julius caesar 2002, unfortunately not really shakespearean, and infinite amounts of tl;dr
So the culmination of my all-nighter last night was me watching Julius Caesar - not, actually, the Shakespeare one, but this 2002 TV film, which I found on youtube. The image is not the most flattering, nor is that the right trailer, obviously, but search "julius caesar 2002" on youtube and you'll find something.
I enjoyed it! A lot! It felt kind of like The Young Victoria with Romans, in that it was pretty costumes and pretty people kissing and being cute and the plot was kind of secondary. Well, it was for me at least, because I know that story pretty much like the back of my hand so the only parts of the plot I really paid attention to were bits of history I wasn't familiar with or extra scenes that were obviously added, but were no less nice.
So it starts off with Sulla, coming in and going RRR I DICTATE YOU. Sulla (dammit I keep writing Cinna) was played by Richard Harris, aka First Dumbledore. So I was, for the most part, going NOOOO DUMBLEDORE WHY. He didn't have a beard at all though, and his part was fairly small, so it didn't last. Anyway, the most important part of his scenes was POMPEY.
This film made me ship Caesar/Pompey. I mean, I kind of don't know why I didn't think of it before. They first see each other when Caesar's been captured and taken before Sulla. Sulla says he'll let him go if he divorces his wife, Caesar says no. Pompey says he thinks Caesar should go free, Sulla lets him. When Caesar is gone, Sulla tells Pompey to go bring him Caesar's heart. Pompey finds Caesar and gives him a ring. He tells Caesar to go to Asia (Bithynia, I think), and show Nicodemes the ring so he'll be welcomed. Which made me SO EXCITED, because, you know, Caesar's the queen of Bithynia! Unfortunately, they totally skipped over that part, but oh well.
Hm, let's see... there was this one extremely suggestive Caesar/Pompey line, let me go find it...
Okay, here it is! They're talking about Pompey (obvs)...
Caesar: Yes, he tolerated me because he loved Julia so much...
Brutus: Caesar... He loved Julia because he saw you in her!
What? No, I... I just got some dust in my eye, that's all...
Regarding Julia. There was this scene at the beginning, when Julia was still little, where Caesar goes into their garden and she's playing with a couple of other kids, a girl and two boys. He says "Who are your friends?" "Portia and Marcus!" "Ah, Cato's children." One of the kids: "That's our cousin. *points*" "Brutus!"
GUYS
GUYS ARE YOU GETTING THIS?
WEE LITTLE BRUTUS
Oh, and I said she was playing with a girl and two boys - that was wrong. She was playing with a girl and a boy. Brutus was on a bench, reading Aristotle.
I CAN'T HANDLE THIS
Hey, so, let me talk about Brutus/Cassius for a little bit, then I will tell you about Portia and Calpurnia, then I will regale you with a mini picspam from IMDB.
So Brutus was quite young - not the kid sitting on the bench reading Ethics, but still, comparatively, young. Cassius was grey-haired, a bit shorter, a bit stouter, and had a strange little accent. I was trying to place it for... like, most of the time he was in the film. I then figured out that it was the same accent the Bithynian guys had in Rome. Not quite "I want to see a Roman woman fucked by baboons", more "Seems a bit cowardly, no?" Actually, when I was trying to place it, I kept thinking of that last line, it just took me a while to remember what that was from. Which was pretty pathetic, because I've seen that scene at least 8 times. Anywhoozle. Cassius was actually pretty cute, and Brutus looked Mediterranean - or, shall I say, Greek (friendslist, conspirators, unkindestslash ers - you know what that means. He actually did, though, I'm not just saying that suggestively).
Well, the culminating B/C scene, for me, was this film's equivalent of 1.2, when Cassius first goes to speak to Brutus alone about Caesar. He comes in (basically just invites himself into Brutus' study), they each remark at how the other is an early riser, and Cassius then says
"I couldn't sleep last night, worrying about the honor of your name."
Okay, perhaps partly it was a ploy to convince Brutus, but Cassius basically says "I was up all night thinking about you." Hee. <3 And here are some not-very-related but still fantastically slashy lines from the same scene:
Caius Cassius: So, you're mourning over Cato's death?
Marcus Brutus: Cassius, yes, I am grieving... but private affections and public duty are not the same thing.
Caius Cassius: And yet they say that in your grief that you just weep and say prayers... and fill your wife's drinking cup and go to bed... And when Caesar comes to you tonight, you'll be like his boy, filling his cup too.
Heh.
In the same scene, they start talking about things relevant to the more thinky members of unkindestslash : words vs deeds. Cassius tells Brutus that, though he's verbally opposed Caesar becoming king, he might as well not have done anything at all. Brutus gets a couple of fantastic lines right here. They kind of blew my mind when I first heard them, just for how sheerly true they felt for these characters, in all their different media iterations:
"I try to use words before a sword, Cassius. Just as I try to use reason before passion."
Cassius says some stuff about reason leading to idleness, and how action is required, that felt more true for Hamlet than for the story, so I won't quote them here. I pretty much just did, anyway. He then gets in a sneaky snarky insult at Brutus, calling him "meek and gentle". XD Haha. You know, I think maybe a lot of traditional portrayals of Cassius are like this - only focusing on the sneaky, mean, conniving side (not to say I didn't find this Cassius completely adorable at times). But because I've seen so many sides of, and takes on, Cassius: John Gielgud's straight-faced, hard-on-the-outside-soft-and-chewy-on-the-inside soldier; David Collings' flirty, tempermental firehead; Guy Henry's coolheaded, emotional, sentimental introvert; and fog_shadow , who, gods help me, could actually BE Cassius and I might not be able to tell the difference. What I'm saying - what I'm trying to say - is that I've seen so many different versions, what's adding one more?... even though I say he is the typical Cassius and yet is far from what, in my eyes, is the "typical" Cassius... I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about here. What am I talking about? what was I talking about? Oh right, slash. Let's, err, get back to that.
Umm, well. I'm not sure if there's much else to say, really - perhaps most of the slash was just in little glances (I like to think it was), maybe my slash goggles are on so tight it's affecting the bloodflow to my head.
Speaking of slash goggles, god help me if I don't want these like a mofo. *sigh*
Moving on. Before I start talking about Portia and Calpurnia, allow me to make two notes:
1. Cato was played by Christopher Walken, who had the ugliest, most un-Roman hair known to man. At worst I hated him, at best I was creeped out by him.
2. The guy playing Antony looked like a more square-faced version of Taylor Lautner. It was INCREDIBLY distracting through pretty much all of his scenes.
3. Oh, third extra note because that reminds me. At one point Antony gave this awesome speech (not the funeral, that wasn't shown, the film ended with Caesar on the senate floor - it was while he was in Gaul), which was totally OOC because Antony was actually a really shit orator. In real life, I mean.
So. Portia and Calpurnia.
I'll start with Calpurnia, because she had the bigger role. Caesar's second wife was completely left out, which was a bit of a relief, because srsly the Bona Dea and that one dude it's just. uuuuugh. Gives me a headache.
They met (well, she met him) during Pompey's Triumph, when Seizure quietly went off to the side to have a caesar - I mean Seizure had a seizure - I mean Caesar had a caesar - okay, I give up. Caesar had a seizure. There we go! Calpurnia, in the crowd, was the only one who noticed, and she quietly went to go find him and hold him while he tossed until his mother came and took over. It was really quite sweet. <3 They met at a party later (Pompey and Julia's wedding, I think), and got married. They were the most adorable couple ever, you guys, omg.
Of course, then there was that whole Cleopatra fiasco :|... but I'll avoid the topic, it just makes me mad.
So Portia. She was part of the little gang of Julia, Cato Jr, Brutus, and herself, which made it kind of sweet to see her and Brutus married but also ew, cousins. There was no thigh-stabbing, and in fact how she found out about the assassination was by seeing Brutus put a dagger in his toga early in the morning, while he thought she was asleep. She followed him to another room of the house, and hears him describe, pretty explicitly, the plan for Caesar's murder to the rest of the conspirators.
So now Brutus has gone to Cleopatra's house to pick up Caesar (oh wow, Caesar, nice job, you're really going up in my opinion here), but Calpurnia has beaten him there and told him about her dream (which was actually pretty scary, she sat up in bed and started pulling bloody cloth off of Caesar), and of course poor Brutus has to play the role of Decius (or Decimus, I suppose we should call him - although he wasn't ever called by name in this anyway) and convince Caesar to go to the senate. He's shaken by Calpurnia's dream, though, and tells her it's okay - he'll stay close to Caesar all day. (And so near will I be, etc...)
Portia tells Calpurnia, kind of obscurely, about the murder, and Calpurnia runs to the Senate House, just in time for Caesar to die looking in her eyes.
End film.
*sigh*
It then, at the very beginning of the credits, goes through the faces of all the other people and describes how they died. Which... was understandable for Brutus and Cassius, and for Portia too I suppose, but then it talks about Antony and Cleopatra and their suicide, and I can totally see how if I were just a casual TV-goer who didn't know jack about history, I'd probably be going "What the hell?" right about then.
So anyway. If you have read all the way through this, or at least skimmed, or scrolled down that's okay too, here's a mini picspam for you! :D
Brutus, looking very sad and war-torn. :(
Left to right: Caesar, Cassius, Brutus. I told you they were cute! Aww, they look like little kids next to him. <3
Poor bb on the Ides, looking terribly conflicted. (All these pictures have Brutus in them because he is the only actor on whose page I could find pictures, and also, Brutus!) I kind of love the pattern on his tunic, a lot. That's probably not what you're supposed to say, but I do.
Left to right: Calpurnia, Portia (god aren't they beautiful?), Brutus of course, and I think that's Cato Jr kind of peeking out behind him.
Ooh! I take that back about all of them being of Brutus, I found some of Antony, too! :D
Starting with this one, because I believe it's the most obvious in terms of resemblance to Taylor Lautner. C'mon guys tell me I'm not the only one that sees it
Antony, with Caesar next to him. Caesar was a cutie, but terribly pale for a Roman conquerer. And he seemed to be wearing an eternal coat of guyliner, which did not help suspension of disbelief but was quite pretty to behold.
Antony making his kickass speech, which ended in the senators getting pelted with food. Ah, movies. He looks delightfully snarky here, and I love it.
tl;dr This movie can be kind of silly or strange at times but it was absolutely fantastic and I loved it a lot for reasons I'm not sure of. There were moments here (bb Brutus, Brutus and Cassius' early-morning chat) that I would have loved to link to the video and given what time to go to to see them at, but I'm not going to. You know why? Because YOU SHOULD WATCH THE WHOLE THING. Seriously.
I think I might start watching Empire next.
♥
(I also feel that perhaps, in a post so blatantly Caesar-based - if perhaps not the right Caesar - now might be the right time to say that I've been made a mod of unkindestslash , and I'm just making a note of it here because it makes me very happy. :D)
I enjoyed it! A lot! It felt kind of like The Young Victoria with Romans, in that it was pretty costumes and pretty people kissing and being cute and the plot was kind of secondary. Well, it was for me at least, because I know that story pretty much like the back of my hand so the only parts of the plot I really paid attention to were bits of history I wasn't familiar with or extra scenes that were obviously added, but were no less nice.
So it starts off with Sulla, coming in and going RRR I DICTATE YOU. Sulla (dammit I keep writing Cinna) was played by Richard Harris, aka First Dumbledore. So I was, for the most part, going NOOOO DUMBLEDORE WHY. He didn't have a beard at all though, and his part was fairly small, so it didn't last. Anyway, the most important part of his scenes was POMPEY.
This film made me ship Caesar/Pompey. I mean, I kind of don't know why I didn't think of it before. They first see each other when Caesar's been captured and taken before Sulla. Sulla says he'll let him go if he divorces his wife, Caesar says no. Pompey says he thinks Caesar should go free, Sulla lets him. When Caesar is gone, Sulla tells Pompey to go bring him Caesar's heart. Pompey finds Caesar and gives him a ring. He tells Caesar to go to Asia (Bithynia, I think), and show Nicodemes the ring so he'll be welcomed. Which made me SO EXCITED, because, you know, Caesar's the queen of Bithynia! Unfortunately, they totally skipped over that part, but oh well.
Hm, let's see... there was this one extremely suggestive Caesar/Pompey line, let me go find it...
Okay, here it is! They're talking about Pompey (obvs)...
Caesar: Yes, he tolerated me because he loved Julia so much...
Brutus: Caesar... He loved Julia because he saw you in her!
What? No, I... I just got some dust in my eye, that's all...
Regarding Julia. There was this scene at the beginning, when Julia was still little, where Caesar goes into their garden and she's playing with a couple of other kids, a girl and two boys. He says "Who are your friends?" "Portia and Marcus!" "Ah, Cato's children." One of the kids: "That's our cousin. *points*" "Brutus!"
GUYS
GUYS ARE YOU GETTING THIS?
WEE LITTLE BRUTUS
Oh, and I said she was playing with a girl and two boys - that was wrong. She was playing with a girl and a boy. Brutus was on a bench, reading Aristotle.
I CAN'T HANDLE THIS
Hey, so, let me talk about Brutus/Cassius for a little bit, then I will tell you about Portia and Calpurnia, then I will regale you with a mini picspam from IMDB.
So Brutus was quite young - not the kid sitting on the bench reading Ethics, but still, comparatively, young. Cassius was grey-haired, a bit shorter, a bit stouter, and had a strange little accent. I was trying to place it for... like, most of the time he was in the film. I then figured out that it was the same accent the Bithynian guys had in Rome. Not quite "I want to see a Roman woman fucked by baboons", more "Seems a bit cowardly, no?" Actually, when I was trying to place it, I kept thinking of that last line, it just took me a while to remember what that was from. Which was pretty pathetic, because I've seen that scene at least 8 times. Anywhoozle. Cassius was actually pretty cute, and Brutus looked Mediterranean - or, shall I say, Greek (friendslist, conspirators, unkindestslash ers - you know what that means. He actually did, though, I'm not just saying that suggestively).
Well, the culminating B/C scene, for me, was this film's equivalent of 1.2, when Cassius first goes to speak to Brutus alone about Caesar. He comes in (basically just invites himself into Brutus' study), they each remark at how the other is an early riser, and Cassius then says
"I couldn't sleep last night, worrying about the honor of your name."
Okay, perhaps partly it was a ploy to convince Brutus, but Cassius basically says "I was up all night thinking about you." Hee. <3 And here are some not-very-related but still fantastically slashy lines from the same scene:
Caius Cassius: So, you're mourning over Cato's death?
Marcus Brutus: Cassius, yes, I am grieving... but private affections and public duty are not the same thing.
Caius Cassius: And yet they say that in your grief that you just weep and say prayers... and fill your wife's drinking cup and go to bed... And when Caesar comes to you tonight, you'll be like his boy, filling his cup too.
Heh.
In the same scene, they start talking about things relevant to the more thinky members of unkindestslash : words vs deeds. Cassius tells Brutus that, though he's verbally opposed Caesar becoming king, he might as well not have done anything at all. Brutus gets a couple of fantastic lines right here. They kind of blew my mind when I first heard them, just for how sheerly true they felt for these characters, in all their different media iterations:
"I try to use words before a sword, Cassius. Just as I try to use reason before passion."
Cassius says some stuff about reason leading to idleness, and how action is required, that felt more true for Hamlet than for the story, so I won't quote them here. I pretty much just did, anyway. He then gets in a sneaky snarky insult at Brutus, calling him "meek and gentle". XD Haha. You know, I think maybe a lot of traditional portrayals of Cassius are like this - only focusing on the sneaky, mean, conniving side (not to say I didn't find this Cassius completely adorable at times). But because I've seen so many sides of, and takes on, Cassius: John Gielgud's straight-faced, hard-on-the-outside-soft-and-chewy-on-the-inside soldier; David Collings' flirty, tempermental firehead; Guy Henry's coolheaded, emotional, sentimental introvert; and fog_shadow , who, gods help me, could actually BE Cassius and I might not be able to tell the difference. What I'm saying - what I'm trying to say - is that I've seen so many different versions, what's adding one more?... even though I say he is the typical Cassius and yet is far from what, in my eyes, is the "typical" Cassius... I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about here. What am I talking about? what was I talking about? Oh right, slash. Let's, err, get back to that.
Umm, well. I'm not sure if there's much else to say, really - perhaps most of the slash was just in little glances (I like to think it was), maybe my slash goggles are on so tight it's affecting the bloodflow to my head.
Speaking of slash goggles, god help me if I don't want these like a mofo. *sigh*
Moving on. Before I start talking about Portia and Calpurnia, allow me to make two notes:
1. Cato was played by Christopher Walken, who had the ugliest, most un-Roman hair known to man. At worst I hated him, at best I was creeped out by him.
2. The guy playing Antony looked like a more square-faced version of Taylor Lautner. It was INCREDIBLY distracting through pretty much all of his scenes.
3. Oh, third extra note because that reminds me. At one point Antony gave this awesome speech (not the funeral, that wasn't shown, the film ended with Caesar on the senate floor - it was while he was in Gaul), which was totally OOC because Antony was actually a really shit orator. In real life, I mean.
So. Portia and Calpurnia.
I'll start with Calpurnia, because she had the bigger role. Caesar's second wife was completely left out, which was a bit of a relief, because srsly the Bona Dea and that one dude it's just. uuuuugh. Gives me a headache.
They met (well, she met him) during Pompey's Triumph, when Seizure quietly went off to the side to have a caesar - I mean Seizure had a seizure - I mean Caesar had a caesar - okay, I give up. Caesar had a seizure. There we go! Calpurnia, in the crowd, was the only one who noticed, and she quietly went to go find him and hold him while he tossed until his mother came and took over. It was really quite sweet. <3 They met at a party later (Pompey and Julia's wedding, I think), and got married. They were the most adorable couple ever, you guys, omg.
Of course, then there was that whole Cleopatra fiasco :|... but I'll avoid the topic, it just makes me mad.
So Portia. She was part of the little gang of Julia, Cato Jr, Brutus, and herself, which made it kind of sweet to see her and Brutus married but also ew, cousins. There was no thigh-stabbing, and in fact how she found out about the assassination was by seeing Brutus put a dagger in his toga early in the morning, while he thought she was asleep. She followed him to another room of the house, and hears him describe, pretty explicitly, the plan for Caesar's murder to the rest of the conspirators.
So now Brutus has gone to Cleopatra's house to pick up Caesar (oh wow, Caesar, nice job, you're really going up in my opinion here), but Calpurnia has beaten him there and told him about her dream (which was actually pretty scary, she sat up in bed and started pulling bloody cloth off of Caesar), and of course poor Brutus has to play the role of Decius (or Decimus, I suppose we should call him - although he wasn't ever called by name in this anyway) and convince Caesar to go to the senate. He's shaken by Calpurnia's dream, though, and tells her it's okay - he'll stay close to Caesar all day. (And so near will I be, etc...)
Portia tells Calpurnia, kind of obscurely, about the murder, and Calpurnia runs to the Senate House, just in time for Caesar to die looking in her eyes.
End film.
*sigh*
It then, at the very beginning of the credits, goes through the faces of all the other people and describes how they died. Which... was understandable for Brutus and Cassius, and for Portia too I suppose, but then it talks about Antony and Cleopatra and their suicide, and I can totally see how if I were just a casual TV-goer who didn't know jack about history, I'd probably be going "What the hell?" right about then.
So anyway. If you have read all the way through this, or at least skimmed, or scrolled down that's okay too, here's a mini picspam for you! :D
Brutus, looking very sad and war-torn. :(
Left to right: Caesar, Cassius, Brutus. I told you they were cute! Aww, they look like little kids next to him. <3
Poor bb on the Ides, looking terribly conflicted. (All these pictures have Brutus in them because he is the only actor on whose page I could find pictures, and also, Brutus!) I kind of love the pattern on his tunic, a lot. That's probably not what you're supposed to say, but I do.
Left to right: Calpurnia, Portia (god aren't they beautiful?), Brutus of course, and I think that's Cato Jr kind of peeking out behind him.
Ooh! I take that back about all of them being of Brutus, I found some of Antony, too! :D
Starting with this one, because I believe it's the most obvious in terms of resemblance to Taylor Lautner. C'mon guys tell me I'm not the only one that sees it
Antony, with Caesar next to him. Caesar was a cutie, but terribly pale for a Roman conquerer. And he seemed to be wearing an eternal coat of guyliner, which did not help suspension of disbelief but was quite pretty to behold.
Antony making his kickass speech, which ended in the senators getting pelted with food. Ah, movies. He looks delightfully snarky here, and I love it.
tl;dr This movie can be kind of silly or strange at times but it was absolutely fantastic and I loved it a lot for reasons I'm not sure of. There were moments here (bb Brutus, Brutus and Cassius' early-morning chat) that I would have loved to link to the video and given what time to go to to see them at, but I'm not going to. You know why? Because YOU SHOULD WATCH THE WHOLE THING. Seriously.
I think I might start watching Empire next.
♥
(I also feel that perhaps, in a post so blatantly Caesar-based - if perhaps not the right Caesar - now might be the right time to say that I've been made a mod of unkindestslash , and I'm just making a note of it here because it makes me very happy. :D)