Looking For Richard Notes Essay

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Looking For Richard

title ——> layered, (king richard ——> look for = looking for Richard) leafless tress ——> old building that is British (what is the significance here?) bell tolling in the background, panning downward over ancient building, British culture/statement speech from The Tempest - Prospero’s last speech/final play by Shakespeare (in a British voice) about how things pass, change, evolve, disappear, everything passes ——> everything will disappear in the end
Film about Richard III beginning with Shakespeare's last play which was a metaphor for him ending his career as a playwright ——> Pacino breathing life back into Shakespeare cut to modern apartment block building/high-rise, contemporary culture
Pacino’s dress with a backward cap on, etc ——> what people see on the streets approaching them about Shakespeare, basketball on the streets reflective of his want to gather normal peoples view of Shakespeare key element of Looking for Richard is JUXTAPOSITION bell toll signifies death ——> death of the old building/death of a finished culture (old building of British culture)
Basketball court associated with Americans —-> Pacino is on the basketball court with the kid, and this in juxtaposition with the old building suggests that ‘this is now’
“Who’s going to say action around here? Should I say action here?” ——> Pacino sharing his power as direction/democratic
Have not tried to “light scenes properly” ——> present it as it is
Pacino sees Shakespeare sitting in his audience watching him (Shakespearean plays loaded with judgement) “Fuck” ——> expression of anxiety, says something about someone of American cultural background trying to do Shakespeare
Vox pop - interviewing people in the street
“Shakespeare? What the fuck do you know about Shakespeare?” ——> shows British view upon an American trying to make a “classic British icon”
Film based on Shakespeare’s Richard III - discovery/finding the relevance and importance of Shakespeare
Many Shakespeare company in the U.S = perform many plays by Shakespeare, has the greatest collection of original editions of the plays ——> Why? Cynical view = elitist, cultural cache, prestige (Shakespeare wasn’t elitist as he had language that addressed the lower-class, but also had the highest forms of literature that appealed to the upper-class = Shakespeare was not elitist but the themes in his play were)
“When we speak with no feeling, we get nothing out of our society. We should speak like Shakespeare, we should introduce Shakespeare into the academics. You know why? Because then the kids would have feelings. We have no feelings. [“Thats right”] That’s why it's easy for us to get a gun and shoot each other. We don't feel for each other, but if we were taught to feel we wouldn't be so violent. [“He helped us?”] He did more than help us. He instructed us.”
Two camera ——> looks at the camera (as if to audience/communicating to audience as Richard III does in his soliloquies)
Pacino uses look as judgement to comment about actors within the docudrama
Pacino walking through the part talking to the ordinary people (just as Richard uses phrases and colloquial language not used by someone of his status, as well as hanging out with the lower class) ——> modelling himself on the character of Richard III
Vox pops//vox popular (voice of the people)//talking head ——> not particularly accepted/relevant to American culture
Responses - “He’s boring”//“He’s a great export” (Shakespeare being done in many countries in many languages to make a lot of money from it//Kevin Kline “made out with my girlfriend in the back row and left at intermission”//Kenneth Branagh “straight-forward and dull, we read it out at school and it made no sense to me”//James Earl Jones “I was hearing great words having great meaning”
Technique - breaking the film into little segments = the question & then the quest
“It has always been a dream of mine to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people” ——-> is it though?
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