MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING B
USA (109 mi) 2012
d: Joss Whedon Official site
While this film may have had a more interesting history in terms
of how it originated, as it was filmed entirely on the premises of the
director’s own Southern California home where a group of friends came to visit
to partake in backyard Shakespeare parties, acting out various scenes until the
director got the idea to shoot this film in 12 days using a variety of TV
actors while he was simultaneously making a mega-million dollar Hollywood comic
book adventure movie THE AVENGERS (2012).
So while this may have played out as a trifle, a little playful fun to
take the pressure off of having to produce a box office success, the director
does get the opportunity to restage into the modern era one of Shakespeare’s
most comically accessible plays, where the incendiary, rapid fire dialogue does
resemble sitcom TV shows. But that’s
precisely the problem, where this feels a little too much like watching
television, where there are no major movie stars and none of the performances
stand out, where there’s an interesting production design, shot in Black and
White, and a few minor alterations in the script added for humor, but overall
nothing that particularly stands out.
While it’s perfectly enjoyable, and is meant to be a breezy, lightweight
comedy, there is also a certain dramatic heft in the play that is lacking due
to time restraints, as tragic elements are lost by not having the opportunity
to develop the characters properly. This
is, after all, Shakespeare we’re talking about, the best writer who ever lived,
not just some hack working in the business.
This guy pre-dated the business, where in celebrated literary critic
Harold Bloom’s book Shakespeare: The
Invention of the Human, he goes so far as to suggest that Shakespeare, and
likely the play Hamlet in particular,
may be the root of human personality.
All right, so we get none of that from watching this film, which does,
however, retain much of the wit, utter wreckage of the English language (by the
police detectives, of course), and plenty of physical comedy, including some
hilarious pratfalls. Perhaps the film
this most resembles is Woody Allen’s A
Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), a delightful comic romp through the
woods, borrowing heavily from Bergman’s SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955), where
Woody and Mia Farrow’s initial chemistry together is simply off the charts,
falling short of that mark, but it retains the same air of happy, good-natured
fun.
While the expression “a war of words” may have had its
origins with this production, the highlight of the story is the furious verbal interchange
between male and female leads, Benedick and Beatrice (Alexis Denisoff and Amy
Acker), a saucy pair of sparring former lovers, barely even suggested in the
original but explicitly shown here, where what seems like the most mismatched
couple in the universe, through a bit of trickery and behind-the-scenes
manipulation, comes together in harmony and happily fall in love. As impossible as that may seem, no one is
more surprised than they are, as they spend the entire film endlessly bickering
and complaining about one another, literally duking it out with nonstop insults
and inflammatory accusations, exhausting everyone’s patience to the point where
they’ve had enough, only to start up again like there’s no tomorrow. While Benedick is vain and something of an
arrogant male buffoon, misogynist and cocksure of himself while contemptuously
mocking of everyone else throughout, never taking anything or anyone as
seriously as he takes himself, so ends up alone sputtering soliloquies most of
the time, needing no other audience than himself, Beatrice is one of
Shakespeare’s smartest women, who has a brain and is not afraid to use it along
with her acid tongue, resembling the combative Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, displaying a healthy contempt for the male
species, which makes her the most modern of all characters, seemingly out of
place with a more backward group mindset, but Acker is much too meek and
middle-of-the-road ordinary, where it’s more important for her to be liked than
to be heard. The language is flowery and
delightfully comic, all cast in an air of bourgeois manners and good taste, as
these are representatives of the upper crest of society, so behavior is
key. In a parallel love story, this one
with younger, more innocent lovers, more openly public for all to see, the
noble Claudio (Fran Kranz) expresses his affection for Hero (Jillian Morgese),
the fair daughter of governor Leonato (Clark Gregg), where the entire setting
takes place on the grounds of the governor’s massive estate. While the younger couple can barely utter a
word, so sweetly smitten with one another, the other two swear off love and
marriage altogether, so consumed by the fumes of their discontent. Two plans are simultaneously hatched in
secret, one drop dead hilarious and the other one devilishly cruel, where the
eavesdropping Benedick first, followed later by Beatrice, will overhear idle
gossip about how much the other is in love with them (where they clumsily hide
and step all over themselves to be able to hear), but because of their
professed disdain of love, could never actually admit to such a thing, where
such flattering attention immediately amends their hostile views, suddenly
aglow with love, both primping with peacock-like pride, while in the other, a
much darker and malevolent plot is meant to expose the virginesque Hero as a
fraud, where in a malicious charade of deceitful disguises and mistaken
identity, Claudio is led to believe his beloved is already cheating on
him. Refusing to play the fool, he
publicly chastises her and shamefully denounces her at the altar in what is an
affront to her virtue, making it difficult to sympathize with him afterwards,
but sending the parties into a swooning despair.
If you like unhappy endings, you may as well end it right there,
usually a curtain closer between acts where patrons can order drinks in the
lobby and decry the injustice of it all.
But Shakespeare isn’t a miserablist, but knew how to sell tickets and
enjoyed wreaking havoc on his audience’s expectations, where he is, after all,
the author of All’s Well That Ends Well,
but that’s another story. But as in Romeo and Juliet, the Friar comes to the
rescue, concocting a little scheme of his own (when did the Church become so
ingeniously inventive?), feigning Hero’s death, hoping to extract the truth of
the matter as well as Claudio’s remorse.
While there are some behind-the-scenes shenanigans, Leonato also calls
in the guards, who unwittingly overhear mischief in the making, where the chief
constable Dogberry (Nathan Fillion) gives a credible turn as the most bumbling
butcher of the English language, turning a small and truly asinine character
into a shameless scene stealer, where he and his minions may get the biggest
laughs of the entire film. The befuddled
awkwardness of the police, however, sets the scene for the inevitable
turnaround of events, where the mystery of it all is a tapestry of illusion,
including the elusive nature of love itself, a bewildering and mystifying
enigma that continually alters form, befuddling those within its grasp, who
often haven’t a clue what to make of it, as it’s never what one expects, or is
anywhere near when you need it, but largely comes as a surprise, as if it’s
been there all along but you somehow overlooked seeing it. The weakest element, however, is how quickly
and easily it all wraps up at the end, without ever feeling love is earned,
making it all feel superficially cheap afterwards. And while this is a relatively meek mannered
Benedick and Beatrice, who spare the meanness and never deliver the down and
dirty maliciousness written into the characters, they continue their wordplay
right to the end, never really believing that any of this is actually happening
to them, where reality itself cannot be trusted, and the world is not what it
seems. There’s another reality that
lives within the existing one, an illusory world that has the power of magic
and deceit, but can also reveal unheard of wonders that one never imagined. Not sure this condensed version adds anything
except easy accessibility, something akin to Shakespeare-light, but the film is
a comedy of manners, given a brisk pace that accentuates the good life and a
few surrealist touches, like an absurd scene in the pool or an arrest captured
on an iPhone, where the considerable consumption of alcohol likely violates
some unwritten moral law, yet the movie basks in the glory of good over evil,
feeling more like a fairy tale where they all live happily ever after.
