All's Well that Ends Well

Forgive me a second post on Shakespeare in Love. I watched the bonus materials the other day, and when I saw the deleted scene that would have been the ending of the movie, I knew I had to do a post about why the director made exactly the right choice by deleting that scene and using the one that actually ended up in the film.

First, a brief synopsis of each scene.

Deleted Ending: We see Will alone in the theatre, and Viola comes in to bring him the money he won in the bet with Lord Wessex. From across the room, she says, "The Queen bids me say goodbye," and tells him the queen also wants his next play to be a comedy, to which he replies, "I'm done with comedy." She then crosses the room and they have their brief, tearful goodbye kiss. She leaves and he starts after her, but Burbage stops him with a meaningful look. Burbage then looks at the money bag and says, "A hired player no longer. Welcome to the Chamberlain's Men" (which had been Shakespeare's goal at the beginning of the movie). Will looks after Viola, but then smiles ruefully at Burbage (as a sign he's accepted his fate, I suppose). The next scene shows the two of them walking down the street with Burbage telling Will the Queen wants a comedy for Twelfth Night, and then the scene changes to Will beginning the script for Twelfth Night, leading into the final scene in which Viola is walking across a beach (which is also in the final version of the movie in slightly shortened form).

Final Version of the Ending: The first thing I noticed is that the camera shots are closer and the lighting is more intimate, which immediately sets a different mood. Viola brings the money to the backstage area, and Will says, "My Lady Wessex," both as a greeting and a question. She acknowledges it without a word, then gives him the money and says, "A hired player no longer." They reflect a little on what happened between them, she encourages him to keep writing, and she tells him the Queen wants a comedy.  He replies, "A comedy? What would my hero be? The saddest wretch in all the kingdom, sick with love?" She says, "It's a beginning," and then together they begin to lay the foundation for a plot. She uses Henslowe's running gag from the movie ("It's a mystery...") and then they have their tearful goodbye. She pulls away and says, "Write me well." The scene then picks up the same basic ending as the deleted scene, to have Viola on the beach.

As a viewer of the movie, I know the second scene was infinitely more satisfying as a way to end the story. As a writer, I can look at the two scenes and see why. The version that made it into the movie allowed for the emotional threads to all be pulled together; the deleted scene, on the other hand, was a bit detached. Hey, you should find yourself tearing up at the end of the relationship between these two characters we've come to know and love. Introducing Burbage into the final scene takes us away from that.

I also thought the scene that was kept contributed to the development of these characters. What, at the end of the movie??? You wouldn't think there's anything else we need to know about them, especially since their story is over. But the scene added even more strength of character to Viola. She's now stuck with this pompous jerk of a husband, stuck going to an uncivilized country half a world away, and yet in the scene, she's not bitter or  despairing. Will actually seems more bitter and torn up about it. Viola reassures him, "all ends well," even though she doesn't know how. And she understands (and helps him understand) that even though their relationship is now ended physically, through the power of his writing, they can always be who they were, together forever.

Wow. The first scene brings the plot to a close; the one they kept brings a depth that really helps elevate this movie above being just another movie with a love affair and lots of kissing. Even at the end the characters are growing. The scene gives the story (which is pretty sad, basically) that element of hope that I believe is so important.

(And I love the fact that even in that scene, when he is an actor and a lover first, we can still see the inkstains on Shakespeare's fingers. He is always a writer.)

I couldn't find the entire scene as one piece, but here is the last part.

Getting My (Literature) Nerd On

I'm one of those annoying people who can't just sit still and watch TV. Normally, I'm doing something else at the same time - catching up on my blog reading, or checking Twitter, or (confession time here) grading papers. Today I sat down to watch Shakespeare in Love with intentions of working on the syllabi for my spring classes, which start next week (yikes!). But I didn't get a thing done. For two hours I sat and was completely entranced by this movie.

This movie has some of the same glaring errors as Elizabeth (which I watched last week, see previous post), most notably disregard for historical fact when it got in the way of the story.  The biggest error was having tobacco plantations in Virginia as a major point in the plot. The movie is set in 1594; I know from our family's vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina this past summer that the English were struggling to get a colony established in the New World at that time. Actually, 1594 would be only a few years after John White found the English colony at Roanoke deserted. It would be another 10 years before the Jamestown colony was established. So the threat of having the heroine of the story about to be married off and shipped to Viriginia was completely bogus.

"Body Natural" and "Body Politic," or, What I Thought about While Watching a Movie

One of the pleasures of these days when the family has gone back to school and I haven't yet is that I have control of the TV remote.   A few days ago, I found the movie Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett, and today I got the chance to watch it.  I wasn't completely thrilled with it, but I enjoyed the historical "spectacle" with all those great costumes, I learned something about British history (from going to read stuff after watching the movie), and I discovered Joseph Fiennes is a beautiful man, ha ha.

The movie seemed to jump around from one genre to another. Sometimes it was historical epic, sometimes it was spy flick, sometimes it was love story, sometimes it was philosophical drama.

As history, it's clear the movie took some license with events to improve the story, and especially that the timeline for events was collapsed. The broad strokes are accurate enough; the struggle between Mary I and Elizabeth over the succession to the throne was real, as was the constant pressure on Elizabeth to choose a marriage with political benefits. I admire the filmmakers for finding a way to make Elizabeth's efforts to create religious compromise interesting as a plot device, and I liked their portrayal of her initial ineptitude as a ruler, taking advice that led to a disastrous invasion of Scotland. On other important points, though, the movie definitely distorts history; there's no evidence Mary of Guise was assassinated, and Robert Dudley most certainly was not involved in a plot to remove Elizabeth from the throne. Dudley apparently remained as one of Elizabeth's favorites for the rest of his life.

If You're Going to Write Something Historical, Study Some History!

My family has been off at a day-long retreat today, so I had the television to myself. That means I hunted up movies with some sort of historical link. I ended up watching Brothers of the Frontier and part of Two Mules for Sister Sara. In each case, I found myself questioning some of the history in the movies and getting rather irritated.

I was actually not so much irritated as questioning when the French pulled out what appeared to be a Gatling gun in Two Mules for Sister Sara. I remembered from a trip to the Museum of Arkansas Heritage (where they had a firearms exhibit up) that the Gatling gun was invented during the American Civil War. A quick trip to the internet told me the French invaded Mexico during roughly that same time period, so at least the gun existed to lend at least a shred of truth to the story. However, further reading convinced me that there wouldn't have been a Gatling gun in that French stronghold in Mexico; the U.S. Army didn't actually adopt the gun until 1866, meaning it probably wouldn't have made it into the hands of foreign armies just yet by the time the French were defeated in Mexico. So while it's plausible, it's just not very likely. I don't care that a Gatling gun made for really dramatic battle scenes; it is historically inaccurate and shouldn't have been in the movie.

At least the Gatling gun in Two Mules for Sister Sara was plausible. There were so many things in the Brothers of the Frontier movie that were just plain wrong. In a nutshell, the story is about a family that is driven away from their home when a greedy, proud neighbor falsely accuses their oldest son of theft. The family leaves for the West and gets separated on the way, leaving the three sons alone in the wilderness. This story was supposed to have taken place in the Alleghenies of the 1700s. But let me tell you, whoever wrote this movie and whoever did props and costumes apparently made no effort whatsoever to find out what people wore in the 1700s. The mother had on the standard form-fitting "pioneer woman" costume with what looked like Battenburg lace on the collar. Battenburg lace???? Are you kidding me? The Alleghenies were still frontier territory during the 1700s - this woman would have been lucky to have a very simple linsey-woolsey dress.

I also caught them using the term "OK" throughout the movie. I know from research for my own writing project that "OK" didn't come into common usage until the 1820's. And their dog! It was one of those fluffy little white "Benji" types of dogs. No self-respecting pioneer family would have a cutesy dog like that! They would have a hound or some kind of terrier that could pull its weight, not just be a pet.

Well, I could go on, but the family just got home and it's bedtime. For my two cents, these movies are just wrong...if you're going to write historical stories, get the history right!

How Long Until July?

If nothing else, the Harry Potter series has forced on us the virtue of patience.  We would anxiously anticipate the release of a new book, devour the book in a day or less, and then have to wait another year (or more) for the release of the next one.  The same is true of the movies based on the books, although I think the wait between Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2 is going to be the most agonizing yet.

I've said before that I thought the first movie stuck a little too devotedly to its book, while others (like The Half-Blood Prince) seemed to wander a bit far from the original (not that I'm necessarily opposed to that, unlike my husband and son).  This latest movie stayed fairly close to the material in the book, and in some ways, I think it did an even better job with the storytelling than the book did.  I'm thinking specifically about the chapters in which Harry, Ron, and Hermione were wandering around the countryside trying to figure out how to find horcruxes.  In the book, those chapters (honestly) seemed to drag a little; in the movie, a handful of establishing shots (of some very different and very beautiful landscapes) accomplished what took lots of words in the books.  That allowed for more emphasis to fall on the characters, and I must say I am greatly impressed with the way these young actors brought out emotions.  I had never much liked Ron's character, in either the books or the movies, but Rupert Grint sort of changed my mind about Ron in this movie by giving him some depth I'd never considered.

Of course, I absolutely love Hermione, and this movie made me doubly appreciate just how invaluable she was to Harry during his mission (I want that beaded purse!). Emma Watson plays the character with a combination of a sort of grim understanding of what she's gotten into and a certain vulnerability that really shows what she's giving up to help Harry.  I guess that's what I liked best about this installment of the series. In the other movies, the actors are portraying what's on the page; in this movie, the actors are enriching what's on the page.  My husband has commented a couple of times on how well Jason Isaacs portrays a Lucius Malfoy who is fresh out of Azkaban; Lucius has lost a whole lot of his swagger, and Isaacs actually gives Lucius a slight tremble that really captures the essence of how his world, personal and public, has been turned upside down.  That's not an exception, either; David Yates seems to have pulled good performances out of everyone.

The action sequences were sufficiently thrilling, and the scary scenes were delightfully creepy.  But I think what I enjoyed most (being the English major geek I am) was watching these young characters take on the mantle of adulthood in a situation in which the stakes are impossibly high.  Story arc, you know.

The movie ends in just the right place, too.  When the credits started to roll, I wanted to stand and say, NO!!!! NOT YET!!!!!  July is so far away!

A Little Poetic License, I Suppose

The other night the kids and I watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I have to admit, I'm not much of a movie watcher, and I got bored and wandered off to clean the dishes or something. Part of the problem may have been that it wasn't much like the Alice in Wonderland I remember from my youth. There were the basic characters, but the plot seemed entirely different. My son (who has read both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass) said the movie is Burton's take on what could have happened - in other words, a sequel that was never written.

This is not anything new. I remember hating Melissa Gilbert when I was a kid because of what that TV show did to the Little House book series, LOL. And as a student of literature and communication, I understand that a movie director is producing a different work than the original book, and that the director has a certain degree of poetic license to produce his/her work.  A faithful adaptation of a novel doesn't always satisfy; the first Harry Potter movie seemed a little too self-conscious about sticking close to the book, in my opinion. With a long book, a director simply has to leave some things out - who wants to sit for more than three hours watching a movie? (Well, I take that back - my husband has been known to sit and watch all three of the Lord of the Rings movies in one sitting - the extended versions).

Sometimes, the director does a great job capturing the "soul" of the book, even if there are significant changes from the book. The Lord of the Rings series is the best example. Although Shelob was in the second book, it made narrative sense to put her in the third movie. My husband and son were upset because there was no funeral for Dumbledore at the end of the Half-Blood Prince movie. I'm suspending judgment on that, thinking that may be the place where the first half of the last Harry Potter movie will start. If so, I think that's a reasonable use of poetic license.

What I do have a problem with are movies that give only lip service to the original work. One clear example is Stuart Little. Ugh, I hate that movie! There's very little in that movie that comes from the book. In fact, it almost seems like the people who produced this movie weren't all that interested in the story in the book; all they wanted was the character, the mouse who lived with a human family. And even with that, they significantly changed Stuart's character from a dapper mouse in a tiny suit (see Garth Williams' rendition above) to a more casual "skater" mouse.

So what? So, my daughter sees no need to read Stuart Little; she's "seen the movie, Mom!" 

We're going to nip that attitude in the bud...she saw an ad for the Beezus and Ramona movie and asked to go see it. I said, "You have to read the book first." Next thing I know, there she is, curled up on the couch reading it. Yes.....