. Neither the opulent backgrounds nor the conceit
of the script, however, has any impact on either understanding or enjoyment
of the play and the setting seems to be simply a marketing decision not
an artistic one. The film opens with a kabuki scene at the court of Duke
Senior (Brian Blessed). His brother Frederick, also played by Blessed with
black hair, interrupts the proceedings to forcibly overthrow his brother’s
dukedom and the elder Duke is banished to the Arden Forest. Orlando, played
by the Nigerian born David Oyelowo, and his brother Oliver (Adrian Lester)
then proceed to fight over their position in the court.
Oliver, aligned with Frederick,
entices his brother to take on a 300-pound sumo wrestler to all but certain
doom but, as the script will have it, the underdog prevails in spite of
a weight differential of about 150 pounds. In addition to being victorious
at sport, he also falls for one of his well-wishers, the attractive Rosalind
(Bryce Dallas Howard), daughter of Duke Senior. Fearful of her safety at
the court, Rosalind, pretending to be a man and, taking the name of Ganymede
from the handsome cup bearer to the Gods in Greek mythology, sneaks out
with her cousin Celia (Romola Garai) and the clown Touchstone (Alfred Molina)
to seek out her father in the Forest of Arden. Soon they are joined by
Orlando who also fears for his life after a fight with his brother Oliver
over their inheritance.
Before long, a bunch of
other personages wander into the film including a melancholy philosopher
named Jaques (Kevin Kline) who is described as “an exiled courtier”, a
young shepherd Silvius (Alex Wyndham) who pursues his reluctant girlfriend
Phebe (Jade Jefferies), and others. Curiously, there are two characters
named Jaques and two named Oliver, something that most writers would go
to any length to avoid. The play is best noted for the cynical soliloquy
chronicling the seven ages of man, “All the world’s a stage and all the
men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances,
and one man in his time plays many parts”, delivered with properly dour
expression by Kline.
It would not be a Shakespearean
comedy without some gender confusion and Rosalind, after noticing Orlando’s
love poems neatly positioned on trees all over their neck of the woods,
knows that Orlando loves her. Approaching Orlando in her boy disguise as
Ganymede, Rosalind endeavors to teach him the finer points of courtship
if he would just pretend that he is a she. She uses her charm to seduce
Orlando, but also is drawn reluctantly into a relationship with the shepherdess
Phebe. In Elizabethan conventions, this meant that a boy playing the girl
Rosalind would dress as a boy and then be wooed by another boy playing
Phebe.
Quite naturally, this
being a comedy and all, everyone ends up happy, (dramatized in a finale
of the utmost silliness by Branagh) except for Jaques who, in character,
decides not to return to the court. All the pieces are in place for the
film to be successful but there are key elements that work against it.
For the play to work at all, Rosalind has to be believable as a young man.
If she is not, Orlando looks like a complete fool, and the play is robbed
of its intended homoerotic playfulness. In this case, Branagh does not
even attempt to have Rosalind look masculine and the scenes with Orlando
in which he/she is teaching him how to express his love are unconvincing
(unless you read it that Orlando goes along with the ruse and the author
is simply making a statement about role playing, the masks people wear
(himself?) in life, and the inauthenticity of self).
Rosalind is supposed to
be pure, innocent, perhaps a little naïve but definitely virtuous.
Howard, however, is very un-maiden like in appearance and manner and lacks
any noticeable chemistry with her lover. She tries so hard to put the correct
inflections in the words that she robs them of whatever poetry they might
have had, conveying the impression that she is trying out eagerly for a
grammar school play. This is Branagh’s fifth attempt to put Shakespeare
on film and I’m sure it won’t be his last. After achieving considerable
artistic but not financial success with the first three, he has opted in
this latest film for less of an artistic statement than an overtly commercial
approach. Love’s Labours Lost was an unmitigated disaster – scorched by
the critics and shunned by audiences. Unfortunately, As You Like It may
follow in its path.
GRADE: C
COMMENTS ON THE PLAY:
As You Like It is normally
dated around 1599 or 1600 and is based on the novel “Rosalynde” by Thomas
Lodge written in the euphuistic style which in plot is almost identical
to Shakespeare’s version (though Touchstone and Jaques do not appear in
the novel). It is generally considered to be one of Shakespeare’s best,
though some critics have thought otherwise. Swinden calls it “the most
perfect” of the comedies, Gardner “the most refined and exquisite,” and
Ward cites its “most extraordinary elusive subtlety”. The play romanticizes
a life close to nature and Edward Dowden has written that Shakespeare “has
written no happier play”. There is little action, however, and, according
to one critic, “the characters spend much of their time talking, simply
talking”, yet the dialogue is so sprightly and witty that it never appears
to be overly “talky”.
The play is consistent
with the aristocratic approach of most of Shakespeare’s plays, stipulating
that good manners are learned at court and nowhere else. Touchstone is
asked how he likes this shepherd’s life and he replies “If thou wast never
at court, thou never sawest good manners; if you never sawest good manners,
then thy manners must be wicked.” It is also noted for an unusual interaction
between Audrey, a local wench, who is wooed by the clown Touchstone and
another pursuer, a country fellow curiously named William. It should be
noted that writers do not normally give characters their own name, especially
not to an apparently unimpressive character like the bumpkin portrayed
here. It is also interesting that the consensus author William of Stratford
would have been 25 years old in 1590, the age that William in the play
says that he is.
Touchstone, after asking William a few questions, declares enigmatically, “drink, being pour’d out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your writers do consent that ipse is he. Now, you are not ipse, for I am he”. The dialogue in this scene makes no sense in reference to anything else in the play and there has been much speculation about its meaning. As Alex McNeil has pointed out, “it is not quite accurate to say that “ipse is he.” “Ipse” connotes something more than merely “he.” It is “he himself,” or “the emphatic he, the man himself, the very man”. “Writers” could refer to the ancient Latin writers or to Latin grammarians, but also to the author’s contemporaries, suggesting that his fellow writers knew that Touchtone (he himself), not William, personified the true author of the works. So the passage adds more fuel to the authorship controversy and the debate continues.
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