King Lear
by Richard Eyre
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Flynn; Ian Holm; Amanda Redman; Paul Rhys; David Lyon; Victoria Hamilton; Adrian Irvine; Michael Simkins; Finbar LynchDirector: Richard Eyre
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 150 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-28
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: WGBH Boston
Movie Reviews of King Lear
Movie Review: THE LEAR JET EXPRESS TOO HEAVILY ABRIDGED; SEE JAMES EARLE JONES IN THE PARK INSTEAD
Summary: 3 Stars
One school of cinema says you start a scene in the middle and end it before the action ends. This we see here. Shakespeare snipped.
I hope and pray the coming Pacino production respects the text, and uses the Quarto written for the King's original Saint Stephen's Day production, not the naked later Folio version edited for groundlings and a later censorious King who did not like astrology mocked. Shakespeare of course ducked the divine prohibition by setting this in pre-Christian Britain. I hope the Pacino version might use the full conflated text as developed by Professor Tucker Brookes in the great The Tragedy Of King Lear (The Yale Shakespeare).
But I have not so much faith in present scholarship and literacy.
Here in this presentation with Ian Holm we have the streamlined, aerodynamic version, which loses far too much in its editing for "efficiency" and modern dramatic theory.
It's all about Lear; we lose the Fool, as did Nahum Tate, but not as much.
This Fool by the way is EXCELLENT, and absolutely correct, the best actor of this and the best Fool of any other filmed . The elderly Lear would neither care for nor even recall a recently arrived "boy" but a longstanding companion like Kent he would dearly recall as part of his psychological make-up, his counselor and medic, as he enters the dark night of dissonance and discord and madness. This is the excellent Fool; unfortunately most of his lines are removed in this express edition.
We also lose the great and long lines of Kent in response to Oswald asking "What do you know me for?" a marvelous and varied response here lost entirely.
Of course no British production permits the wonderful lines: "Fee, Fi, Fo, fum! I smell the blood of a British Man!" which we are only permitted to hear in video recording in Joe Papp's excellent Shakespeare in the Park production filmed live in 1974 with a young and virile Raul Julia as Edmund, and the greatest American Shakespearean actor, Mr. James Earle Jones. This Joe Papp production has the finest edition of the text ever played, as the most comprehensive recorded in any media. No problem. Great actors, and great staging (even if Paul Sorvino was having an off night). The staging makes great sense of lines which otherwise lack clear context. For instance, when the Fool is saying the lines with Halter, Daughter, Slaughter, etc. he is stealing food from the table avoidng her wrath, after she had found him hiding under the table rather than following the King (a great wheel rolling downhill).
In this Ian Holm production, the old Fool remains at the table until driven off, trying to win favor from Albany in order to get a new patron than the mad King, a good choice and true. But then the whole daughter, slaughter, halter bit is cut, and we lose much.
Olivier cut John Hurt's excellent fool and the Ian Holm production cuts this excellent and properly, equally elderly Fool, for some the one character as essential to the play as a Greek Chorus in Euripides, as essential as a good, wise and trusted friend to a great man losing his grip. It is a serious fault to cut him off.
We may doubt the Fool in Joe Papp in some few aspects, but at least he has all of his lines, and expresses them more or less properly, including the most bawdy ones. We are blessed by the Joe Papp production; it is the best we have. It is the one we must see to know the fullness of Shakespeare's Historical Chronicle of King Lear. Rene of the impossible last name is EXCELLENT as Edgar, the best in any production, and plays especially well off Raul Julio's half brother Edmund, and off Gloucester, even as Sorvino fails. I can not speak highly enough about this marvelous production, full of life and reality and of course as a live staged presentation, broad theatrical gestures and costuming and projection despite the clip on mikes (including one strapped around the naked Edgar). Once our government sponsored such free and sophisticated and top notch professional and scholarly theatre in Central Park; may we return soon to this former glory.
I therefore advise you to get at all costs the Joe Papp version at King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive) and to skip over this unfortunately seriously, tragically abridged Ian Holm production.
Summary of King Lear
This spectacular film version of the award-winning Royal National Theatre production of King Lear stars the immensely celebrated actor Ian Holm. Critics used every superlative imaginable to acclaim Holm's performance in King Lear when it was first staged. The Sunday Times called his performance, "Timelessly classical, harrowingly modern and unforgettable," and The Evening Standard wrote: "Holm's triumph is indisputable total." The Royal National Theatre production of the Shakespeare classic has now won the award for Best Actor (Ian Holm) and Best Director (Richard Eyre) in the Evening Standard Awards, the London Theatre Critics Award and The Laurence Olivier Awards. Lear, King of Britain, has three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Intending to divide his kingdom among his daughters according to their affection for him, he asks them to say which loves him most. Goneril and Regan profess their extreme affection, and each receives one-third of the kingdom. Cordelia, disgusted with their hollow flattery, says she loves him according to her duty, no more or less. Infuriated with this reply, Lear divides her portion between Goneril and Regan. Eventually the two daughters reveal their true heartlessness and a tragic chain of events are set into motion.Art House & International DVD Video
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