Richard III

I recently read the Shakespeare play Richard III because I was going to watch the 1995 film adaptation of the same name starring Ian McKellan, and I like to read works of literature before I see their counterparts on film. The play is incredible in presenting Richard III as one of the most Machiavellian characters I have ever seen. He will stop at nothing, even marrying the wife of a man he has had killed, to achieve his desire for the kingship. Of course he fails to anticipate the moral outrage of those who are in the know after he is finished with his string of murders and is thus finally undone.

I went in to watching the movie knowing it was highly critically praised, but even so it exceeded my expectations. The film is set in 1930 Britain. Usually attempts to modernize the setting of Shakespeare plays seem to fail miserably, but in this case it works perfectly. The closer Richard gets to becoming the ruler of England, the more the military uniforms begin to recall those of Nazi Germany during WWII. The dialogue is mostly taken directly from the original, and yet the pacing kept brisk enough to make for a solid story arc. Especially effective are what in the play would be Richard's asides to the audience, which in the film arewhen he looks directly at the camera and speaks his real purposes.