conuly

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Mostly this is because we needed something to study so I can get a few months of writing work with her before she hies off to high school, and she wasn't interested in anything conventional.

Not that she's terribly interested in movies, but if I remember I can make popcorn.

Thus far we've watched Sweeney Todd, Billy Elliot, The Sound of Music, and (tonight) West Side Story. At her behest I think we're going to end up with Black Panther next week. She strongly didn't like West Side Story....

Any other suggestions?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

siderea

Or heck, Branagh's Much Ado is charismatic enough to get over the original-text hump (captions help).

So, I was a big fan of this until I saw the Whedon's Much Ado, which was, as they say, a revelation. I realized upon seeing it that not only hadn't I really understood what it was about*, apparently neither had Branagh or anyone on his team.

The Whedon version is way, way less fun. That's actually the point. It's not supposed to be a fun "comedy". It's actually very dark, and very, very angry. And parts of it are very difficult to watch. In Whedon's version, it makes perfect sense that Hero faints dead away when she does and that the other characters might reasonably assume she just died on the spot.

So while the Branagh version is fun, I don't recommend it for understanding the play.

* The title "Much Ado About Nothing" is meant ironically, and is ironically and snarkily (like the protagonist!) expressing how the meat of this story – which is about women's lives – is considered unimportant, "nothing". It's how what is life-or-death for women is considered "much ado about nothing" to the men who control their lives and dispose of them casually.

From:

greghousesgf

I never did like how we're supposed to think it's a happy ending that Hero took Claudio back.

From:

siderea

...I'm not saying you're wrong to feel that way, but. "Take him back"? There are exactly four possible outcomes from Hero after what Claudio does to her on her wedding day:

1) Become a whore 2) Become a nun 3) Become dead 4) Get married by Claudio

The thing about the Whedon version which was so revelatory to me was that unlike the Branagh confection, it actually manages to page in to consciousness what one might know about Shakespeares' society and the status of women there and then, and make it clear just how horrifying what was done to Hero actually is and why Beatrice is devastated and homicidal over it.

To quote another play entirely: "I'm a girl in a world in which// My only job is to marry rich// My father has no sons so I'm the one// Who has to social climb for one". Hero has one job: to marry well. Once Claudio publically denounces her for unchastity – slanders her – she is unmarriagable. She cannot do her One Job. Which is why her father wants to kill her, if she turns out not to be dead. Friar Francis pleads with him for mercy, that if they can't get this sorted out, she can be sent away in secret to be a nun.

The only man who can marry her – and save her life – is the bastard who slandered her. He can recant his slander, and prove he means it by going through with the marriage. Nobody else will touch her. So it's him or the grave or the convent or the whorehouse. (This later option isn't even discussed, but it's kinda where courtesans come from, so should be taken as understood.)

Hero doesn't "take him back". She allows herself to be married to him. She does not protest any love for him, nor even joy at the occasion. When she is unveiled to him, she rebukes him: "And when I lived, I was your other wife: [unmasking] And when you loved, you were my other husband. [...] One Hero died defiled, but I do live, And surely as I live, I am a maid." (i.e. "SURPRISE! Yes, I am a virgin, you son-of-a-bitch").

And, technically, Claudio doesn't agree to marry her. He agrees, as penance for murdering Hero, to marry whomever is under the veil, sight-unseen.

It's not a love story. It's a Hero-isn't-destroyed story. It's a "feel good horror story", to use a term from an article that went viral recently, talking about "heart warming" stories that were only heart warming because they involved the victims of injustice and inhumanity managing to not be destroyed by virtue of the mercy and grace of others, stories which perversely illuminated how awful and unjust what befalls so many people in our society is. And that's what Much Ado is. Isn't it wonderful that Hero doesn't have to die or go into a convent or a whorehouse for the rest of her life, because the faithless bastard that dropped her like a hot rock because he trusted bros before hos was tricked into marrying her, yay? It's supposed to make you queasy. It's a feel-good horror story about how traditionalist society treats women; and, more fully, what it means to be a feminist ally, and how patriarchy makes romantic love at least fraught if not impossible.