#If it’s done with more of a cynical eye then fourth wall breaking/characters’ realities breaking down is not as good

[deeneedsaname]

Been rewatching the Amazing work of Gumball and I think we need a good word for media that’s marketed for children but has huge meta/existential plots like that show, Lego Movie 2, etc because that’s the stuff that kills me

[douxreviews]

The Hollow Crown - Series Review

“Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

Occasionally, television reminds us that it can be a brilliant medium. It is easy to become cynical, believing that only a show that pretends to be reality or a comedy in which good actors spout terrible dialogue can be aired. Then, just as we despair, along comes something truly genius. The Hollow Crown is truly genius.

It is a series of four of Shakespeare’s history plays. Often performed together, these stories take us from the late years of Richard II’s reign through the reign of Henry V. Although we will never know if Shakespeare intended for these plays to be performed as a series, they work as one. The stories lead on to the next; characters appear in more than one; and, references are often made to earlier plays.

The BBC, once again, didn’t hold back when producing these four shows. Each has a dream cast and a dream director and they were all filmed on location in England. The music is gorgeous; the sets and the costumes are lush; the cinematography is stunning.

Shakespeare is not an author you can watch with one eye while doing the crossword. His language is dense and, because he wrote in the days prior to special effects, much of what is happening is spelled out in some detail. Your reward, however, for paying attention and concentrating on the play at hand is some of the most beautiful language ever written, at least in English. When that language is spoken by some of the greatest living English actors, it becomes magic.

Richard II

The story takes place over the last two years of Richard’s reign and shows us the rise of Harry Bolingbroke who will become Henry IV. The cast is magnificent, especially Patrick Stewart who, I would argue, is among the best of the RSC old guard. And, on a personal note, can I just say that James Purefoy in period costume works so much better than whatever it is that he is currently playing in The Following.

Like so much of Shakespeare, this play is much more complex than one would initially suspect. On the surface, it is about one king losing his throne to another. It is, however, so much more. It is the story of two men who face off against each other. One is a born leader; the other not so much.

Ben Winshaw, who deservedly won a BAFTA for this role, plays King Richard as weak and entitled, convinced by the divine right of kings that he is untouchable. As he makes the decisions he does, even without the benefit of history, we know that they are wrong and that he is making his downfall inevitable.

Rory Kinnear plays Bolingbroke, Henry IV by the end of the play. He plays the role with subtlety and grace, yet underneath it all is a man conflicted and tormented. He never wanted to be king; he just wanted back what was his.

The best example of this disparity is in the language used. Richard never strays from the royal plural; Bolingbroke never uses it once. Now Henry IV, Bolingbroke understands that the divine right of kings has been turned on its ear and his guilt at what he has done, both to his cousin and to the monarchy, is stunningly conveyed in the final scene.

This play is not performed often, but it should be. It is as strong as the three that follow it.

Henry IV, Part One

Many years have passed, and Henry IV is ensconced on the throne. He has aged and now is played by Jeremy Irons who is simply wonderful. “Uneasy lies the head” being a true statement, Henry has spent his reign wrestling with his guilt and with the constant threat of civil war as not everyone is thrilled about who is wearing the crown.

To make matters even more troubling for our king, his son and heir Hal is a right pain in the ass. Instead of hanging out with his father at court and becoming a mighty warrior, Hal chooses to spend his days hanging out in an Eastcheap tavern with Falstaff and other lowlifes. Tom Hiddleston plays Hal and does so with gusto.

Herein lies the tension of this play. Hal has two fathers; the king whom he disrespects and Falstaff whom he disrespects even more. Henry has two sons; Hal who makes him furious and Hotspur (one of the great Shakespearean names) who is not his son, but is the warrior supporting the crown. The problem is that Hotspur is hotheaded and feels that not only does he have a right to the throne as Richard’s true (and declared) heir, he has earned it.

The inevitable battle is truly epic and tough to watch. The producers did not hold back and the flying arrows and sword fights look amazingly real. Extras roll around in the mud and, at the end, all of our heroes look truly filthy and exhausted.

Hotspur and Henry face off and we see Hal become the true heir to the throne in front of our eyes. The language helps, but Hiddleston plays the scene to perfection as everything from the tone of his voice to the way he holds his head changes and becomes more regal.

Simon Russell Beale is the finest Falstaff, ever (he, too, won a well-deserved BAFTA). So many actors play the role going for the obvious laughs. Beale, on the other hand, manages to inject the character with pathos and humanity, and his paternal love for Hal is obvious to all. Admittedly, some of the humor is lost as a result of these choices, but I didn’t miss it. For maybe the first time ever, I understood what Hal saw in such a horror of a man.

This version is filled with wonderful character actors, too numerous to mention. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t send a shout out to Julie Waters who plays Mistress Quickly to perfection. These plays are slight on roles for women, but Waters manages to jump off the screen, going toe-to-toe with both Hiddleston and Beale and, more often than not, winning.

Henry IV, Part Two

This is my least favorite of the four plays, but I did like the choices that Richard Eyre (the director) made in his cuts. He turned what can be a turgid and, let’s face it, dull play into something interesting to watch. He turned it into a play about becoming old and facing death.

King Henry is approaching his death and he frets about the unsuitability of his son to wear the crown when he is gone. Although it takes a while to get there, the final scenes between Henry and Hal are mesmerizing. Irons and Hiddleston are wonderful as the mantle of power is passed, literally as Henry crowns his son. The very brief moment before all this happens, as Hal sits on the throne with his crown, tears running down his face, actually made me well up.

Hal’s other father is aging as well. Falstaff is completely deluded about what Hal’s becoming king will mean for his old friend. Convinced that a life of leisure and sack is just around the corner, Falstaff is biding his time. The scene in the tavern with Doll was tender and lovely. Here is an old man, aware of his mortality, trying to drum up sympathy for his plight. It is all too late, as his past actions are catching up with him.

Never do they catch up more than at the end of the play and Beale plays Falstaff’s final humiliation to perfection. Genuinely shocked by Hal’s change of heart, the emotion races across his face while the newly crowned king dismisses him out of hand. Hiddleston plays this scene extraordinarily well. It is clear that he is doing what he must and what he believes is right, but there are hints that he wishes he could have avoided this scene all together.

Henry V

The producers were up against it filming this play. Undoubtedly the best known of the history plays, it is filled with speeches that are so well known, they are quoted and paraphrased in nearly everything one watches. Additionally, every English actor worth his salt has performed the role at one point or another and Kenneth Branagh filmed a version that would be tough to beat.

It is also, arguably, the most English of all Shakespeare’s plays. By that, I mean it is patriotism in its purest form. The English king, a reformed bad boy, travels to France and, against all odds, triumphs over his adversaries. Throw in the St. Crispin’s Day speech, and I want to stand tall and salute the St. George’s Cross.

The Hollow Crown version, although not the best, worked in terms of the series. It brought to a satisfying close the arc of a weak king, succeeded by a stronger king, succeeded by the most famous king of them all. Hiddleston was better as the younger playboy than he was as a fierce warrior, but when Henry disguises himself to walk amongst his troops before the battle, he was believable -- we had already seen it.

The problem I had with this version is that Hiddleston is on his own, and he doesn’t quite carry it off. He does not have a Jeremy Irons or a Simon Russell Beale with whom to interact and his final scene with Princess Katherine should have at least some degree of sexual tension. This did not.

Having said that, I pity anyone who has to take on the St. Crispin’s Day speech and make it his own. This one was fantastic. Rather than shout it from the ramparts, the director chose to have Hal speak it to “a happy few” and to speak it from the heart. I found myself grinning at the end of it.

The end was also an interesting choice. The director chose to have Falstaff’s boy, who appears sporadically throughout the play, age and turn into John Hurt who had been voicing the role of the Chorus. He breaks the fourth wall in the final moments and it worked. It reminded us that we are watching is, indeed, history and that time passes for us all.

I’m convinced that if Shakespeare is looking down at some of the schlock being performed in his name, he is sighing with relief at these. I’d like to think that, like me, he wishes they hadn’t stopped, but had continued on with Richard III.

ChrisB is a freelance writer who spends more time than she ought in front of a television screen or with a book in her hand.

[griffincastle]

Dempsey is a unaltered piece of comic relief

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

Yea, he is definitely the silliest boy out of the 4 but I still think he is more than that! 

Dempsey is supposed to be more like you, the player, than any other character. When you finish the Origins easter egg you see the cut-scene via His eyes. He breaks the fourth wall as his Ultimis character numerous times in a way that he’s the only character you can identify with. In BO3 he is the only character that greets Richtofen’s plan with healthy skepticism (while Takeo undeniably trusts Richtofen, and Nikolai undeniably distrusts him.) If Nikolai for example was the “us” character, nothing would happen because his cynicism is too intense for things to move in a positive direction. If Takeo was the “us” character that is just not realistic because he reached the 7th stage of consciousness and the 4th stage of enlightenment 9 years ago, and honestly we are just a bunch of young people growing up in a life that Requires healthy skepticism to survive. In the Revelations cipher he is the last one alive because that will be us. When we lose the boys (or any incarnation of them) we will be the last to see what they have done. He is super important as this silly-boy but his unique perspective immerses you in the game! 

Plus he has a unique emotional dynamic. He starts taking a reality check after Der Eisendrache, then he is Mr. Depresso on Zetsubou, and after that he is so fragile and caring with his teammates with his comic relief that he serves as the catalyst for things to actually move forward story-wise (as a common friend to the 3 very different needs the others have.) 

[wu-mo]

In-between Pseudo-Realities:

A (Fictitious) Conversation between Trinh T. Min-Ha and Jean-Luc Godard

It is widely acknowledged that the U.S. reality show has little interest in truth or facts: it is apt in turning image of the real and traditions of documentary into a narcotic commodity to imbibe. For example, the specimen from this line of products, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, operates on the impetus where reality, fiction and voyeurism feed on each other. Below are sections of a conversation between Trinh T. Minh-Ha and Jean-Luc Godard on directing The Kardashians Movie, a documentary on the making of the pseudo-documentary TV show. Taking on an extreme subject, the directors gauge the reality show itself as a subject of reflexive documentary while critiquing each other's proposed approaches.

Trinh: As many reckon the Kardashians’ success as a tragic fall of public decency and the end of privacy in the digital age, I for one am not at all interested in their staged lives as a subject. These women are no different than any other businessman or woman who knows exactly what the consumer needs, except the product they sell is their own images as TV personalities; they are at once the producer and the consensual commercial good. Their production of these images has, therefore, a complex relationship with factual reality. One cannot simply reduce their TV life to “fakeness”. For the very act of selling their image is, in fact, part of their reality. That relationship, as well as that between the spectator and the actor, creates symbiosis in between reality and fiction.

It is certainly worth noticing that in the making of reality shows, the techniques and doctrines of conventional documentary are utilized as a means of familiarization—however absurd the setting is—so the audience can more easily identify with the characters and be absorbed into the plot. This is Hollywood’s original program—what reality shows are selling is no different than any fantasy drama product. And I believe that, in an exaggerated sense, it mirrors certain problems of documentary filming itself.

It has long been a concern among filmmakers that, even serious documentaries that work with the most rigorous of facts still face problems in regard to what constitutes as “the objective truth”. There is no such thing as documentary—whether the term designates a category of material, a genre, an approach, or a set of techniques (“The Totalizing Quest of Meaning,” 90). And this is why the Kardashian Show—not the Kardashians—makes an intriguing and difficult subject because the show is an extreme example of how an expected diction of documentary is manipulated into pure entertaining. With that in mind, I would like to introduce my own voice as narration as I edit the footages of staged interviews, of the actors themselves and of the TV crew. I do not wish to speak for the documentary subject—which is essentially an industry that I am not and hopefully will never be part of—but rather speak nearby it and acknowledge the power of my cinematic gaze to (mis)represent, directly to the audience, for inevitably, my own critique on the U.S. TV industry will affect the film. This would be, in short, reflexive documentary. I am curious as to how you would approach the same subject, Mr. Godard?

Godard: You and I share distrust in documentary as a medium to convey reality. I have myself used what is traditionally viewed as documentary device in fiction works,by challenging the convention that the sheer form of interviews provides an access to truth because it gives an opportunity for the interviewee to, as it were, speak reality—this is a narrative assumption the audience is conditioned to make, and it needs to be broken. I recall some of the other documentary elements I have employed: my own voice-over narration, having the actors to break the fourth wall constantly by asking them spontaneous on-set questions through earphones… I have also noticed similar strategies in your films such as Surname Viet Given Name Nam, where you inform the viewer that the interviews are pre-staged in numerous ways. I admire your attempt at acknowledging the power of filmic gaze in both Reassemblage and Surame. However, what we face now is an entirely different sociopolitical context. Earlier you have regarded products like this TV show as a caricature of documentary, which I agree, but I must disagree with your attempt to detach your narrative from the subject when you are indeed making a documentary instead of only using documentary elements for fictional purpose. Because we are not filming a third world country: this is the U.S. entertainment business; the subject is a privileged system of both consumers and sellers of flat-out poison. The narration on power of cinematic gaze and the lack of objective truth in documentary is only acknowledged but not further actively utilized in this particular context.

I would rather rely on the power of film image as ideologies in itself. And since we already have a group of actors as subjects, why not use that and exaggerate the absurdity that is already their daily life? If, say, the current episodes of this TV show operate on the illusion of reality, then I would like to push that illusion until it is distorted into a visual anarchy. I will give you an example. Evidently, it has become a cosmetic trend these recent years for women to “contour” their faces—by putting darker shades in the hollows of one’s cheeks and highlighter above the cheekbones, nose and forehead, this is done so that the face appears slender in front of cameras and in real life. I was informed—by a make-up artist for my last film—that women all over the world, of all ethnicities, are doing this now; and that Ms. Kim Kardashian all but single-handedly created this trend. And there I stood, watching the makeup artist turn an actress’s face into something else in front of my very eyes. Like all filmmakers, I was trained to consider what things appear in front of a camera, but it seems that we have reached a point where people literally fake dimensions of their visages on a daily basis and take photos alone in bathrooms. It is increasingly hard to tell who is the audience. I can already imagine contouring as a visual metaphor in this film. Extreme close-ups of cosmetic application. Through tipped or inverted angles as if the cell phone is accidentally left behind. All is still scripted, but unlike the way reality shows are scripted to mock reality, my editing of these footages would be stripped of a linear narrative or any normative cinema conventions. Ultimately, the audience should acknowledge they are voyeurs peeking into an elaborative scam.

Trinh: There are two things I would like to discuss. First, the image you have just painted is in vivid, conscious violation of Hollywood codes, and I understand it is used to defamiliarize and destabilize the viewer’s senses in order to break them out of the illusion. I have used similar techniques myself and frankly, I would not be surprised if our films came out looking or even sounding somewhat alike. Secondly, while we share a belief in the power of defamiliarization, I am afraid we use similar devices to achieve fundamentally different purposes. Mine is to first dissolve the establishment of totalistic meaning, while yours is ultimately to promote the ideologies you believe in by battling the ones you do not.

My narration is not aimed to detach itself from the subject. It is quite the opposite in this case. I will explain why. It is utterly important to consider that, underneath all the apparent Kardashian Vulgarity, there is a set of self-correcting powers entertainment like this is equipped with. People, including this reality show’s most avid watchers, already know it is utterly addictive, amnesiac junk, but detoxification is not easy. Therefore, despite the attempt in détournement, you would still miss what you might consider the sociopolitical imperatives—what truly fuels the success of shows like this. Which is that the real power of its blatant vulgarity lies not in gimmicks such as employing documentary or quasi-documentary elements, but in its automatic assimilation of any possible criticism thrown at its way. It is by the same impetus that, a critical, anti-paradigm cinematic work always risks becoming the new “norms” that are consumed as aesthetics in the course of time—is a danger that many Western filmmakers have to face. Where is the limit of the truth you are advocating? Because on the “opposite side” is the near comic evil brilliance of mass entertainment: the awareness of its own toxicity, plus the ability of making “inside jokes” about said toxicity in harmless ways so we, the voyeur, feel much less guilty, lonely, disgusting and more comfortable with consuming larger doses of it. That is very intricate self-reflexivity at work—almost a photo-negative of what my narration will try to address. In other words, our subject fuels on people’s obsession and their distain. It is precisely through the layer of irony that it shields itself from any real damage. And this is what I would like to include in my narration. That the Kardashian Film is staged not just the way a normal intelligent person would imagine it is staged, but also in the sense that it knows it is meticulously designed to be an invitation for the viewer to see through the layers of manipulation and vulgarity. Any contemporary audience can discern satire, but in the mean time, they are all-too familiar with the concept to the extent that our attempts—be that your hyperbole or this very reflexive narration—might not serve as much stimulation as we would like them to, and any cynicism or critique it might invoke will probably become a teleological end in itself. Still, it is a risk worth taking, or at least a message worth acknowledging, and that is what I would like the audience to know.