Graeme O
A true masterpiece. And I don't mean Shakespearean. The sparse northern setting and Schofield's lead inject a raw urgency to the classic themes of the original play.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
04/09/24
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ashley h
King Lear is a decent film. It is about a senile old ruler, whose susceptibility to flattery proves his undoing. Paul Scofield and Irene Worth give good performances. The screenplay is a little slow in places. Peter Brock did an alright job directing this movie. I liked this motion picture because of the drama.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
Fine performances highlight Peter Brooks' stark version of Shakespeare's classic tragedy.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
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Audience Member
This film version of Shakespeare's King Lear is so grim, so determinedly devoid of any trace of aesthetic pleasure, that I had to start playing the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie immediately after finishing it just to remind myself that films are indeed capable of being enjoyable.The watchwords for the production of Peter Brookâ(TM)s 1971 film adaptation of King Lear seem to have been âbleakâ? and âstark.â? Jenny Spencer says in her article on Edward Bondâ(TM)s Lear that Peter Brookâ(TM)s stage version âreclaimed Shakespeareâ(TM)s text for a post-Holocaust age by highlighting (often grotesquely) its bleakest, most Beckettian aspects.â? This assessment holds true for Brookâ(TM)s film version, as well. The film certainly does seem like Shakespeare filtered through Beckett, minus Beckettâ(TM)s gallows humor. It is cold and uncomfortable to watch, but deliberately so. The film seems to intentionally discourage direct emotional involvement from the audience; rather, it wants the audience to reflect critically on what they see.
Every aspect of the filmâ(TM)s look and feel contributes to the overall sense of desolation and bleakness. The cinematography is in harsh black and white. There is absolutely no music anywhere in the film. Scenes are often silent, except for the dialogue â" no subtle ambient noise to make scenes feel more naturalistic. When there is ambient sound, it is only that of wind or rain or the waves at the beach. Rarely have I been so aware of, and felt so oppressed by, the sheer silence in a film. The film really sets its tone quite well with its opening shot, which shows a large crowd of motionless extras staring at something in complete silence. The only way I could be sure that I was seeing actors and not wax statues was that one of the extras blinked a couple of times.
The costumes do not especially remind me of any particular location or time period, but if I had to guess, I would say nineteenth-century Siberia. The sets are sometimes spare and minimalistic â" Learâ(TM)s palace in the beginning of the film seems to have only benches and the throne in an otherwise completely bare and featureless room. The throne itself is one of the only interesting pieces of scenery in the entire film: shaped like an oblong egg, it seems to hide the king within itself and isolate him in shadow. The exterior locations are all barren, snowy, and endless. The locations remind me of C.S. Lewisâ(TM)s description of hell in The Great Divorce: a great gray, empty landscape where melancholy souls are separated from each other by impossibly long distances. Shots of characters moving through those locations are often taken from high in the air, to emphasize how small and pathetic and alone they all are.
Most of the acting has a similarly distancing effect as the visual and aural style. Especially towards the beginning, the actors are often seen in static close-ups and speak in monotones with little in the way of movement or facial expression. It frequently seems like a production with a cast of robots. It is not that the actors are unskilled; the relative blankness and lack of emotiveness of the acting is surely an artistic choice. In particularly dramatic moments, the actors do become more fluid and human, especially Paul Scofield as Lear.
From the standpoint of sheer cinematic technique, the storm scene is probably the filmâ(TM)s most interesting moment. Brook allows the rain to actually wet the camera lens, blurring the images and drawing attention to the presence of the camera itself. The scene is also characterized by its extremely jagged, off-putting editing techniques, which at moments achieve an almost strobe-like effect. Directorially, one could argue that the scene is actually trying too hard and the technique becomes distracting, but even so it would be worth considering exactly what the scene is trying to do.
The screenplay for the film seems to have been composed by taking a meat cleaver to the text of the play. Large swathes of dialogue are cut out or truncated all over the film. At first I tried to follow along in the text to see which parts were cut, but this quickly became a headache. Suffice it to say that much, if not a majority, of the dialogue that does not contribute directly to the plot has been cut out. Certain plot developments and changes of location are dealt with by means of simple title cards, such as the one that informs us: â Gonerilâ(TM)s castle: The banished Duke of Kent is now disguised as a servant. He seeks employment from the King, who is now living with his daughter Goneril.â? It is as if Brook wants to simply get to the point without letting too much fancy language get in the way.
The overall effect of Brookâ(TM)s film version is uncompromisingly bleak. The film has its grim, existentialist interpretation of the play firmly in mind from first shot to last and never, ever deviates from that agenda. While it is not the most enjoyable film to watch, it is an impressive example of a Shakespeare film that single-mindedly provides one well-defined reading of its play.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
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Audience Member
Brook's Lear is a new conception, a rethinking, and a critical commentary on the play. Much to talk about and discuss in the classroom setting, but it is just too academic to make a fully realized film.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Under Peter Brook's direction, against a grainy, grey and darkly atmospheric Lithuanian backdrop, this screen version emerges a gem-like masterpiece resplendent in haunting visual and dramatic magic. Scofield's Lear is a richly-layered magisterial virtuoso performance without the gaudiness, reflecting the subtle iridescent shades of love and loss, the rigours of parenthood, vanity, pride and the virtue of patience. Brook's depiction is marked by an unbridled visualisation of metaphor and symbolism set against a timeless moral compass. Compulsive viewing with the touch of the Sphinx - and very hard to forget.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/21/08
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