Sunday Best: Top 10 Shakespeare Movies

This is the opening week for the second Shakespeare play I have directed.  I adore William Shakespeare, though I will not vouch myself an expert.  Instead I will say that I am enthusiastic student of his work.  His plays have been adapted hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways for the stage and screen.

With that in mind, it would be good to look at the best ways in which the immortal writer's stories were captured on the sliver screen.





10. Love's Labour's Lost (2000)

You are going to see a lot of movies directed by Kenneth Branagh on this list.  Those familiar with this blog know that I am not shy about my partiality towards his work.  This time he does something quite experimental: he combined the play with 1930's Broadway hits.  The combination is odd and works sporadically well.  The modest budget of $13 million forced the film to look a bit almost all the sets looking artificial like a film from the era of the songs the cast was singing.  The reason this film makes it into the top ten is that when Branagh is able to get it to work, the movie is incredibly charming.  Like many of his comedies, the story is incredibly silly.  But Branagh and his cast do an admirable job of moving the movie along with some toe-tapping numbers in between.  I particularly enjoyed Branagh's monologue about love towards the end of the film.

9. As You Like It (2006)

Another Branagh adaptation, this one transposes Shakespeare's characters to feudal Japan.  The scenery is simple, but beautiful.  But what really makes this one work are the performances.  I was surprised at how good Bryce Dallas Howard was in the lead role.  She was both charismatic and charming, showing intelligence and feminine grace.  Kevin Kline showed wonderful range as the melancholy Jaques.  Alfred Molina also does a wonderfully comedic job as Touchstone the jester.

8. Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Joss Whedon adapted this version of the classic comedy and shot it with friends almost exclusively at his home.  The simple black and white piece captures the universality of the story and why it is so familiar and resonant whenever it is adapted.  The war of the sexes should always end in mutual surrender to love.  Alexis Denisof and and Amy Acker lost none of their chemistry from their time on the TV show Angel.  Nate Fillion is particularly good as the dead serious, but dead stupid Dogberry.

7. The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part I (2012)

This adaptation is the best I have seen of this story.  Most of that falls on the shoulders of Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal.  He carries with him his roguish Loki grin, but he pushes all of his dramatic buttons to really peel back the layers of this incredibly complex character.  Jeremy Irons does a great job as the imposing Henry IV, but the one who brings both the comedy and tragedy to all of this is Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff.  The play-within-a-play scene turns from hilarious to heartbreaking because he and Hiddleston play the subtext to perfection.


6. Julius Caesar (1970)

There is no getting around the fact that Jason Robards as Brutus Is awful in this movie.  But as bad as his casting is, you will completely overlook it because of the magnificence of the mighty Charlton Heston.  His performance as Antony, especially at the funeral speech is one of the all-time greatest Shakespearean performances.  You can see how Shakespeare understood the power of words and how they can sway people's hearts, even when they are insincere.  Heston squeezes every drop of dramatic blood from those words to conjure a rhetorical storm so that you believe the power of his speech could move a city to riot.


5. A Performance of Macbeth (1978)

This one is a little bit of a cheat.  It is a recording of something that is essentially a stage play.  But the filming of it is very specifically used to make it feel more than a theatrical performance.  The performance space is bare and so the entire movie must hang on the faces of the actors.  And these performances are world-class.  Ian McKellen knocks it out of the park as you see the slow erosion of MacBeth's soul.  Judi Dench is every much his equal as she goes from evil to insane as the sins she commits come back to destroy her.  This is dark and haunting the way Macbeth should be.

4. Hamlet (1990)

This was my first exposure to Hamlet.  I was only twelve, but I was shocked at how much I was able to understand.  Not only was this because of Franco Zeffirelli's direction, but it was primarily because of Mel Gibson.  I had known him primarily as an action star and hadn't thought of him much beyond that.  But he gives a tour-de-force performance that knocked my socks off.  There is a wildness in his eyes, a madness that sets the movie on fire.  I could feel his intensity in my own heart and it resonated with me like few other Shakespeare performances.  Helena Bonham Carter's waifish Ophelia, who collapse into madness, haunted me with her crazy, sunken eyes.  A dark and tragic take on the classic story.


3. Henry V (1989)

This film received a number of Oscar nominations, all of them well deserved.  I did not know the story of Henry V when I went to watch it and Branagh drew me in with his directing and his performance.  Everything fires on all cylinders in this movie.  I absolutely adore everything from the night before the battle of Agincort through to the final tracking shot.  It is so beautifully filmed with such long, sweeping takes.  The Patrick Doyle score has been sampled dozens of times for film trailers because it captures the uplift and drama presented on the screen.  I still get chills watching Branagh give his St. Crispin's Day speech.  It is the perfect antithesis of Heston's Caesar speech.  Whereas I believed Heston's words could spurn others to vile destruction, Branagh made me believe his words could inspire hopelessly outnumbered men that they were privileged to stand their ground and fight with him.  A great film.


2. Hamlet (1996)

This movie is absolutely beautiful.  Branagh took all of his skills as a visual filmmaker and brought to life the best version of Hamlet I have seen.  It is the only movie that captures the entire entire text of the play, clocking in at just above four hours long.  The icy landscape ultra-wide and ultra-wide format give a scale reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago.  All of the performances are excellent and are complimented by the incredible visual design.  Patrick Doyle's score is passionate and haunting.  The movie is a who's who of acting greats with Branagh in the lead, but also featuring Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams.  And yet none of the casting feels like a stunt as each actors executes their role to great effect.  Crystal's gravedigger is a particular highlight for me.  The film requires endurance to sit through because of the length, but doing so rewards you with a unique and beautiful cinematic experience.

1. Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

I've said this before about this movie: it was a revelation to me because it taught me that Shakespeare was actually funny.  That revelation made me realize that his words were not cold and distant, but alive and relevant.  The movie is pure romance, and I mean that in both the modern and medieval way.  It captures to pomp and poetry of the age.  Branagh is fantastic as Benedick and Emma Thompson shines as Beatrice.  Denzel Washington brings his princely bearing to the proceedings and Michael Keaton shows off all of his manic comedic skills as Dogberry.  This movie is a joy and triumph.  The subject matter may be whimsical, but it captures the pain, poignancy, and pleasures of romance.  If I were ever to show a movie to help someone fall in love with Shakespeare it would be this one.