excited for Henry times
So I finally got a chance to watch the next installment of The Hollow Crown! I hadn't had a chance previously because I was visiting family, and then I kept getting distracted by the fact that Richard II was in the same file folder and I kept thinking "oh, hey, I could watch that again!" Plus it's been really good for taking my mind off of the latest way the universe has decided to crap on me, which I may talk about later. But then I remembered that 2 Henry IV is airing tonight and I don't want to get behind, plus, okay, it is 1 Henry IV and I do love the Henry IVs.
That said, it wasn't as good as Richard II (seriously, that was so good that even my sisters watched the entire thing when I was at my parents' house, and I've never been able to get them to watch past the first scene of any other production) or the amazing production they did at the Globe a couple of years ago and then broadcast in cinemas last summer, starring Jamie Parker as Hal and Roger Allam as the best Falstaff I have ever seen (it is now on DVD! Go buy it if you can, it's fantastic!) but it was still quite good. Plus a lot of the less-good bits nevertheless suggest that Part II is probably going to be amazing -- I think the production's major flaw was insufficient exuberance, and in Part II that is not a problem at all, since it's not exuberant at all. (The last BBC version followed a very similar trajectory, although this Part I is on the whole better than that one was, since Tom Hiddleston's Hal is not a human two-by-four like David Gwillim's, and also, the production is lit in such a way that you can actually see what's going on. Plus the battle scenes actually occur onscreen rather than just out of frame.)
Also I have the distinct suspicion that my viewing experience suffered quite a bit from the fact that the audio on my copy of them film got pretty seriously out of sync.
(also also Part II is airing in the UK RIGHT NOW which probably means any UK people who don't like it will see this afterwards and then make fun of my cock-eyed optimism in the comments.)
So, some general and incomplete thoughts which I'll probably have more to say about after seeing Part II: well, first of all, the acting was pretty consistently superb -- I think my favorite performances were Jeremy Irons' restless, angry King Henry, who wasn't in it nearly enough, and Joe Armstrong's Hotspur, but Tom Hiddleston's Hal did a good job on the less-douchey end of the Prince Hal spectrum. I even kind of see what they were going for by putting his big soliloquy in voiceover: while we hear Hal talking about how he's going to ditch all his buddies first chance he gets, we see the Boar's Head crew smiling at him and waving at him, and the tavern set does a pretty good job looking inviting as well as seedy, so we get a sense of what he's tossing aside. And then he goes outside and we see a bunch of commoners doing Cheapside market stuff, people who don't have the time to fuck around like Hal does. So it does offer a lot of big-picture-type insights, but also, not quite the same level of insight into Hal qua Hal. (I'm going to stop comparing this to the Globe version after this, but one of the things I loved about that version was that Jamie Parker's take on the soliloquy is very "hey, look how clever I am, with my Cunning Plan!" I remember some people on lj arguing that he wasn't calculating enough, but I've never really agreed; he's still calculating, he just knows he won't have to do anything about it any time too soon.) And actually, I thought there was quite a bit of good about Simon Russell Beale's Falstaff, in the sense that I've always been adamant about showing Falstaff's dark side -- but his performance suffered the most from the extensive cutting, which is what I mean when I say the big flaw in the production is insufficient exuberance. Like, for the whole honor-catechism scene, they've got Falstaff wandering around the camp while bad war shit goes down, and he does the speech in another voiceover -- which I really don't like, because Falstaff of all people should totally get to talk to the camera, but the Falstaff-and-battle-ickiness thing has been played to great effect in, e.g., Chimes at Midnight, a film which pretty clearly influenced this production, and would probably have worked fine here if we'd had more of a sense of Falstaff's larger-than-life side, because we get the seediness here, but not as much of the fun.
Again, a lot of this had to do with the cuts. The film came in at slightly under two hours, and that means we lost a lot of texture -- a lot of the backstory, for instance (I'm not sure if that's for the benefit of new viewers or because they assume we've all seen it last week, but as allochthonous says in her review, it really makes it feel like it's not the same world as Richard II, in ways other than the way it's not actually in the same world), but the bits that suffered most were the tavern scenes and the battle. The production did a pretty decent job condensing the story, but a lot of the effect of the Eastcheap scenes depends on our ability to hang around shooting the shit with these characters, and when they're truncated so heavily, we don't really get that. And the Shrewsbury scenes, while pretty well-executed technically -- I know a couple of people talk about their fundamental BBC cheesiness, but I've probably seen the 1979 version way more than any of you -- are a little too straightforward in their presentation of Team Henry's victory; they leave out, for instance, Henry's use of decoys in the battle, which is a pointed comment on the changing nature of royal power, and also Hal's rescue of his father from the Douglas (who has, like, one line in this whole thing) where he's rewarded by learning of his father's assumption of parricidal expectations. The Hal/Hotspur battle is well-done, though, although I missed the Epic Falstaff/Douglas Smackdown. ;)
So that whole thing makes it sound like it wasn't good at all, but I think the issue is more that it's less than the sum of its mostly very good parts, and so since I can't make a call on the whole thing yet (as noted, I need to see Part II first), I'll just give you a lot of bullet points regarding things I have thoughts on:
- I kind of loved that it opened with meat-chopping imagery, because there's so much of it in the text, and the opening Cheapside shots were a pretty good reminder that while this play is focused on kings and nobles it never really forgets the ordinary people who are much more concerned with work and eating and everyday things -- although the textual cuts in this production sort of do. Plus (sort of in opposition to what I just said) it's always a fun way to forecast the fact that people are going to get sliced up later. P.S. By "fun" I don't actually mean "fun."
- Was rather amused that they went with the least gay staging of the first Hal/Falstaff scene possible; not only does Hal wander in from the street, but Falstaff is also in bed with Doll Tearsheet (who is a pretty enjoyable presence throughout, though she doesn't have any real dialogue until part two). Also, is it a rule that all productions must depict Falstaff peeing? Well, I guess that since it's actually in the text of Part II (his first line in 2.4 is "Empty the jordan"), it technically is. I did not time it in order to compare to the ESC version's epic 45-second pissfest, though.
- I am not sure I will ever forgive Richard Eyre for depriving me of the chance to hear "So shaken as we are, so wan with care" in Jeremy Irons' plummy yet world-weary tones. EYRE YOU BASTARD. I'LL HAVE A STARLING TAUGHT TO SPEAK NOTHING BUT [THAT SPEECH] AND GIVE IT YOU TO KEEP YOUR ANGER STILL IN MOTION.
- ...I also really missed that bit. Seriously, they got 20 extra minutes for Richard II, would it have killed them to do it again?
- I actually really really loved Jeremy Irons' reaction to Hotspur's explanation of his non-prisoner-handing-over, where he's clearly amused/charmed by it, but then once he's heard it, he's all "okay, funtimes are over, prisoners now." And then he loses his shit. (Okay, one more Globe comparison: the weak link in that production was Oliver Cotton's excessively shouty King Henry; Irons shows us all how to do Henry!anger right. Also, while there's not a lot of continuity between this and last week's RII, I actually could picture Rory Kinnear's Henry turning out this way, obviously not physically because he and Irons look nothing alike whatsoever, but in terms of how he played the part.)
- The Percies! I actually thought their first scene together played a bit weirdly since the physical gestures and the line readings didn't quite match up, but their second scene chez Glendower was great, especially, as everyone has noted, their reactions to the Mortimers. Also, Michelle Dockery is ridiculously gorgeous, so that's nice.
- The Gadshill robbery almost never works onscreen. I wonder why that is? I did think that David Dawson did a good job as Poins; he is exactly the right kind of smarmy yet oddly charming douchebag.
- Best scene in the whole thing was probably Hal and Falstaff's rehearsal of Hal's impending visit to court -- I really liked the way they played it off as Falstaff suggesting it out of concern for Hal in the face of bad news. And Hiddleston's Jeremy Irons impression was so uncanny as to be seriously creepy (as well as hilarious). Equally good was the actual Henry/Hal confrontation (which was placed immediately after the tavern scene, in a reversal of the original scene ordering which has the Welsh scene first and then the court scene), where both Irons and Hiddleston knock it out of the park. Plus I could watch the Hal-slapping bit ALL DAY. ;)
- Creepiest Hollow Crown/Game of Thrones overlap ever: Glendower is Craster. Ewwwwwwwww. Fortunately he did not have a dead pigeon on his head and yellow face paint like the Welsh in RII. Also, while I'm on about GoT, Harry Lloyd (Mortimer) is clearly a man unafraid of typecasting. Also also, on a non-GoT note, I appreciated that Lady Mortimer did not sing either "Suo-gan" or "Ar hyd y nos" like every other Lady Mortimer in the history of ever, because THERE ARE OTHER WELSH SONGS.
- I quite loved the "everyone's hung over" scene in the tavern. Not sure why they decided to move Falstaff's dissertation on sack to that part, but Beale did it well and it was nice to see Falstaff light up for a bit. Plus everyone's "ohgod SHUT UP" faces were great.
- So I already talked about the battle stuff earlier and don't feel the need to do it again. Although I did rather like Hal stepping up after his father had to withdraw from the parley with Worcester in order to go cough up blood. I'm sure that's great for morale.
- Also, just as a soundtrack note, the somewhat-infamous Sad Violins weren't as bad as I expected. I guess because I'd been forewarned.
So! That is all awfully random, but bring on Part II! Shakespeare's most underrated play, if you ask me.
That said, it wasn't as good as Richard II (seriously, that was so good that even my sisters watched the entire thing when I was at my parents' house, and I've never been able to get them to watch past the first scene of any other production) or the amazing production they did at the Globe a couple of years ago and then broadcast in cinemas last summer, starring Jamie Parker as Hal and Roger Allam as the best Falstaff I have ever seen (it is now on DVD! Go buy it if you can, it's fantastic!) but it was still quite good. Plus a lot of the less-good bits nevertheless suggest that Part II is probably going to be amazing -- I think the production's major flaw was insufficient exuberance, and in Part II that is not a problem at all, since it's not exuberant at all. (The last BBC version followed a very similar trajectory, although this Part I is on the whole better than that one was, since Tom Hiddleston's Hal is not a human two-by-four like David Gwillim's, and also, the production is lit in such a way that you can actually see what's going on. Plus the battle scenes actually occur onscreen rather than just out of frame.)
Also I have the distinct suspicion that my viewing experience suffered quite a bit from the fact that the audio on my copy of them film got pretty seriously out of sync.
(also also Part II is airing in the UK RIGHT NOW which probably means any UK people who don't like it will see this afterwards and then make fun of my cock-eyed optimism in the comments.)
So, some general and incomplete thoughts which I'll probably have more to say about after seeing Part II: well, first of all, the acting was pretty consistently superb -- I think my favorite performances were Jeremy Irons' restless, angry King Henry, who wasn't in it nearly enough, and Joe Armstrong's Hotspur, but Tom Hiddleston's Hal did a good job on the less-douchey end of the Prince Hal spectrum. I even kind of see what they were going for by putting his big soliloquy in voiceover: while we hear Hal talking about how he's going to ditch all his buddies first chance he gets, we see the Boar's Head crew smiling at him and waving at him, and the tavern set does a pretty good job looking inviting as well as seedy, so we get a sense of what he's tossing aside. And then he goes outside and we see a bunch of commoners doing Cheapside market stuff, people who don't have the time to fuck around like Hal does. So it does offer a lot of big-picture-type insights, but also, not quite the same level of insight into Hal qua Hal. (I'm going to stop comparing this to the Globe version after this, but one of the things I loved about that version was that Jamie Parker's take on the soliloquy is very "hey, look how clever I am, with my Cunning Plan!" I remember some people on lj arguing that he wasn't calculating enough, but I've never really agreed; he's still calculating, he just knows he won't have to do anything about it any time too soon.) And actually, I thought there was quite a bit of good about Simon Russell Beale's Falstaff, in the sense that I've always been adamant about showing Falstaff's dark side -- but his performance suffered the most from the extensive cutting, which is what I mean when I say the big flaw in the production is insufficient exuberance. Like, for the whole honor-catechism scene, they've got Falstaff wandering around the camp while bad war shit goes down, and he does the speech in another voiceover -- which I really don't like, because Falstaff of all people should totally get to talk to the camera, but the Falstaff-and-battle-ickiness thing has been played to great effect in, e.g., Chimes at Midnight, a film which pretty clearly influenced this production, and would probably have worked fine here if we'd had more of a sense of Falstaff's larger-than-life side, because we get the seediness here, but not as much of the fun.
Again, a lot of this had to do with the cuts. The film came in at slightly under two hours, and that means we lost a lot of texture -- a lot of the backstory, for instance (I'm not sure if that's for the benefit of new viewers or because they assume we've all seen it last week, but as allochthonous says in her review, it really makes it feel like it's not the same world as Richard II, in ways other than the way it's not actually in the same world), but the bits that suffered most were the tavern scenes and the battle. The production did a pretty decent job condensing the story, but a lot of the effect of the Eastcheap scenes depends on our ability to hang around shooting the shit with these characters, and when they're truncated so heavily, we don't really get that. And the Shrewsbury scenes, while pretty well-executed technically -- I know a couple of people talk about their fundamental BBC cheesiness, but I've probably seen the 1979 version way more than any of you -- are a little too straightforward in their presentation of Team Henry's victory; they leave out, for instance, Henry's use of decoys in the battle, which is a pointed comment on the changing nature of royal power, and also Hal's rescue of his father from the Douglas (who has, like, one line in this whole thing) where he's rewarded by learning of his father's assumption of parricidal expectations. The Hal/Hotspur battle is well-done, though, although I missed the Epic Falstaff/Douglas Smackdown. ;)
So that whole thing makes it sound like it wasn't good at all, but I think the issue is more that it's less than the sum of its mostly very good parts, and so since I can't make a call on the whole thing yet (as noted, I need to see Part II first), I'll just give you a lot of bullet points regarding things I have thoughts on:
- I kind of loved that it opened with meat-chopping imagery, because there's so much of it in the text, and the opening Cheapside shots were a pretty good reminder that while this play is focused on kings and nobles it never really forgets the ordinary people who are much more concerned with work and eating and everyday things -- although the textual cuts in this production sort of do. Plus (sort of in opposition to what I just said) it's always a fun way to forecast the fact that people are going to get sliced up later. P.S. By "fun" I don't actually mean "fun."
- Was rather amused that they went with the least gay staging of the first Hal/Falstaff scene possible; not only does Hal wander in from the street, but Falstaff is also in bed with Doll Tearsheet (who is a pretty enjoyable presence throughout, though she doesn't have any real dialogue until part two). Also, is it a rule that all productions must depict Falstaff peeing? Well, I guess that since it's actually in the text of Part II (his first line in 2.4 is "Empty the jordan"), it technically is. I did not time it in order to compare to the ESC version's epic 45-second pissfest, though.
- I am not sure I will ever forgive Richard Eyre for depriving me of the chance to hear "So shaken as we are, so wan with care" in Jeremy Irons' plummy yet world-weary tones. EYRE YOU BASTARD. I'LL HAVE A STARLING TAUGHT TO SPEAK NOTHING BUT [THAT SPEECH] AND GIVE IT YOU TO KEEP YOUR ANGER STILL IN MOTION.
- ...I also really missed that bit. Seriously, they got 20 extra minutes for Richard II, would it have killed them to do it again?
- I actually really really loved Jeremy Irons' reaction to Hotspur's explanation of his non-prisoner-handing-over, where he's clearly amused/charmed by it, but then once he's heard it, he's all "okay, funtimes are over, prisoners now." And then he loses his shit. (Okay, one more Globe comparison: the weak link in that production was Oliver Cotton's excessively shouty King Henry; Irons shows us all how to do Henry!anger right. Also, while there's not a lot of continuity between this and last week's RII, I actually could picture Rory Kinnear's Henry turning out this way, obviously not physically because he and Irons look nothing alike whatsoever, but in terms of how he played the part.)
- The Percies! I actually thought their first scene together played a bit weirdly since the physical gestures and the line readings didn't quite match up, but their second scene chez Glendower was great, especially, as everyone has noted, their reactions to the Mortimers. Also, Michelle Dockery is ridiculously gorgeous, so that's nice.
- The Gadshill robbery almost never works onscreen. I wonder why that is? I did think that David Dawson did a good job as Poins; he is exactly the right kind of smarmy yet oddly charming douchebag.
- Best scene in the whole thing was probably Hal and Falstaff's rehearsal of Hal's impending visit to court -- I really liked the way they played it off as Falstaff suggesting it out of concern for Hal in the face of bad news. And Hiddleston's Jeremy Irons impression was so uncanny as to be seriously creepy (as well as hilarious). Equally good was the actual Henry/Hal confrontation (which was placed immediately after the tavern scene, in a reversal of the original scene ordering which has the Welsh scene first and then the court scene), where both Irons and Hiddleston knock it out of the park. Plus I could watch the Hal-slapping bit ALL DAY. ;)
- Creepiest Hollow Crown/Game of Thrones overlap ever: Glendower is Craster. Ewwwwwwwww. Fortunately he did not have a dead pigeon on his head and yellow face paint like the Welsh in RII. Also, while I'm on about GoT, Harry Lloyd (Mortimer) is clearly a man unafraid of typecasting. Also also, on a non-GoT note, I appreciated that Lady Mortimer did not sing either "Suo-gan" or "Ar hyd y nos" like every other Lady Mortimer in the history of ever, because THERE ARE OTHER WELSH SONGS.
- I quite loved the "everyone's hung over" scene in the tavern. Not sure why they decided to move Falstaff's dissertation on sack to that part, but Beale did it well and it was nice to see Falstaff light up for a bit. Plus everyone's "ohgod SHUT UP" faces were great.
- So I already talked about the battle stuff earlier and don't feel the need to do it again. Although I did rather like Hal stepping up after his father had to withdraw from the parley with Worcester in order to go cough up blood. I'm sure that's great for morale.
- Also, just as a soundtrack note, the somewhat-infamous Sad Violins weren't as bad as I expected. I guess because I'd been forewarned.
So! That is all awfully random, but bring on Part II! Shakespeare's most underrated play, if you ask me.