Shakespeare Retold: The Taming of the Shrew

Last week in a discussion on Facebook I was trying to convince Liz to watch the Shakespeare Retold version of The Taming of the Shrew, since Rufus Sewell is TO DIE FOR in it. And I realized, to my everlasting horror, that I hadn't watched this movie in years (an absolute TRAVESTY!). Since then, I'm on my second viewing in a week, and all is once more right in the Rufus Sewell-loving portion of my world.

Shakespeare Retold was a series of four made-for-television films that the BBC aired in 2005 (I can't BELIEVE it's been that long!). The series was made up of brilliantly realized modern takes on Shakespeare's plays (Shrew, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing). Shrew and Much Ado are my favorites, in most part thanks to the aforementioned Sewell in the former and Damian Lewis in the latter (but that, my friends, is another blog post).

Shirley Henderson plays Kate Minola, a hilariously psychotic MP who's the bane of her harrassed secretary's existence and an exasperating curiosity to her fashion-obsessed mother and sister. Her career is her life, and she's trying to organize a leadership campagin in her party with an eye to eventually becoming Prime Minister. She's advised that she has a better chance of winning her leadership campaign if she gets married - the question is, who'd possibly marry her? 

Henderson, perhaps best known as Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films, is pitch perfect as a modern incarnation of Shakespeare's shrew of a heroine. She may only be a tick over 5'0", but she is an absolute terror and I LOVE it. NO ONE does wonderfully pyschotic and intense like Henderson. She's first introduced while some Jaws-like theme music plays as she stomps through the halls of Parliament...and everyone she passes positively cowers in the face of her fury. In contrast, her sister Bianca (Jaime Murray, recently seen as H.G. Wells in the latest season of Warehouse 13), a model, is universally liked and receives multiple proposals a week. I've just got to say, I think Kate handles the having a stuck-on-herself model for a sister and Twiggy for a mother much better than I ever could. *wink*

Bianca's manager - instead of a tutor - Harry (Stephen Tompkinson), is in love with Bianca and toys with the idea of fixing up Kate with someone, anyone, so Bianca will be more marraige-minded. He introduces Kate to Petruchio (Rufus Sewell), an eccentric aristocrat looking for a rich wife to bail him out of his financial woes. They meet in an elevator -and, well...I can't really say anything to do justice to the brilliance of the moment except that the elevator scenes are hysterically funny. And freaking hot. I am convinced that Rufus Sewell has never been more swoon-worthy than as the appealing bad boy in the elevator. It's an absolutely classic moment as Kate and Petruchio exchange lightening fast zingers. The entire script, in fact, is full of fabulous, quotable moments (the insults are particularly noteworthy, LOL).

Everything comes together brilliantly in this adaptation, which remains remarkably - and surprisingly, perhaps - true to the source material, right down to Petruchio showing up to his wedding dressed in women's clothes (instead of an outlandish clown costume), and the ways in which he subsequently seeks to "tame" his furious bride, to the sun-is-the-moon discussion. It's interesting to compare this incarnation of the story to the other famous film version of the play - the 1967 Franco Zeffirelli film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the title roles. In particular, I think Sewell's Petruchio owes a great deal to Burton's gregarious, over-the top turn in the role. It's brilliant, Rufus is brilliant, and I just love, love, LOVE seeing him play a "good guy" like this.

Henderson and Sewell have unbelievably amazing on-screen chemistry. Whether they're fighting or making nice the sparks positively explode off the screen. The barbs and zingers fly fast and furious and non-stop in all of their scenes, but underneath the sparring they both manage to convey their respective character's insecurities and fears, really humanizing Kate and Petruchio, letting you see the motivations, pain, and fear behind their gloriously, wonderful, hilariously over-the-top personalities. I think Henderson does a fantastic job transforming Kate and making her emotionally vulnerable. She's a woman who has spent so long presenting a tough shell to the world, constructing impenetrable walls around her heart that have made her a raging and feared political success, that opening her heart to another requires more bravery than she's ever had to muster before.

Sewell's Petruchio is wonderful. WONDERFUL. I love how when we're introduced to him he's at such loose ends, not sure what to do with his life, only that he really needs to come into some money to get the tax man off his back. When he first meets Kate, you can see this instant transformation on his countenance - rather than being put off by her abominable rudeness, he's intrigued. This woman's something different, a glorious challenge, someone who isn't afraid to give as good or better than she takes. As Harry describes him to Kate during the critical, do-or-die moment, Petruchio is really just an "unstable, unbalanced exhibitionist who needs someone to think the world of him." Say it with me: awwww. :) I just adore Kate and Petruchio in this film, and the "wives obey your husbands" scene at the end is SO well played. I think the scriptwriter did a really great job translating Shakespeare's play to the present day.

Ratings-wise, this is probably a PG-13. There's some language and innuendo, bawdier than most regular Masterpiece fare, but so was Shakespeare when it comes down to it. :) Bawdy and hilarious in the best Shakespearean tradition, and  pro-marriage? Love it.

Rufus, m'dear, I promise I won't ever again let us spend so much time apart.

Miss Marple: Murder Is Easy

Spoilers...

Considering a new Marple episode is on Masterpiece Mystery tonight, I know I'm really late in posting about last week's episode a week late. But I was left, quite honestly, slightly freaked by last week's episode (I couldn't get my head around the idea of Christie writing an incest/rape plot), and wanted to read the novel before I blogged about the film. So now that that's accomplished, on to a bit about the film from the PBS website (because trust me, the film and the book are two entirely different things!):

Miss Marple coincidentally meets a woman on the train who confides that she is on her way to Scotland Yard to report two murders. "Murder is easy," the woman says conspiratorially. "As long as no one thinks it is murder." When Pinkerton herself is found dead, Miss Marple travels to the quaint village of Wychwood to pick up the trail. The village is populated with any number of suspects — a beautiful, young American on some sort of mission, a successful politician and an ambitious lawyer. But even with the help of retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam (Benedict Cumberbatch, The Last Enemy) will Miss Marple be able to unlock the secrets of this sleepy village?

In many ways this film resembles one of my favorite entries in the rebooted Miss Marple franchise - The Moving Finger. Both stories take place in what are, apparently, peaceful, tranquil little villages - the most unlikely locale for homicidal maniacs, right? Or not, as the case is proved here once again. To start with, I should say Murder Is Easy isn't actually a Miss Marple book. Before I'd even read the novel this week, it was easy to spot that Miss Marple co-opted at least half of the role of Luke Fitzwilliam (Benedict Cumberbatch). Miss Marple has been quite successfully inserted into non-Marple books in other episodes of this series (particularly By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is a Tommy & Tuppence novel). I'm all for inserting Miss Marple into non-Marple books, since those are rarely, if ever, filmed. And, at least to date, they remain fairly faithful adaptations of the original stories in basic essentials in spite of the new investigative presence. So, let's start off by talking about the "stunt" casting in this episode. :)

First up we have the aforementioned Benedict Cumberbatch (Amazing Grace, Atonement) as Luke, recently returned from policework overseas, and attempting to recalibrate to English life. As the main character in the novel, in order to "make room" for Miss Marple he loses half of his role. Luke's character isn't as compelling as I would've liked to see, given that I think Cumberbatch is a fantastic actor, but I did enjoy the scenes where he got to play off Julia McKenzie's Marple. Which brings me to my second favorite piece of casting - Russell Tovey (Little Dorrit) as Reed, the local constable. Tovey does a terrific job of playing Reed with the right balance of go-get-'em smarts and uncertainty at being caught way out of his depth investigatively. My favorite scene in the film is, I think, the sequence where Reed interviews several townspeople, and it turns out that Miss Marple is listening in from the next room, coaching him along with the occasional note. Tovey and McKenzie played off each other really well here, and were a lot of fun to watch.

It was great to see Anna Chancellor in a new project. Anyone familiar with the "Colin Firth" Pride and Prejudice will recognize her as the one and only Miss Caroline Bingley. She plays the doomed Lydia Horton, who "stole" the Major from Shirley Henderson's character, Honoria Waynflete. Hands down the creepiest bit of casting is Henderson (Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day). Henderson plays creepy and disturbing extraordinarily well. It's freakishly uncanny!! The woman is 44, apparently, but she looks a good 15 years younger than that at least, and her height (only 5'1/2") only reinforces her waif-like appearance. The idea of someone, who looks like Henderson, killing five people, just boggles the mind.

I ended up appreciating this film a bit more on the second viewing as a creepy show. The first time I watched it I went in expecting more of a creepy, cozy-style mystery, along the lines of The Moving Finger. You get that, of course, but then for reasons I've yet to figure out the filmmakers had to go for the low, salacious angle of having all of these crimes stem from the results of Honoria's mentally retarded brother getting drunk and raping her, resulting in a pregnancy which led to the randomly inserted American orphan angle, Bridget searching for her roots. (Speaking of Bridget, when she discovers her roots why is she not more...disturbed?! Just sayin'...) I'm not completely naive - I get that the 1950s weren't all Donna Reed, and a lot of crappy things happened then as happens today. But this movie seemed determined to show that veneer of gentility everything crappy and awful that could happen, did. I mean there's a fine (okay, sometimes it's a neon flashing sign, but whatever) line between a nicely mysterious, creepy story and outright distasteful. And I guess what I'm trying to say, is this show ended up more on the "eewww" distasteful end of the scale for me than not. Book vs. film comparison after my review of the novel, which will be in the next post.