![]() Except when Shakespeare, Parker or the actors get in the way.įishburne's commanding, stony Othello and Jacob's dewy-eyed Desdemona generate enough heat to make the underlying love story feel fresh and vital. What he's ended up with, however, is "Othello" as biracial buddy flick, with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh in the Danny Glover, Mel Gibson roles and Irene Jacob ( "The Double Life of Veronique" ) handling the sensuality. He's trimmed, cut and pasted and rearranged the material and introduced visual flashbacks, fantasies and one steamy love scene to re-frame "Othello" as an erotic love story run afoul of an action pic. His two-hour adaptation takes care of the rhetorical problem by jettisoning more than half of Shakespeare's words, including some of the grandest language. To his credit, Parker's met some of the biggest challenges fairly well. The disparity between the symphonic sonorousness of the language and a tale of jealousy that borders on farce is simply too great. With its melodramatic plot and too easily misled hero, it's become increasingly difficult to take the play seriously as one of Shakespeare's great tragedies. Parker, who adapted the text as well as directed, is making his feature film debut with "Othello." He's taken on a notoriously difficult project. ![]() For every glorious image with which Parker demonstrates a fresh sense of how to bring Shakespeare to the screen - and there are many - there's a botched transition, awkward reading or unconsciously funny confrontation that makes you wonder why anybody would've trusted him with a camera. ![]()
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