Twelfth Night or What You Will (1996)

If Shakespeare were this dead, we'd all be reading Ben Jonson instead.

Pretty pictures and big names don't guarantee the illusion of life.

We need people to move, to have energy, to make us care about what happens to them. It's a comedy, remember?

This was more like a glossy coffee-table picture book of fabulous house interiors. An uninhabited house.

Shakespeare wrote a whole raft of interesting people.

I wanted to get interested in these people up there on the screen, but they were all on life-support, like a group coma punctuated by an occasional wake.

"O for a muse of fire!" Or at least a director with some.

Fmovies: In one of the DVD extras, a producer praises director Trevor Nunn as knowing more about Shakespeare than any man in England. (Not true, it's John Barton. But that's another story.)

Unfortunately, Nunn attempts to demonstrate his erudition in this beautifully photographed, somewhat medicinal misfire. In an attempt to serve up Shakespeare to everyone, he's bogged himself down in self-conscious paralysis. Despite the beautiful images and the star-studded cast, this is an airless, spineless lump.

Imogen Stubbs (Mrs. Nunn) is quite fine as Viola, and Richard E. Grant maintains great energy as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Just about everybody else is sabotaged by a leaden pace and a heavy directorial hand. Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio is destroyed by the glacial tempo, and Helena Bonham Carter's charm wilts at half speed.

Mel Smith is beautifully cast as Sir Toby Belch, but is also just too darn slow. In a major miscalculation, Ben Kingsley's plays Feste as a menacing ex-con, perhaps Abel Magwitch strayed in from "Great Expectations." This is a Killer Klown from Kornwall.

And in order to keep things this sluggish, at least a third of the text of the play is missing. It's the language that makes Shakespeare immortal, not the plots. Bad idea....

Oddly enough, in group scenes, actors often lose character, just standing around staring blankly at whoever is talking. You never see this in films, and you shouldn't. It should never happen.

There is a 1969 ITV version circulating with Sir Alec Guinness as Malvolio and Sir Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby Belch to remind us of how far we haven't come.

But best of all is the 1980 BBC DVD with Felicity Kendall, Sinead Cusack, Alec McCowen, Robert Hardy and Robert Lindsay. That "Twelfth Night" is an ensemble delight from beginning to end, with a full text and virtually flawless in engaging the play successfully on every level at once. Run, don't walk. It's a genuine treat.

In writing Twelfth Night (and the same goes for many other of his romantic comedies), Shakespeare showed that he was not only a genius at dark tragedy but also at light comedy. I saw a junior college production of this play which did live up to Shakespeare's intentions, which was in fact so funny I was falling off my chair.

Unfortunately, director Nunn will not allow a hilarious slapstick comedy to just be a hilarious slapstick comedy. Apparently he succumbed to the notion that everything Shakespearean has somehow to seem profound, which in this case results in an attempt to transfer this light, sparkling comedy, full of deliberately overdrawn characters and silly lines and pratfalls, into a brooding tragedy in which pompous ass Malvolio acts as if he were, or imagined himself to be, Hamlet caught in the wrong play, while clown Feste is misanthropic to the point of sadism. There is no suggestion of comic timing anywhere in this film!

It appears that once Nunn decided to insist on a modern-dress version, he adopted as his mentor the let's-portray-the-messed-up-dysfunctional-household school. This is stupid. A better mentor would have been a closer modern equivalent of what Shakespeare was doing in this play. Something like I Love Lucy or Amos 'n' Andy or The Honeymooners, in other words.

One thing that entirely puzzles me is: why the devil didn't Nunn exploit the particular advantages of the cinema in depicting this gender-bender story of a girl impersonating a look-alike boy? Why in sam hill didn't Nunn have a male actor who is skilled at female impersonation, or an actress skilled at impersonating males, play both roles on a split screen? (See, for the sort of impersonation I refer to, Vanessa Redgrave as the trans-sexual tennis player in Second Serve.) In other words: Why transform a stage play into a film at all, if you're not going to put the advantages of the cinema, as opposed to those of the stage, to work? Nunn's treatment of this play is not only a mangled interpretation, it's unimaginative.

Ben Kingsley is the only performer who does very much with his part, and what he does he does very well. His acting creates a very interesting character, and his interpretation of Feste is certainly consistent, but it receives no support whatsoever from the text.

Twelfth Night or What You Will fmovies. Trevor Nunn's adaptation of Twelfth Night is exceptionally beautiful, well acted, and emotionally engaging. Ben Kingsley's performance as the Fool stands out as magnificent, but the entire ensemble comes off very well. The film nails both the joy and the darkness of Shakespeare's play - and the play, make no mistake, contains plenty of dark and strange moments when things go, as the drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch says, "Out of tune, sir." The filmmakers deserve credit for not glossing over the shades of sadism in Toby's treatment of Malvolio or the shallow fickleness of Orsino's character. The wintry Cornwall setting dovetails perfectly with the mood of the play, half sun and half shadow, and the costume design (roughly Edwardian, though I am not an expert on fashion history) creatively evokes the luxury of Orsino and Olivia's courtly world, while allowing for - even necessitating - the brilliant re-imagining of the Fool as bohemian vagabond.

As with most Shakespearian comedies, the plot is deeply implausible. However, the excellent Cornish locations at St Michael's Mount & Lanhyrock give a good sense of place and the winter setting (apart from the scene of apple picking!) comes across well - it really does look like an English winter, rather than a picture postcard snow-scene.

The play is cut down to a manageable length without losing the sense of it, The broad comedy aspects (Toby Belch et al) are thankfully limited.

The acting is well done by a cast of British stalwarts. Amazingly, Viola and Sebastian actually do look broadly alike.

This film is best viewed as an amusing light romantic comedy rather than a side-splitter.

Reading other reviews of 'Twelfth Night' it is interesting to see that some people think it is a slow film and others quite fast. It gripped me from the opening gust of rain on a dark night to Feste dancing off into the sunset. Grappling with Shakespeare is a perilous activity but I thought Trevor Nunn brought out the comedy and the emotions of the story well. It is a film to make you smile at the follies of mankind but also their charm.

Ben Kingsley is amazing. I've never seen Feste played that way but it seemed perfect. Imogen Stubbs does the comedy and the drama equally well. The scene with Orsino in the bathtub is a stock one but she does it beautifully, balancing the humour of the situation with the tenderness and the longing. Imelda Staunton brings unusual depth to the character of Maria. The rest of the cast are great too.

The text of the play is changed around but not unnaturally so. The scene that cuts between Feste's song and Viola/Cesario and Orsino playing cards is wonderful, taking in eight of the characters and telling you more about them. The last act of the play is difficult to stage well but Nunn gives it a good shot.

The Cornwall setting is lovely, the radiant sunshine, the green leaves and fine buildings are captured gorgeously by the cameras. I also liked the music very much and find some of the tunes quite hummable.

Very enjoyable and worth seeing again and again.