Richard III

What is the origin of the evil in Sam Mendes production of Richard III?  Kevin Spacey plays a Richard that will take its place with the great historical renditions of the role and the citations of Mussolini (strung up by his heels), of Qaddafi in his epaulets are quite clear as is the reference to technology (in this case image creation by way of a large screen TV) as the whipping boy of fascism. Elias Canetti wrote a book called Crowds and Power and the crowds in the Bridge Project's rendition of the play abet the evil. This Richard III is not a modernized Shakespearean production influenced by Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Instead Mendes leaves the final chapter of The War of the Roses as a history play that freely partakes of the future.  So that besides our latter day tyrants this Richard is firmly anchored in fantasy and science fiction and could easily be subtitled The Empire Strikes Back. The Star Wars analogy is made clear from the beginning in the futuristic typeface used to project the names of characters who dominate individual scenes. The current production parenthetically also makes one ponder the Shakespearean origins of Star Wars (and other similar fare) with its ornate universe of evil and in the end as Spacey finally holds court and the perspective of the stage is deepened, the set does momentarily take on a sci-fi quality. But Mendes, the director of American Beauty in which Spacey also starred, is known for his visual effects and the stage at BAM is transformed into a buffet of visual references to die for including one scene in which Mendes presents the London Underground as Magritte might have imagined it, with bowler hats and yes clouds. Spacey played Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, a character who only acts the part of the cripple as a cover up. Spacey’s gnarled Richard isn’t covering up anything and while the malignity is as superhuman as the performance (whose portrayal of gratuitious evil surpasses even the actor’s John Doe character in David Fincher’s Seven), the shock value comes in the recognition of something almost true to life.

The White Ribbon

Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon has already been exterminated, exfoliated and hermaneuticized, and will undoubtedly be the subject of numerous PhD theses. But let’s cut to the chase. The film’s historical context, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarejevo, immediately forces the viewer to pluck out his or her retrospectroscope. Should the viewer call to mind Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which throws cold water on the banality-of-evil theory invoked by Hannah Arendt in Eichman in Jerusalem, or turn to Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power to understand the impending sense of doom and horror that grows amidst Haneke’s astonishing, unflinchingly beautiful set pieces? Christian Berger’s cinematography owes more to Zeno and Parmenides of the Eleatic School of pre-Socratic philosophy than to film-school technique, as his black and white shots strive towards a prison-like stasis. It is almost disturbing to detect motion in some of the compositions, which are interrupted by movements so discreet that we at first mistake them for trompe l’oeil.

   

Etiology and innocence are the themes that Haneke (The Piano Player, Caché) is playing with, and his mise en scène is virtually inextricable from the narration. The oppressive luminescence of sunlight on snow is one of the recurring images in this exploration of human sadism and childhood’s lack of innocence. The butchering of an already crippled bird, the torture of two children (one retarded), the tripping of a horse and rider, an adolescent put to sleep with his hands tied to preempt masturbation—these are just a few of the images woven into a tapestry of evil that becomes a work of great beauty. Evil beauty is not an oxymoron if we consider The Divine Comedy, or Nancy Milford’s book about Edna St. Vincent Millay, Savage Beauty. Emily Dickinson's memorable line, “Split the lark and you’ll find the music,” gives a hint what Haneke’s getting at, only in this case it’s the music that leads to a dead bird. One can’t help can’t help but think of Bergman’s Winter Light. Haneke’s stern pastor is a dead ringer for Gunnar Bjornstand, who plays a similar role in the Bergman film. The two cinematic personae are due for a tête a tête.