Cymbeline (1982)

One of my all time favorites.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This play gets lots of flak, and I think unjustly. I see it as Shakespeare experimenting with everything he knew how to do simultaneously. It works for me, and the results are astonishing, especially the ending. I liked the cast and I enjoyed the setting, though it was a strange choice for a play set during the reign of Augustus. It looks like the Netherlands during the era of Rembrandt, so that creates some discontinuity between what they are saying and where they are. My wife pointed out, and I agree, that it is very odd to think that any woman would forgive a man who had ordered her murder. I wish Fellini were still alive to do a version of this. If Tarsem Singh decided to take on this play that would be something. Now that Joss Whedon has directed his first Shakespeare...

Cymbeline is often seen as problematic, and it not among those of Shakespeare's works which receive the most attention. "The Tragedy of Cymbeline" features Cymbeline as a smaller character who end the play joyous and alive, more clement than before after having realized his error. The plot is a bravura tangle -- a tour de force of Shakespeare's power of creating mazes of deception and misconception, then resolving everything in a symphonic final scene. In a sense, it is plotted like a Shakespearean comedy but otherwise written like a Shakespearean tragedy (in the scene where Imogen decides to disguise her self as a man -- as so many of Shakespeare's comedic heroines seem to -- she also earnestly and poetically begs Pisanio to kill her), becoming interestingly uncanny.Elijah Moshinsky, in directing this production, takes the wise move of playing the script deadly straight (except or course for definitely comic elements such as Cloten's self-love) and wringing as much drama from the play as possible. Largely it works very well, and Cymbeline is, as it should be, an emotionally powerful journey. The effect is aided by good atmosphere and appearance -- these BBC TV productions sometimes show humble origins, but here the appearance of a bleak, and largely empty castle where many scenes take play, and that of similar landscapes outdoors, enhances the mood. The greatest positive attribute, though, is a cast with many extraordinary performances. Helen Mirren headlines and is excellent, making Imogen always believable -- a strong person overwhelmed by circumstances. Michael Gough is wonderful as Belarius in a very sensitive performance that makes the character palpably guilt-ridden, but loving and possessed of pride (this performance makes me wish Michael Gough had done much more Shakespeare). Robert Lindsay is very memorable as Iachimo, taking a rather upsetting sensual pleasure in all his villainy. Richard Johnson is notable too with a fairly eccentric but very good performance as a grumpy, sulky, and cantankerous King Cymbeline, and Claire Bloom is chilling as his villainous wife. Sometimes the pace lags, but it is worth this for the attention paid to hitting all the vital moments of this play. I'm glad the only full screen performance we have of this play is a good one, sensitively directed and blessed with excellent acting from many hands.

The BBC Shakespeare series often posed a problem - low budgets, stage-bound performances, odd camera-work, leaden pace - but this version of Cymbeline, one of my favourites of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, is not that bad.Certainly it suffers from the same low budget and lack of location work, but it manages to transcend this with a largely excellent cast. Richard Johnson and Michael Gough, Claire Bloom and Helen Mirren, Paul Jesson and Graham Crowden, especially, keep the verse moving and get truly inside their characters. Mirren is heartbreaking as Imogen, with her husband exiled, and herself assuming a new identity in the wild when her life is in danger.Some scenes work less well than others - the dream of Posthumous when he sees father, mother, and Jupiter (the scene gives Marius Goring and Michael Hordern a chance to shine, but it is preposterous), and the final scene's poor acting from Michael Pennington - usually reliable he goes too OTT here. But the scene with Imogen and the corpse she thinks is her husband ... and the mock-seduction scene with her asleep and Iachimo in wicked mode (Robert Lindsey, not that believable in much of this play but good in this scene).This Cymbeline is good, mainly because it is really the only time the difficult play has been put on the screen. Within the BBC series it is one of the better ones, not too stagy, not too bland.And the musical arrangement of 'Fear no more the heat o'the sun' is beautiful.

It would be much easier to make a laundry list of complaints about how "Shakespeare didn't know what he was doing," or "everyone and everything bores me," but let's do it the hard way and see what's here.This is one of those late plays that academics can't classify as a tragedy, comedy or history. This is not a mistake of Shakespeare's, but a deliberate choice. "Cymbeline" is crammed full of incident, sprouts multiple strands running off in all directions, and miraculously pulls itself together at the end. In fact, some critics refer to "Cymbeline," "Pericles" and "The Winter's Tale" as the Miracle Plays.So, assuming just for the moment that Shakespeare did know what he was doing, how well has he been served here? Helen Mirren as Imogen is herself a miracle, "in the moment" at every moment, totally committed to her character. John Kane and the ubiquitous Paul Jesson bring similar conviction to Pisanio and Clothen, respectively.Michael Gough surprises with his model delivery of Shakespeare's language - clear and natural. More likely to be remembered for some spectacularly grungy horror movies, Gough has done his own reputation a disservice with his enthusiasm for constant work no matter how scuzzy the script. This is his only appearance in the Shakespeare series, and that's a real pity.Richard Johnson rasps and scowls well as the King (check out his IMDb.com bio for a few surprises). Claire Bloom flirts with a Disney concept of an evil stepmother without quite going over the line. Michael Pennington acts everything that can be acted about Posthumus without the gift of making you care.Robert Lindsay, so grand in comic roles in "Much Ado" and "Twelfth Night," here is the inverse of Helen Mirren, without a single moment of truth as Iachimo - a fumbling, external attempt at a villain by an actor outside his natural range.Elijah Moshinsky's direction is of a piece with others of his in this series. Ignoring all Iron-Age references in the script (Julius Caesar is not long dead), Moshinsky's fascination with Old Masters' paintings gives us a coherent through line to the production, with a particularly wonderful mountain snow set designed by Barbara Gosnold. Occasionally the director provides a striking image, as when one character converses with the mirror reflection of another.However, Moshinsky's editing is occasionally clumsy. When Iachimo presents his false proofs to Posthumus, the camera stays on one character or the other for far too long, and often the wrong one. We strain to see the other character, and aren't allowed to. This is distracting, maladroit, and just not good enough.However "Cymbeline" has much to recommend it, and Helen Mirren's performance alone is worth the price of admission.