Cymbeline

13 August 2018

Cymbeline 2014

• Director: Michael Almereyda
• Based on the play by Shakespeare
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Penn Badgley, Anton Yelchin, Peter Gerety
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Ethan Hawke – Before Sunset, Tape, Hamlet, Snow Falling on Cedars, Before Sunrise, Reality Bites, Waterland, Dead Poets Society
• Dakota Johnson – nothing yet
• Ed Harris – Snowpiercer, Gone Baby Gone, Copying Beethoven, A History of Violence, The Human Stain, The Hours, A Beautiful Mind, Pollack, Glengarry Glen Ross
• Milla Jovovich – Jeanne d’Arc, The Fifth Element
• John Leguizamo – John Wick, Miracle at St. Anna, The Happening, Moulin Rouge, Romeo & Juliet, Carlito’s Way
• Penn Badgley – nothing yet
• Anton Yelchin – Fright Night, Like Crazy, Terminator Salvation
• Peter Gerety – Public Enemies, Changeling, The Wire, War of the Worlds, Homicide Life on the Street
• Why? Shakespeare
• Seen: 5 August 2018      

       It can’t be helped, I’m a Shakespeare freak so I must include a summary of the play here (some viewers might have appreciated it before watching the film):

       Innogen, the daughter of King Cymbeline, has married his foster son Posthumous. The king is enraged and banishes him. In exile he meets Giacomo who wagers with him that Innogen is not faithful. Giacomo goes to England, fails to make Innogen believe that Posthumous has been unfaithful to her, but succeeds in spying on her and falsifying evidence showing that she has been unfaithful to Posthumous with him. When told this, Posthumous rages that he will kill her. Meanwhile, Cymbeline’s two sons who had been kidnapped as infants have been raised as hunters in the wilderness. Cymbeline’s evil queen’s son is in love with Innogen and vows to get revenge on her for loving Posthumous instead. Furthermore, the Romans demand tribute from England. Cymbeline refuses. It’s all quite complex, in other words. However, it is not a tragedy so after many twists and turns it ends happily.

     So, this film. Cymbeline (Harris) is the King of the Briton Motorcycle Gang who is at war with a crooked cop gang, the Romans.  The setting is now but the story and the lines are Shakespeare’s.

     Cars, bicycles, cigarettes, T-shirts, jeans, black leather jackets, mobile phones/cameras, American teen-agers, skateboards, guns and more guns, Google, President Obama on TV.

     It’s all curiously remote. Many of the soliloquies are done as voice-overs and much of the dialogue is choppy, low-key, relaxed, given with a shrug.

     In its own peculiar way, it’s faithful to Shakespeare. And in its own peculiar way it works. It’s one of the more interesting – if often confusing – modernised spin-offs I’ve seen. Ah right! It’s Almereyda! I’d forgot but of course it is. There are many similarities to his Hamlet and it’s almost as good.

    

4 * of 5