For better and for worse, we’re living in an age of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings. We absolutely should comment about the shortage of original material, but we can’t let the products of the remake machine go to waste. Everything we produce reflects something of our time and quality back at us, something we should understand and take with us. Remakes are necessary things that give us new lights and angles where we can examine stories. Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, a love story between two giant hams, and a play usually produced with the express purpose of providing a venue for giant hams to fall in gigantic bantering love with each other, gives us a great opportunity to look at the art of the remake.
Much Ado is a rich, quotable comedy, with Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 adaptation the long-standing Definitive Film Version that you can absolutely use to bluff your way through a classy Shakespeare-quoting life. Yet (long may Branagh’s version reign), seeing Whedon’s version revealed a new depth to this play I had seen and read so many times in so many forms. Whedon’s version completely remakes the play from the ground up, and his version poses a question that I hadn’t even thought to ask: in watching Much Ado, do we want a great story, or a great performance?
Full disclosure: I love Kenneth Branagh. I love his version of Much Ado. I love his Hamlet. I love his Thor. I love that he so loved the world, he gave it Tom Hiddleston when he had the chance to trap that rainbow-made-flesh in a crystal and keep it in the chamber of secrets beneath his house.
I love that someone slipped him a giant roll of money and said, “Please take Chris Pine and this Jack Ryan movie off our hands,” and then he shrugged, cast himself as the villain, and come December I will be morally obliged to cackle my way through the end result, whose 2-minute trailer contained no dialogue that couldn’t also appear in the far more compelling gay porn version (also starring Chris Pine, or turned into a lesbian thriller starring The Good Wife’s Archie Panjabi and Keira Knightley, not that I’ve thought about this). What follows is an objective breakdown of two films I care for very much, but I had to clarify my personal stakes in the game of Branagh, which he always wins unless it’s against Emma Thompson. Let’s go.
Speaking of goddesses: here’s Emma Thompson.
Branagh’s Much Ado doesn’t open with this shot of her, but it opens with her beautiful elocution running over some inspirational misandry. This opening poem-song uses the word “nonny” a couple of times, so it’s a good SHAKESPEARE, BITCH kind of introduction.
Beatrice reads aloud from the meta companion to the festival of banter and slut-shaming she and her fellow denizens in the Land of the Peasant Blouses will live for the next week (110 minutes), but what she’s reading aloud tells us nothing about the characters present, their relationships to each other, or why Denzel and his leather pants can ride into this villa with some friends and fuck up their bucolic splendor. However, it does sketch out the very basic theme of the story about to unfold: men were deceivers ever, so hey nonny nonny! Too blasé? Whatever. Tuscan villa.
If you’ve seen Branagh’s Much Ado, you’re hearing the music. You’ve fallen over laughing and immediately sat back up again because these are some smug as hell guys riding somewhere. You’re thinking of all the butts.
We aren’t even offered a look at the full line of officers first: no, first we have to see each of these hams up-close and how awesome Branagh thinks he looks on his horse, and then they all cheer—because the war is over? Because Italy? Because Denzel? (Because Denzel.) It’s absolutely a performance of triumph. They don’t look like they’ve been away from their homes fighting for their lives and property, and that’s fine. Between Beatrice’s adorable introduction and the officers’ fun, flawless arrival at Leonato’s house, Branagh’s version immediately promises a comic romp in a too-beautiful setting with too-beautiful people spouting too-perfect dialogue at each other, and he promises that we’re going to eat it up.
Right away, Whedon narrows the scope on his adaptation to focus on people. It doesn’t matter in these early moments if the audience can identify immediately who they are; what matters in this moment isn’t who they are, but the story unfolding between them. The audience doesn’t know what town they’re in, who these people are, how long they’ve known each other—like the characters, all the audience has are these few silent moments to piece together a relationship and prepare for the next part of the story to come.
Until this opening, did any of us realize how much of a genuine human element could exist between Beatrice and Benedick? They’ve lived for centuries as opposing blocks of monologue, but here Whedon brings them into a too-small room with each of them baring too much of themselves. Benedick’s silent departure, Beatrice’s wide-eyed disbelief that he’d actually leave—all of it makes a hurt that will feed the animosity and affection to come.
When I mentioned earlier that Shakespeare’s Much Ado was a love story between two hams—that was only a little facetious. We talk about Branagh emphasizing performance in Much Ado, but that isn’t just because Branagh is himself a giant ham kept alive by the squawking of his own voice (that’s an added bonus). When Branagh plays up the performance aspect of Beatrice and Benedick’s relationship and courtship, he stays closer to the original text of the play. Branagh sets Beatrice and Benedick’s first scene in a courtyard, the two of them circling each other as they bicker in front of the other characters. Branagh portrays this as a public display of antagonism because the rest of their relationship feeds and thrives on their obsession with its public perception. When Beatrice and Benedick are separated, they wonder how to present themselves to the other; when they meet, they dissect their behavior and tease each other about how they’re perceived by the other characters. When they finally confess their true feeling to each other, the feelings are a glance on the real question between them: how will you publicly declare yourself to me?
In Whedon’s adaptation, the opening battle of wits happens separate from the other characters—the audience sees that this is something between Beatrice and Benedick, but not anyone else. Brought into this space and made into a moment that exists just between them, it achieves the same purpose as its Branagh counterpart but it embraces its cinematic style. While Branagh’s version seeks to emphasize the format of the play, one of standout and disjointed moments, Whedon tries to sculpt a narrative in his version. That isn’t to say that Branagh’s version has no narrative, but his version provides very little sense of an overarching personal narrative linking the characters together in a meaningful way.
When Whedon was making the publicity rounds promoting the film before its release this past summer, a lot was made of the fact to film the movie in his own house. For many fans, it was the chance to see the lair he called home and the site of his mimosa-soaked literary brunches that eventually brought out his spin on Shakespeare for an audience wider than “my friend Nathan Fillion.”
So in looking at the stronger sense of story and personal relationships Whedon creates in his version, we realize how the setting does much of the heavy lifting in making Much Ado seem like a story between actual human people. It isn’t that Whedon brought the characters into his home, but he brought the characters into someone’s home. If filming in his house started as a gimmick and a way to save overhead, the end result shows that using a home brought out the genuine connections between characters that other adaptations haven’t been able to emphasize. We see this especially in how Whedon’s version presents the characters of Beatrice, her cousin Hero, and Leonato, who in other versions seem family only in name.
Whedon makes Beatrice, Hero and Leonato the core characters of the story, and all it took to emphasize this was to have them talk around a kitchen island or linger at the dinner table before another scene. There’s easy, familiar banter between the three of them that, in other versions, becomes buried when the Benedick rolls into town and his “merry war” with Beatrice steamrolls everything in the vicinity. Whedon’s version allows his audience to become emotionally invested in the characters, something incredibly necessary when the play’s climax involves betrayal on so many levels.
It’s difficult to get the same sense of character in Branagh’s version, with the best British stage actors of two generations and Denzel Washington frolicking through an actual Tuscan villa. For better and for worse, an audience can never quite lose itself in the story, or lose the sense that they’re watching extraordinary performances in an extraordinary space—and that’s the point. While Whedon’s version actively works to create a story from the half-dozen different threads running through the story, Branagh’s version embraces everything that makes Much Ado such a good but weird comedy for our tastes.
Where Whedon scales down Shakespeare’s ridiculous and bombastic characters into more human dimensions, Branagh sends a camera off on a helicopter to film the entire cast and dozens of extras frolicking through a cascade of petals while an invisible chorus sings into infinity. Benedick, hearing that Beatrice loves him, frolics in a fountain while the heart of the universe blares the score and signifies a quick entr’acte sandwich break for those watching at home. The aforementioned cast of those greatest British stage actors—none of them speak their dialogue, but yell at every possible opportunity. All of that could be too brash, but that’s where this particular setting comes in: none of these things need to be contained on a stage or someone’s actual living room. Branagh never keeps his cast inside when they could be outside delivering a monologue in a hedge maze, laughing uproariously while they host a modest party for 300 people, or attending a wedding disaster where Robert Sean Leonard flips over a half-dozen pews to show that he’s real mad about stuff.
This talk about great performance or great story comes to a head in the play’s climactic scene: the disaster wedding where Hero is accused of betraying Claudio because she “knows the heat of a luxurious bed.” (Please feel free to nominate in the comments other Shakespearean insults that we can adopt as contemporary compliments because this can’t be the only one.)
The two wedding scenes embrace the two filmmakers’ different approaches to the source material, and it’s here that the audience can see the full effects of their chosen paths in adapting the text for the screen. The wedding in Whedon’s version plays out like a genuinely trashed wedding: the music stops and the players ugly cry at each other for long, uncomfortable minutes. Whedon keeps the more melodramatic elements of the scene (Leonato yelling at his heartbroken daughter, “Hence from her! Let her die!”) so their intensity in a down-to-earth comedy of bitchy, beautiful people makes for an experience in this scene that can’t easily be shaken. The intensity of the scene and the darker ones that follow wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if we hadn’t been drawn into the story of this family early on and allowed to feel like this is the betrayal—not of Hero cheating on Claudio, but mild-mannered Leonato turning on his daughter when she most needed him.
If the version of the wedding in Branagh’s adaptation is difficult to watch, it’s not because of emotional investment in the characters. Rather, because Branagh’s version so focused on the intensity of performance, the bar for how many incredible things can be unleashed on the scene has been set that much higher. Where Whedon’s version has crying, fainting, and yelling, Branagh’s version has all that and Claudio flips a few pews. Claudio twists Hero’s arm and then shoves her so hard she flies over a bench. The score fiddles on as Hero wails and faints into her family’s arms, only to have her father drag her by the hair and throw her into the grass before he slaps her across the face (and, of course, screams into her face, “Let her die!”) How does anyone look away from a scene with so much chaos and genuine violence coming from every angle? It only works because Branagh’s version has been built from the beginning on a larger, almost unbelievable scale where everyone laughs louder, pushes harder, and wails bitterly before everything is made okay again.
Even though I posed the question “great performance or great story” early on in this piece, I hope I’ve shown that it’s not ultimately about one or the other, but about multiple versions with different strengths working together to show audiences something that other versions neglected. Here, we’ve seen Branagh’s version better emphasizes the performative aspects of the original story with a combination of stage acting in hyper-cinematic presentation, while Whedon’s version lifts out of the play a story between the characters that other adaptations hadn’t even thought of presenting before. For purest insanity in closing party scenes, though, Branagh wins hands down because seriously what is even going on here.
These alternate versions that complement each other absolutely applies to every new re-imagining shuffling its way into movie theaters and TV every year. There are no losers when juxtaposing multiple versions of one work. There are no losers when creating multiple versions of one work because, ideally, this is the kind of discussion every reboot or remake should generate in its own canon/fandom. Implying there’s “one” “true” version of something doesn’t take into account everything that another version has to contribute to characters and story, and when we cut out the possibility of other versions, we deprive ourselves of better understanding what we like and why we like it.
Further Reading/Viewing:
Much Ado About Nothing full text (scene-by-scene | one-page)
1993 film (dir: Kenneth Branagh) (Amazon | Netflix | iTunes)
2012 film (dir: Joss Whedon) (Amazon | iTunes)
Tags: as you like it, hams, joss whedon, kenneth branagh, michelle vider, reboots, shakespeare
ps I love this whooole piece, especially the butts.
yeah those are some BUTTS, man
to quote Big Sean – ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS (ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass)
Butts.
But (AHAHAHA) yes, the clear humanity of Whedon’s Much Ado versus Branagh’s romp. I think you can also use both movies as posters for their styles, in general: Branagh is ornate and raucous and Whedon takes the weird and makes it very personal. Like, “I betcha your boyfriend seemed to hate you after you had sex, didn’t he” personal.
“Full disclosure: I love Kenneth Branagh. I love his version of Much Ado. I love his Hamlet. I love his Thor. I love that he so loved the world, he gave it Tom Hiddleston when he had the chance to trap that rainbow-made-flesh in a crystal and keep it in the chamber of secrets beneath his house.”
This is why I joined the cult of Vider. OK, now I’ll finish reading.
This is the best explanation I will ever have to give to people as to why I sneakily peek at the Thor 2 tag on tumblr like… every day in graduate school.
I LOVE THIS. I love that this exists after today’s Link Roundup. I loved both films, but found myself laughing out loud more during the Whedon adaptation. (Maybe I “got it” more, then?) The comedy shone through — that, and ALL THE BOOZE.
That said, the casting of the Brannagh version is exquisite. We actually watched this in my “Women in Comedy” literature class a few years ago, and all the students laughed uproariously when Keanu appeared on screen. (Just… he wasn’t who we were expecting?) My professor looked up the NYT review, which gave Reeves glowing praise.
Yes agreed! The Whedon film pulls of the feat of making the play funny. Like, not just “Shakespeare funny” (okay, Twelfth Night is actually funny), but a really fresh and modern funny. It helps that Nathan Fillion is a million times better Dogberry than Michael Keaton.
YOU WATCH WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT MICHAEL KEATON
I REGRET NOTHING!
Fillion > Keaton
OH MAN, THE BOOZE. Clark Gregg: actually drunk onscreen all the time, or just most of the time?
This was such a great piece!
Also, I remember my film teacher showing us the ending of the Branagh Much Ado and telling us that the whole thing was a guy with a steadicam who then steps ONTO a cherry picker and that’s how it gets up so high in the air without a single cut? I do not know if this is true.
OH MY GOD. THE CHERRY PICKER THING IS NEW TO ME. It sounds so goddamned insane it has to be true. that’s how facts work, right?
guy with a steadicam in a cherry picker- i’m seriously losing my mind. who DOES THAT.
What’s next on Branagh Day at The Toast???
KEEP IT COMIN’ LADIES!
I’d cry if this were a real thing.
We… we were just talking about Much Ado in another thread… I even mentioned the word “nonny!” Toast and Michelle, this is the best gift ever! <hearts for eyes>
It’s a sign that you really need to make it your ringtone.
Right?? That task moved swiftly to the top of my “To Do List” (or should I say, “To Ado List?”).
“I love that he so loved the world, he gave it Tom Hiddleston when he had the chance to trap that rainbow-made-flesh in a crystal and keep it in the chamber of secrets beneath his house.”
AMEN. I’d like to keep Tom Hiddleston in my chamber of secrets if you know what I mean (sorry). Also am 100% in support of your truly brilliant idea for the lesbian thriller version of the new Jack Ryan movie.
“…brought out his spin on Shakespeare for an audience wider than ‘my friend Nathan Fillion.'”
Ahaha I’m loving the mental image of Nathan Fillion sitting around and listening, enraptured, to Joss’ Thoughts about Shakespeare.
I’ve never seen the Branagh version, but I did see a live version here in DC last year and then saw Whedon’s version. I loved both, but I think I UNDERSTOOD more of Whedon’s, but of course, I’d seen the story already, so I knew what to expect and could focus on the language. And I absolutely love the chemistry between Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof.
Hie thee hence immediately and watch the Branagh version already! You will not regret it, and not just because of the butts and the nonny and the surpassing glory that is Emma Thompson.
I had to run down here a moment to talk about the VERY CLEARLY FROM my favorite queer high school movie “Bend It Like Beckham” Archie/Keira character-shipping, because of course her sister and her bff would get together while she runs off with Rhys-Myers. Because it is perfect. The end.
now butts.
I always though jess would drop rhys-meyers’ character while in college and end up with jules, but I like your idea too. the idea of a lesbian thriller starring knightley and panjabi is amazing and I would most definitely pay for that
The best thing about Branagh’s version is Emma and Ken playing one of the greatest Shakespearean couples. It’s was fun and silly and thoroughly enjoyable. Only exception being Keanu Reeves (I think I’m still traumatized).
But Joss the wonderful wizard of Oz Whedon is the one I would want with me if stranded on a desert island with my ipad. Amy Acker’s Beatrice gave our beloved Emma’s a run for her money.
Emma Thompson is really ridiculously good looking in that movie (I mean, all day, erry day, also, BUT)
Omg she was stunning! Maybe it was the healthy glow from the Italian sun or those crisp virginal white peasant tops but I had the biggest girl crush on her for a long time afterwards.
Also, a contributing factor was the glow of love she shared with Branagh.
Aghh I can’t wait to watch the Whedon version!!
I am a HUGE Keanu Reeves fan. HUGE. As in, I think he is a totally radical dude as a human being and I like a lot of his movies. I always have been and I always will be a huge fan.
I remember watching this movie… I must have been 13 or 14 when I first saw it, and thinking “Wow! This movie is so great! It’s definitely going to become one of my favorite movies of all time!” Which was true, and then John the Bastard got his first scene… “eeeeee Keannuuuuu my poor boyfriend. WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU?” I mean, obviously he looked wonderful but I remember being so deflated. I can’t really tell if it was some kind of weirdness in the direction or if he just could not deliver that Shakespeare.
thank you all for coming for the hams and butts.
also, this link just came to me: color photos from behind the scenes of MUCH ADO: A JOSS’S TALE. taken by the same REALLY cute photographer who was in the wedding scene!
OMG! Color photos! For some reason I had convinced myself that the dress Amy Acker wore while hiding under the island was definitely purple, and here I’m proven wrong.
I don’t know why, but I’m always assuming I can figure out what color things are in a black and white photo. I’m weird.
THIS IS THE MOST GLORIOUS OF DAYS! I finally saw the Whedon adaptation a couple weeks ago and I loved it beyond reason. I think one of the things I liked most about it was how THE MOST EXQUISITE CLAUDIO (in Keanu voice, obvs) was such a weird, moony goon. In a lovable way, of course! With Robert Sean Leonard’s preposterous handsomeness it was almost hard to believe he was so young and naive, and actually a bit hopeless?
I had almost been afraid to see the new version because the Branagh version was one of my absolute favorite movies (at least in Jr. High). True story, the first time I saw it was at a sleepover in 7th grade with a couple of my most bookish (read: favorite) friends, and we all loved it so much that we just kept rewinding and replaying all night. EMMA THOMPSON FAN CLUB 4 LYFE. I still try to sing the Hey Nonny Nonny song around the house, albeit v v tunelessly.
I promise you (sort of)- the Branagh version is so out of this world that nothing can ever hope to touch it. It’s in a cherry picker, untouchable by mortal hands.
Remember when Kenneth Branagh plays Laurence Olivier and we were all like “Yes. This is what art is”?
Remember when Kenneth Branagh started the Industrial Revolution? #HISTORY
That opening ceremony was a treasure.
I love everything about this essay.
I enjoyed the humanity of Joss Whedon’s Much Ado in no small part because Claudio and Leonato had always seemed like such douchebags to me, and he somehow made me sympathize with them. I think it helped that we saw so much of Claudio being infatuated with Hero, and also that he was so flipping drunk when all the shit went down. And that he is so young, so fragile himself. It made it seem much more reasonable that he had what was essentially an adolescent-level freakout at the rumor of Hero’s infidelity, without proof.
Also, can we talk about the utter fucking GENIUS that was the whole thing with the dress Hero wore to the wedding? I’d never seen that interpretation of the text before. Why are we fretting about which dress? Oh, you know, because THAT WAS THE DRESS I WORE PRETENDING TO BE YOU CHEATING ON YOUR FIANCE AND IT MAKES ME AND EVERYONE SUPER-UNCOMFORTABLE THAT YOU WOULD WEAR IT TO SWEAR YOUR VOWS.
I feel like the constant boozing is such a great reason for why… pretty much everything in that play happens. (Also, “drink when the characters drink” would be basically the worst drinking game ever because you would get alcohol poisoning soooo fast.)
See also: the Wyndham Theatre production starring Catherine Tate opposite David Tennant wherein EVERYONE is drinking the whole time. And key scenes take place in dimly lit nightclubs at the stag and hen parties. And it’s all so goooood.
Ooo, I found that one online and can’t wait to watch it!
WHERE???
digitaltheatre.com
…at least it WAS there, I hope I’m not lying!
You can rent or buy it right here> ;http://www.digitaltheatre.com/production/details/much-ado-about-nothing-tennant-tate
I solemnly swear that I have not been acting as a commercial promoter of Digital Theatre dot com.
THANK YOU.
Yes! That version of the events made it within the realm of stage-plausible, for me. And I love the idea of everyone drunk on the beach for the entire play.
confession: first time I saw the Whedon version in theaters, I had just gotten out of a work party with too much wine and too little food, so. THAT was great. I had most of the theater to myself at 5 PM so I sprawled in a seat with a black and white cookie and cackled the whole time.
See, I thought Branagh’s version was better at making me sympathize with Claudio. In Whedon’s version, even after he hears she’s dead and was innocent, I felt like Claudio shows almost no emotion and guilt over it. Combine that with Whedon keeping in the line where Claudio says he would “even marry an Ethiop” (and then the camera cutting to the only black woman in the whole freaking movie, which Whedon says he did to show just how much of an ass Claudio is, but just felt like a cheap racist dig), and I actively hated the guy and wanted Hero to run far far away. Whereas in Branagh’s, Claudio is still an absolute ass, but I feel like maybe he’s actually really sorry and learned his lesson/won’t treat her like that again.
she is NOT the only black woman in the whole freaking movie. there is a black female guest in an early scene of the film who is CLEARLY not the same woman in the wedding (redux) scene.
I’m . . . not sure how two token black ladies with no spoken lines is better than one token black lady with no spoken lines. Even though the black lady in the background when the Ethiope line is spoken has an expression on her face that speaks VOLUMES.
I’m with you there: for the longest time, Robert Sean Leonard went a long, long way in making Claudio even a little sympathetic to me, probably still riding that Dead Poets Society goodwill with his perfect nose in the lead.
Everything about this is perfect! Perfect!
Especially now that I am remembering my very grandmotherly (Note: she was actually a grandmother) English department chair showing us the opening scenes from the Branagh in Shakespeare class and momentarily forgetting how to fast-forward past all the butts and bathing.
That was a good day in Shakespeare class. And for my process of self-inquiry.
Et cetera.
First off: this essay is delightful and I loved both versions and thoroughly enjoyed re-watching the Whedon version a couple weeks ago. Reed Diamond’s Don Pedro is the most fantastic that I have ever seen and I wanted Beatrice to go ahead and accept him after all. No, scratch that, she can keep Benedick, I’ll marry Don Pedro. Problem solved.
HOWEVER. Am I the only one confused as to why we began the play seeing Beatrice and Benedick sleeping together when the main plot of the play revolves around how completely UNTHINKABLE it would be if Hero were not a virgin? It’s one thing for Margaret to be sleeping around, since she’s of a different class and social order than Hero, but it should have been just as dire and terrible for Beatrice to do this as Hero. I like the idea that Beatrice and Benedick have more history than just sniping at each other, but it would have been much more in keeping with the play if he had, say, stood her up for a date. (The BBC did this quite brilliantly and still nonverbally in their ShakespeaRe-Told series.) Or, for that matter, they could have tried to emphasize that Hero was sleeping with someone BESIDES Claudio rather than focusing on just her virginity; it’s a little difficult to do this without changing the lines up a bit, but it’s not uncommon for productions to make slight alterations to the text. This would also have been less disconcerting in the modern setting.
Ahem. Sorry, rant done. I do love this version, and I have to say, the sheer amount of alcohol drunk in this film makes the plot make SO MUCH MORE SENSE. I shall pour myself a drink and watch this movie whenever I feel the need for some vicarious drunken revelry. Cheers.
Thematically, I think the Whedon version shifts the centre of the Claudio/Hero action to emphasize Claudio’s insecurity rather than Hero’s supposed impurity. Fran Kranz’s performance in Act II, scene i–the “’Tis certain so, the Prince woos for himself./Friendship is constant in all other things/Save in the office and affairs of love” scene–serves to frame Claudio as a person whose confidence is easily undermined. When we get the climax of the Claudio/Hero affair–Wedding Number One–it’s that much easier for us to see Claudio as an over-reacting ninny.
Oh, I absolutely agree that there’s a tremendous emphasis on Claudio’s insecurity and I like the effect. But does that diminish the strength of Clark Gregg’s passion when he cries out that “Death is the fairest cover for her shame / That may be wish’d for”? Not to mention the subsequent speech in which he hopes for her death (“Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes: / For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die, / Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, / Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, / Strike at thy life”). He speaks these lines quite seriously, without any attempt to minimize the speech or imply that it should be taken with the modern casual flippancy of threatening to kill your kid if they take your car keys again.
Claudio’s insecurity is important because it prompts him to believe the slander too quickly, but there is no indication in this performance that the characters do not take chastity just as seriously as the original text implies. That’s fine. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of outdated societal expectations and modern setting. I’m just frustrated that Whedon chose to undercut it with an entirely unnecessary contradiction in the opening scene.
I think he struggled a bit with making it “modern” considering the old-school sensibility in the text. Most damning line in the whole play was Claudio saying he’d marry Hero “were she an Ethiope.”
And there’s not really a way around that, because it’s the only line he gives confirming he’s on board. You can’t just cut it and use the next line where he’s all “It’s my duty” or whatever. Any theatre folk know what one would do about that? You can’t change Shakespeare text, can you? I don’t know. Can you?
Technically (legally) you can do whatever you want to Shakespeare text, and I don’t think it’s uncommon to cut lines/scenes/songs (thank god), but my impression is that adding something in is much less accepted (for example, better to excise Ethiope, leaving the line “I’ll hold my mind,” than change it to “I’ll hold my mind, were she a leper”).
Oh, actually, that totally would have worked. I take everything back. Joss, I wish you’d done what snaxstax just said, that would have been better.
I think the stakes with Beatrice are lower because Hero is referred to as Leonato’s heir at least three times in the text (Leonato explicitly says about Hero, “And she alone is heir to both of us”, both him and his brother). Beatrice might never have to be responsible for all that money and property like Hero, so theoretically (theoretically!) Beatrice seems to have more autonomy in her affairs. Joss’s version really emphasizes that it’s less about literal deflowering/bastard children threatening to take Leonato’s cash, and more about Claudio being an idiot too terrified to communicate with the person attached to that vagina he’s marrying.
And I did like Joss’s touch of irony in opening with Beatrice and Benedick’s one night stand, because it draws a much sharper contrast between Beatrice and Hero. Beatrice sleeps with this dude, while Hero does everything right and plays by everyone’s rules, and HERO’s the one who’s publicly humiliated on her wedding day by the guy she has to marry? No, thank you. Hero, be sure to turn out the lights and burn down the world as you’re leaving.
“Hero, be sure to turn out the lights and burn down the world as you’re leaving.” <3 <3 <3 And “Claudio being an idiot too terrified to communicate with the person attached to the vagina he’s marrying” is the best summation of the Hero/Claudio plot line that I can imagine. I’m still not quiet reconciled to the opening scene, but I love your take on it.
I wondered if they were going to cut Leonato’s “I HOPE SHE DIES” speech, and on the one hand, I think they were brave not to and Clark Gregg acts the fuck out of it… but in terms of tonal cohesion, I think maybe they should have done? Because, no. It’s bad enough coming from Claudio, and you can just about argue it’s an insecurity-about-being-cheated on thing, not so much a virginity thing, and maybe he can get over it and still somehow be marriage material — but a modern, Western, secular-looking father who is not clearly shown as some form of extremist religious nut is not going to be perfectly fine with his daughter running around in babydoll dresses and drinking alcohol but then scream that if she’s not a virgin — hell, if she TALKED WITH A MAN AT A WINDOW — she’d better die. And if he does, it’s not a retrievable situation. In the play’s original time period or in Once Upon a Time Land it’s just possible to tilt your head and go “Okay, screwball comedy, wacky shenanigans, HONOUR KILLING, happy ever after, sure, I guess that works.” But a modern setting? I kept trying to construct alternate histories where fashions advanced but morality stayed the same or regressed through the 20th Century, but as you say, Beatrice’s lack of qualms in sleeping with Benedick skews that. If there’s any place in this world where she can do that in reasonable safety and confidence her life hasn’t been ruined, then why instead of babbling about killing Claudio isn’t she tucking Hero under her arm and TAKING HER THERE FOREVER? Actually, even without the sex, how would ANY modern version of Beatrice not do that?
There are modern settings where at least some of the family’s behaviour would be plausible, of course, but not the one the film uses. Which is why though I enjoyed the film and loved the scenes where Hero and Leonato were silently counting the number of times Benedick dragged the topic of conversation back to Beatrice and trying not to lol, I feel it doesn’t really work, but it never could have done — valliant, endearing failure is its only possible mode of existence.
(That Gregg radiates niceness doesn’t help either).
I got the Whedon one for my birthday and am very excited about watching it again!
Joss’s version reunited Fred and Wesley. That was good enough for me.
SECONDED.
I know the play pretty well, but I still felt compelled to wait through the credits and make sure there was no stinger or any very Joss invention to rip out my heart a la Illyria. (I was pleased.)
This! It was like a beautiful happy ending for those of us whose hearts were ripped out and stomped on during the course of Angel. Augh, those beautiful people.
yes yes yes A+
I love that he so loved the world, he gave it Tom Hiddleston when he had the chance to trap that rainbow-made-flesh in a crystal and keep it in the chamber of secrets beneath his house.
No, but seriously. Branagh looked at ‘”guy who plays mildly bitchy co-worker on my Incredibly Depressing British Cop Show About Even-More-Depressing Swedish Sex Crimes” and thought “yep, that’s an epic superhero movie villain, that is.”
That is awesome.
He also managed to turn his trim-waisted, spry self into a doughy, depressed mess with meatball stains on the front of his shirt. (He may have been helped along by the passage of time in that venture, however.)
we can never thank branagh enough for bringing hiddleston to our attention.
This made me remember how much I wanted to just live in Branagh’s version. Everyone looks like they’re having such a great time! It’s almost like a musical.
As opposed to when he actually did a Shakespeare musical, and it was notsogreat. But yes, I would love to take a nap in that Tuscan villa.
Is Branagh’s prewar musical LLL better or worse than his Meiji Japan As You Like it with NINJAS everywhere? I cannot decide.
I mean, I love the AYLI cast to ribbons, but NINJAS? I cannot love.
AYLI is so pretty but otherwise so awful. I kind of like his LLL for how “let’s put on a show!” it feels, but I haven’t revisited it in a while.
It was nosogreat, but it’s got Alessandro Nivola, so it’s got that goin’ for it. Which is nice.
So great! And a perspective on the Whedon version I hadn’t considered (I wanted to like it when I saw it, and… didn’t). But also, also, guys, anyone want to talk about the Tate/Tennant version? Because it delights me to my core.
Falklands War! Tight-sleeved British naval costume! Hen party scene! Don John CLEARLY having repressed feelings for every attractive man! Every time Catherine Tate makes the face!!!
The gifs from that version look amazing, but I still haven’t been able to watch it! FALKLANDS, THO.
I’m a Shakespeare adaptation junkie, and I have to say I loved that the Whedon version of Much Ado had me laughing uproariously and enjoying a thing I’d seen probably literally a hundred of times as if it was brand-new. To me, that’s an accomplishment in itself.
You’re my hero.
I hope you have a b-side for me to read later that’s all about The Problem of Dogberry.
his tiny coat wasn’t tiny enough
In my opinion, Branagh’s version is too over the top. The actors perform it as though they were on the stage playing to the back of the house. Some people like this style of acting, but for me, I prefer the intimacy of film and that’s what Whedon’s film was to me. I actually cried during Amy Acker’s “oh God, that I were a man” monologue. There was such emotion and pain in her portrayal which you just didn’t get in the other versions. I enjoyed Branagh’s version and the one with Tennant and Tate, but they were simply silly romps acted out by people I like. They never really made me feel anything besides amusement.
This post (and the comments!) is one of the many reasons that I love The Toast. Thankyouthankyouthankyou!
I
YAY LESBIAN THRILLERS! I made one up watching lame plot in 2010’s “Chloe!” “So bored… start inventing alternate plot ideas…J. Moore and “Chloe”.. how bout starting detective agency targeting cheaters? becoming female assassins? Award-winning talk show providing free vaginal reconstruction to low-income women….GOD ANYTHING BUT MOONING AROUND WAITING FOR LIAM NEESON TO COME HOME!”
So what I hear you saying is to stop re-watching Branagh’s Henry V and try some new ways to get my Shakespeare fix.
watch hiddleston’s henry v
Watch ALLLLL of The Hollow Crown. Ben Whishaw’s Richard II is made of awesomesauce.
I’m watching one part of Hollow Crown a week and we just did 1H4 — OH MY GOD did I enjoy big-nosed northern-accent Hotspur, and his wife Lady Mary Crawley. Man.
Why would you ever stop watching HV?
I went to see the Whedon version with my BF a few months after having shown him the Branagh version. He really enjoyed the Branagh version, so I figured this was going to be an easy hit.
He. Didn’t. LIKE IT. He said it was, “OK.” I managed to pry more out of him after a while. He thought Clark Gregg was a better Leonato, but he somehow thought there was NO CHEMISTRY BETWEEN BENEDICK AND BEATRICE WHO IS THIS MAN I’M WITH IS HE BLIND?
..I kind of thought there wasn’t much. I mean not so little it didn’t work at all, but … well, I thought Alexis Denisof was really good at the righteous anger and the sulking and at the buffoonery but not so much as being actually besotted with this woman. I mostly thought he looked as if he wanted to eat Acker with his scary huge teeth.
The Toast is really the best website, it has Shakespeare butts and Kids in the Hall and misandrist nursery rhymes. It’s my fucking fave.
I have loved Branagh’s version for a long time, and MAAN is one of my favourite plays so I was more than excited to hear Whedon of all people had done one and I awaited eagerly for his version and when I saw it….wow, it is amazing. I recently got the blu-ray and I have seen it so many times since then, it is so good, Simon Tam makes a great Shakespeare Villain,who knew? Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof actually made me forget about Fred/Wesley and just focus on Benedict/Beatrice and ugh,this movie is so wonderful.
also, all the praise for Brannagh introducing me to Hiddleston. thank you kind sir.
AYLI is so pretty but otherwise so awful. I kind of like his LLL for how "let's put on a show!" it feels, but I haven't revisited it in a while.
Why would you ever stop watching HV?
I am so glad this is here and that I read it and can come back and read it again and again. I skipped the Whedon screening at the Shx conference this spring and still haven’t gotten around to seeing it (does this mean I must surrender my degree?), but I am convinced anew to seek it out.
(I do hate teaching this play, though, so now I’ll have to come up with other reasons for screening it in class.)
I am so glad this is here and that I read it and can come back and read it again and again. I skipped the Whedon screening at the Shx conference this spring and still haven't gotten around to seeing it (does this mean I must surrender my degree?), but I am convinced anew to seek it out.
(I do hate teaching this play, though, so now I'll have to come up with other reasons for screening it in class.)
I grew up on the Branagh version (in hindsight, I was maybe a bit young for a movie with so many butts and lines about luxurious beds the first time I saw it) and have yet to see Whedon’s, but this post increased my desire to! The other thing that’s made me really want to see it is a Tumblr gifset of different Beatrices delivering the “Oh god, if I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace” line. Emma Thompson is my queen forever, but just a gif of Amy Acker delivering that line made me want to give Whedon’s version a shot.
I grew up on the Branagh version (in hindsight, I was maybe a bit young for a movie with so many butts and lines about luxurious beds the first time I saw it) and have yet to see Whedon's, but this post increased my desire to! The other thing that's made me really want to see it is a Tumblr gifset of different Beatrices delivering the "Oh god, if I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace" line. Emma Thompson is my queen forever, but just a gif of Amy Acker delivering that line made me want to give Whedon's version a shot.
Hmm… insult/compliments? How about “Done to death by slanderous tongue?” Doesn’t sound like a bad way to go…
Excellent piece, but I think no comparison of the two films can be complete without noting Branagh’s (and Michael Keaton’s) utter failure with Dogberry and his Watch, compared with Whedon’s and Nathan Fillion’s thundering success. Dogberry is the dimmest of bulbs, but he is Chief Constable, he is a man of some standing and must be a decent citizen. He is, as Conrade says, “an ass,” but our sympathies should not be with Conrade when he (or she, in Whedon’s version) says so – and in Branagh’s version, mine definitely are.
The Monty Python fake horses, the pointless dancing of the watch, Keaton’s whole greasy-sadist-degenerate persona, are essentially one instance of asking for a laugh after another. And the Watch gets no laughs from me in Branagh’s film – I want to look away, it’s painful.
Whedon, and Nathan Fillion, don’t ask for laughs – the script is quite funny enough when played straight – and that’s the key. Humor comes from truth. Fillion is the best Dogberry I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen about a dozen.
Thanks for the article, and the space to comment!