Blog 14 (Cody)

The theatricality and mise-en-scène at the beginning of the McKellan/Loncraine Richard III bothers me somewhat, especially relative to Richard's opening soliloquy in the playscript.  I understand Iris's comment regarding the merging of the public/private dichotomy, but I feel as though the ceremonious joviality does not do justice to the affective tension--insofar as I experience it--aroused within the opening soliloquy.  When I read Richard's soliloquy, I'm caught between pitying him and loathing him.  Obviously, he possesses an internalized hatred for his deformity and what this handicap prevents him from doing and, as such, resolves himself to be the play's villain by pitting Clarence and King Edward against each other.  However, the McKellan/Loncraine adaptation does not seem to allow for a comparable degree of affective tension.  Rather than seeing Richard standing alone on a London street, we see him enjoying some out-of-context ballroom festivities.  Rather than seeing Richard voice his self-hatred and pain in a serious and solemn manner, oddly enough we see him relieving himself at a urinal.   In effect, this filmic version seems to insert gratuitously impertinent moments of humor and frivolity where, instead, we could be receiving a much more nuanced representation of Richard's psychology as it relates to his tensional role as this play's villain.

Having not scene the rest of this particular cinematic adaptation, my above comments could certainly be premature; nonetheless, the opening presentation of Richard is vital for setting up the audience's perception of his character throughout the rest of the play.  In this filmic version, McKellan's Richard does not really excite within me any particular feelings about his character.  And I feel that much of this reaction (or lack of a reaction) has to do with the theatricality and mise-en-scène and, more importantly, how most of our attention is not on Richard but, rather, on other aspects of the scene (i.e. Annette Bening dancing with a child (her son?), with Edward, and with Robert Downing Jr.'s character).  I wonder, if Richard's soliloquy were used as a voice-over during this scene, how might this have changed the audience's/my initial perception of this character?