Is not the fact that there is nothing to say about Charlie Brown capturing the very essence of Charlie Brown?
I don't mind Orsino being played as an arse, and I'm all for problematic Twelfth Nights. But Nunn's version isn't problematising the text (or bringing out the problems already on the surface), it's just turgid, the symbolic darkening autumn isn't a meditation on the dark side of comedy, or Viola's real peril, or Olivia's entrapment, it's just gloomy and dull and the film plods along without energy. The Sir Toby plot is better, because it is given more energy, and indeed pathos and complexity, by Mel Smith, and Nigel Hawthorne is good as Malvolio, but as a whole the film has nothing to say except "look, I'm a comedy, but I'm sad".
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Date: 2012-03-13 08:39 am (UTC)I don't mind Orsino being played as an arse, and I'm all for problematic Twelfth Nights. But Nunn's version isn't problematising the text (or bringing out the problems already on the surface), it's just turgid, the symbolic darkening autumn isn't a meditation on the dark side of comedy, or Viola's real peril, or Olivia's entrapment, it's just gloomy and dull and the film plods along without energy. The Sir Toby plot is better, because it is given more energy, and indeed pathos and complexity, by Mel Smith, and Nigel Hawthorne is good as Malvolio, but as a whole the film has nothing to say except "look, I'm a comedy, but I'm sad".