Why raise a tempest? - exposition …

... and jubilee issue memorizing the 453rd birthday. (Even though 401 is a better number, I’d rather celebrate the birthdays.)

This post and, as I suppose, several ensuing will be about „The Tempest“ of which I have just seen the recent production by the RSC in the „Cinema“. And the first thing about it I am infinitely pleased with is that it made me reconnect with what I set out to do when I started my blog, and which became such an unexpected adventure: READING SHAKESPEARE.

It was even just before I saw the play that I realized how little I wanted to deal with the experience that “Shakespeare” had become less important for quite some time. Of course I was wrong, but it appears to be something I keep forgetting. I obviously have to make this experience time and again. (What did I just write on the issue of love and texts? It’s never about possession, it’s about DOING it.)

READING “The Tempest” again I felt completely lost. This time there wasn’t even the excitement of reading it for the first time. And I know: I always put everything on hold I “know” about a text, especially reading something that is already choked with meaning like Shakespeare. I always put everything on hold and mistrust every kind of opinions or beliefs that are not my own – which means that they have “proved” themselves by inciting a genuine human reaction on my part. This has become a well-tried technique of reading by now but it doesn’t exactly make it easy. “The Tempest” was one of these plays where I became particularly mistrustful and perceived the whole place as littered with prejudice. But still I had it in the back of my mind that the play is supposed to be so special, and why.

Be this as it may, this time reading it felt like going over a particularly bumpy patch. Already that first scene about the tempest … well, this is certainly not the greatest thing to READ, but it already began difficult AND boring at the same time. And, even though I did my best to keep an open mind, reading on didn’t get any better. Even watching it being performed wasn’t really an improvement. The version from the complete Shakespeare by the BBC turned out to be particularly uninspired. The recent production by the Globe Theatre, which I have on dvd, was much more fun, but it didn’t really yield any ideas about what might be the POINT of this play. I mean: Why do all this? Raise a tempest, go to all this length with conjuring up spirits, take so much pain not to hurt anybody, even “rescue” the wardrobe from being destroyed by sea-water… “To please” certainly doesn’t cut it – though it turned out to be more central to the play than I was inclined to think. Okay, there is this rather important issue of setting things right – in real life! But it appears to be a bit “thin”, or rather general, for a play.

The only thing that appeared rather obvious and important to me is that the play somehow is “about” the theatre. And the only pleasant discovery was to notice how important the wardrobe appeared to be. I thought, if there would ever be a “Tempest” for me – because understanding a play for me means to see it before me on a stage, even if it is an imagined one - there would be a big wardrobe on the stage, and Prospero would be a harassed director running to and fro between all the props and clothes. I still think that the theatre angle is important but, as it turned out, the much more important discovery about “The Tempest” became the distinct impression that I DIDN’T GET IT. I didn’t get it at all. And I knew that there had to be a “point”, as there always is in “Shakespeare”, and I knew that I utterly and completely MISSED it.

In the same way as with “Lear” or “Hamlet” there must have been deep-routed opinions – mostly negative – about this play that I wasn’t at all aware of. Looking back, I can see that I mistrusted and questioned EVERYTHING about it and didn’t even know why. (In the case of “Hamlet” and “Lear” I at least had a few ideas.) But I remember that my “theatre partner” and I agreed that we didn’t much care for the play. Like most people I probably hated Caliban, not as a “person” but as a “stage-creature”. I obviously even disliked Ariel, mistrusted him, as well as I mistrusted and disliked Prospero – and all the other people I judged to be either horrible or unimportant.

I am dealing with this at such length because it appears to me more and more important for how I perceived the play in the beginning and how much it meant when I somehow “turned the corner”. How much more I was able to see then. The next thing was that they showed a short interview with the RSC’s artistic director and the lead actor, Simon Russell Beale. I like Simon Russell Beale immensely as an actor but, for some reason that wasn’t completely unfounded, didn’t expect him to be a good “fit” for Prospero. I was pleased with his interview as well as he is obviously the kind of actor I like: being very precise and rational about what he does and then going completely mad on a stage or before a camera. Though, where he is concerned, “going mad” is reserved for very special occasions. Anyway, I know I shouldn’t watch these interviews even though it proved useful in this case. But what I thought when I heard him talking about the play being about forgiveness and so on was: O please, not the usual crap! - or probably something slightly less disrespectful and more rational, like the conviction: There must be something MORE INTERESTING about this play! And I have to write this because I still cannot quite measure how pleased I am that he was so right about this, and that I was so WRONG!

The artistic director of the RSC, Gregory Doran, I never liked. I see him every time there is a play by the RSC in the cinema (or on dvd) and find him invariably dull and naïve, and not even the conviction that I am most assuredly wrong about this ever changed this impression. His own productions were always very good as well, and the only actual fault I can find with him is that, being the partner in life of Anthony Sher, he always gets him into all the roles he is wrong for … (well, I realize that elaborating on this would get me far too far away from my topic, and I totally loved Anthony Sher as Thrain in “The Hobbit”, not only because I was so infinitely grateful that Peter Jackson hadn’t “skipped” Thrain. But this was the only time I did, and I know this would probably not be complimentary.) Anyway, I KNOW that I am unfair and wrong, not only because Gregory Doran’s work is top-notch as to what I consider to be good theatre but mostly because he obviously does what Shakespeare himself must have done (– and which might go wrong more often than not): TRUST THE ACTORS.

“The Tempest” on the Stratford stage began as boring as all my present experience (with the exception of the production by the “Globe”) had been. But it got very much better very fast. As with almost all the other aspects of this play I had been skeptical when I heard that they used computer generated special effects big time and felt that I had been right seeing the first apparition of Ariel as a giant, completely computer-generated character. In the beginning the stage was too dark to see the “real” Ariel in the background. But this was great – to become gradually aware of this larger than life “second” reality. In this case the effect wasn’t just there “to please” but from the beginning it carried meaning. One of my problems with “The Tempest” certainly was that the things you don’t see, or have difficulties to imagine just reading it, are so essential to “build up” the semantics of the play. To understand what Prospero is about it isn’t enough to see Prospero acted – it is to see what he can do. To be drawn in and CONVINCED by the magic.

So it became quickly less boring, and for the first time I loved the “mini-opera” and the ballet because in this production you easily understand why it is so essential to make the most of it. (And what I liked immensely was that they took so much time for doing everything properly – without unduly extending the play.) It is of course essential to see EVERYTHING the theatre can provide for one last time. And of course it has to be as perfect and beautiful as can be. Because when Prospero has done all his magic can do he can safely retire onto the things that are REALLY important - but I am jumping ahead …

The first thing I noticed about the production was that I disliked the actress who played Miranda and, as I had almost expected, wasn’t that pleased with Simon Russell Beale as Prospero. And it is important to explain why – even though I reversed the judgement about Prospero following the play - because this turned out to be crucial for my perception of this character and this production. The reason I wasn’t that pleased in the beginning is that Simon Russell Beale is one of the least “showy” actors I have seen on a stage. Still I like him that much, so much that it might be called “reverence” (which is quite unlike me). But in this case there was even “less” than usual. I thought: This will be boring, HE ISN’T ACTING!

I really like to see Shakespeare being played “naturally” but, at the same time, want to see something that is actually impossible to do with a “big” role like this. As, when I am reading, I feel that every half-sentence Shakespeare has written carries weight and meaning I expect that everything should be PLAYED – not just stated. And even I, who hasn’t got a clue about acting, can see that this is an impossible thing to do on this scale. Nonetheless it is an ideal, and I still believe in it and know that it is possible to get really close to it, as I have seen recently, for example in Lucian Msamati’s Iago or Ralph Fiennes’ Richard III. And I judge “Shakespeare acting” according to it. And in this respect Simon Russell Beale falls utterly short. He speaks the text naturally but monotonously, kind of carelessly – as if it wasn’t Shakespeare!

And somehow one expects Prospero, the great magician, to be impressive himself, and so there was a measure of disappointment, but at some point I began to forget about it, drawn in by the magic … And, following the play, by subterfuge I got used to the little human being, patting about the stage on his naked feet, commanding giant spirits to get everybody in the right place at the right time and taking care of everything that might ruin what he has cunningly set in motion. Sometimes annoyed, sometimes impatient or angry, never quite on top of it all. And, of course, without Ariel, his “lead actor”, who in fact is “a miracle”, who can do EVERTHING that is asked of him utterly convincingly, and whom Prospero TRUSTS IMPLICITELY, he wouldn’t have achieved ANYTHING!

I wrote “by subterfuge” because I took note of all this without really understanding it, or understanding how RIGHT it was. In fact, what I would have done wouldn’t have worked because, in some cases, bringing Shakespeare closer to our time isn’t necessary as nobody since his time has ever written anything more “post-post-modern” than this. (I must admit that I have no clue which period we are currently in, and if it even matters. Post-modernism, in any case, was a long time ago.) Doing it, we rather run the risk of destroying the semantics of the play because he already set up so carefully where the line between stage and reality has to be and is playing so cunningly with it that playing with THIS might become obstructive. It is important that Prospero is the “director”, but it is even more important that he is this little, quite fallible HUMAN being. But I didn’t get this – not until Simon Russell Beale did what he always does. Of course it isn’t always the exact same thing, but he kind of always does it, and this time it was just so impressive. And it was the SECOND TIME – after I had seen him in “Lear” standing on the stage, looking up and almost whispering: “Not mad! Please … not mad!” (The “please” I might imagine, but it WAS there …) He ALWAYS does it, and it is of course why I like him so much, and why he is this actor a director can (and should!) trust implicitly. And it is something you cannot explain, but some actors just know … when they are RIGHT and when they are not. From my point of view it is even the most important talent an actor can have. I am loath to call it “instinct” because it is so much more, but it probably is. And Simon Russell Beale possesses this instinct in such a high degree that he can do away with a lot of other things that I, or other actors, would judge to be important. Without being any worse for it - on the contrary! In this case, what he did was: He deferred the reaction to Ariel’s suggestion that he would forgive the people who ruined his life – IF HE WAS HUMAN. Instead of readily agreeing he just stood there and roared. Twice.

And this was the moment he put this play together for me.

"Moonlight" - glimmering!

O my God, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL FILM! I might recycle the final sentence from my last post about "Manchester at the Sea" and, even though this is the best thing I could think of saying about a film, it would never do "Moonlight" justice. So it wasn't JUST a "political" choice. I still haven't seen "La-La-Land", and probably never will, but there cannot be any film matching this, neither in beauty and perfection (= capacity of telling exactly, simply, and beautifully what you want to tell), nor on the level of intelligence and perspicacity. It was PERFECT in all respects. And whereas "Manchester at the Sea" is just "quietly" beautiful "Moonlight" is bold and daring as well. And emotional, in a totally "honest" way. The kind of film that couldn't leave anybody unmoved who has a human bone in his body. It doesn't occur often that I definitely lack the words for adequate praise ...

And I think now that Mahershala Ali didn't get the Oscar for being black AND Muslim, and not even mostly for being good-looking and confident, but kind of "by proxy" for all the great (black) actors contributing to this film. Everybody was amazing anyway. But of course I can't know that. Same as it is impossible to know definitely if "Moonlight" got the Oscar for the "right" reasons or if this was in fact "political". Which, by the way, might be the wrong reason only in my book, not in most people’s. Making or receiving this kind of judgements is not something I am fond of, but it comes into any reading almost more inevitably than "ethics" and is always kind of embarrassing - as I just experienced when I received my friend's merciless rejection of "Hannibal". Because, even though she meticulously laid down her reasons for rejecting it, does this mean that I am fond of watching shit, and what does this say about me? I think that this kind of implications are the reason why I have become even more careful about criticism than I have been, but, as I said, some kind of verdict about the people who have liked it is almost always implied. And to make it explicit would mean to make up my mind about what "kitsch" or "bad taste", or other terms we use (even if only in our head) to pass a crushing verdict, actually means. That is, what the concept is that is masked by these invectives. And it is not the most captivating thing to do but - as I realize every year when the Oscars come up - might be useful. What I realized as well is that I avoid to SAY "kitsch" or "bad taste" - even though I probably think it more often than I realize - and use the more subjective, but no less crushing, terms "boring" and "stupid". Maybe because I don't like to write something I don't understand, and I understand what "boring" and "stupid" means. That is, that I was bored when I watched it and felt it to be beneath my intellectual ("philosophical") standards. (Meaning: inacceptable as to the way I see the world ...) Well, in both respects I am completely on the safe side with "Moonlight". It is definitely one of the least boring and stupid films I have ever seen, like "The Big Short" was, and unlike "Spotlight" which I haven't seen - I just assumed that it was the film that a majority would be able to relate to, unlike "The Big Short", which would make it less intelligent. I admit it: I am still pleased that I was the only person in the cinema who laughed ... (But my brother, who is working in a bank, loved it as well. And I think he took one of the characters very personally. If I had thought about it I would have known who this would be ...) But of course this is as snobbish an attitude as I have observed and hated in others. If I couldn't even be bothered to see something I should keep my mouth shut. (Writing it in my blog might be the next best thing anyway ...) But of course this is how it works. This kind of preconceived opinions is important too because this is how we choose what we can be bothered to read in the first place. And it is important because nobody can read everything worth reading. (In terms of going to the cinema it is ever more becoming a question of spending money that I could spend on dvds instead …)

And even if this topic is kind of "not sexy" it is something that probably came into any of my posts, and into any of my reading. Because it is somehow fundamentally important to me to do things for the "right" reasons. Which might be stupid because: how does it matter anyway? What is the difference if I do things just because I like them ...? I know, though. It makes me develop "better" taste and makes me usually like the things I like even more. (I even know that my "gut reaction" AGAINST Schiller came from understanding him so well ... And then I was so pleased to discover that I didn't!) As I said, it IS important, but I won't get anywhere with this right now. I might as well go back to the film.

“Moonlight” got a nomination for "best camera" which I think is justified but daring because the hand-held camera is used so inexorably that the image is actually blurry sometimes, and right in the beginning I thought: "No, you don't!" because the cameraman stood right in between the actors and was turning round and round ... but in fact this was great because I suddenly felt as if I stood in this place myself, with the aggression palpably rising about me. Feeling uncomfortable NOT JUST because of the spinning around. This is something I have never seen before (I usually hate hand-held camera ...) except in "Knight of Cups" (which should have got "best camera" by the way, back then ...) This was the first time I appreciated the hand-held camera because the filming created a completely subjective perspective to the point that THIS, in my opinion, was already what the film was about. So, as a means of telling stories IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY, like in "Moonlight", the hand-held camera is great. And I appreciated the turning round because of this but was also grateful when they stopped. In fact I have never noticed camera movements as often as I did in this film, and that was because I could see so exactly why they were doing what they were doing.

And this goes for every other aspect of this film as well, which is why I loved it so much. The exactness and truth of every little moment, especially in the acting. Like Juan (Mahershala Ali) literally shrinking before the young boy because he has to tell him the truth about what he is doing. But he DOES tell the truth, even though he knows that he will lose his respect, will lose him completely. And this is the last time we see Juan. We just see, in the third part of the film, the boy having grown into the spitting image of him, now selling drugs himself. But as much as I liked this, to be quite honest: Naomi Harris should have got "best supporting actress" (she was nominated) - which would have implied that Mahershala Ali wouldn't have got "best supporting actor". And this isn't even about merit because there is no comparing of so many truthful and extraordinary feats of acting anyway. It is about "justice". In fact there is an especially ugly paradox contained in this constellation: the self-appointed father (Juan) who cares properly for the boys and who is selling drugs to people like this boy’s mother, making her unable to care for him. Maybe this film, albeit being so “simple”, is in fact too sophisticated on a deeper level for most people. (Including me: I noticed the paradox just now writing about it. And then I noticed a lot more of paradox throughout the film. It was kind of like when I “got it” what “Macbeth” is actually about, noticing the persistent “equivocation”. Because, even though people want it to be like this: humanity and morality are two different pairs of shoes - or at least you are born LUCKY when you are born into circumstances where they are not ...??? Blimey! I didn’t really try to but I might have dug up by accident what the film was about for me. Nonetheless I didn't mean "poetic" justice, I meant justice towards the actors because I think it was “harder” to play Paula than to play Juan. At least I think that most actors prefer to play characters that appeal to the audience and are sleek and beautiful rather than ugly and cracking. Even though “real” actors probably prefer the ugly and cracking to BORING beautiful characters. 

I just inadvertently got into the “90^th stuff” of my dvd collection and remembered that I had liked the 90^th even on German television because it was still about 90 percent more honest than what they do today. I always wonder where this generation came from that has completely lost touch with everything that is “real” inside them. Maybe there just ISN’T anything anymore that is not spelled out by the television and advertising industry before it ends up on “our” plate … Anyway, I watched “The Lakes” first and then “Sparkhouse” which are kind of the same style but, whereas “Sparkhouse” literally stinks of sheep and everything is steeped knee-deep in mud, there is so much boring and depressing sex in “The Lakes” as is probably actually still going on in this kind of places. Only it is probably less disagreeable now because every imaginable kind of ugliness and misery gets “face-lifted” by social media. My, my, now the nineties already appear historical to me, whereas the eighties are definitely turned into ancient history. But it IS twenty years ago …In fact the only “pretend” reason for writing this – because I so obviously WANTED to write it! – was an example for what I was stating because it is the most obvious example for an actor I have on dvd who is totally unhappy with the character he is playing. I couldn’t fail noticing it because it is Richard Armitage playing a farm hand called John Standring. And I suppose he hated every minute of it because he knew he was unable to hide his posh accent, and his intelligence and good looks completely. He probably didn’t want to because hiding isn’t what actors do, and he probably couldn’t figure out what there was to SHOW instead. And I suppose he didn’t like it either that they desperately tried to make him look awkward and unattractive by tucking him into baggy pullovers (I don’t think we even use that WORD anymore …) and making him wear a very unattractive hairdo. (In fact my father used to grow his hair like this, and he was a school-teacher, not a farm hand! But this was definitely the seventies … where it didn’t matter what men LOOKED like. Even in the late eighties he had begun to have his hair cut very short.) And they even failed! They just made him look clownish, which was probably even worse. Well, I suspect he hated it half the time and the other half tried very hard not to laugh … 

Maybe this is even why I like this stuff, even though it appears pathetic and exaggerated from a twenty-first century perspective: because it makes me aware of how much times have changed – of course not entirely for the good. These two series are in fact a great sample of the “period”, with “beautiful” actors – I finally understood why John Simm obviously enjoyed playing Danny Kavanagh in “The Lakes” so much. Because there is so much of a human angle and so much variety of human predicaments in there. (In fact, John Standring is a great character as well – almost one of his kind, at least in films, because he “naturally” sees the best in other people, not the worst – as “we” usually do. And of course Richard Armitage took up this angle and played it beautifully. But he is certainly not somebody "we" would want to be.) Or why I always held Alun Armstrong - who plays the literally ugliest character in “Sparkhouse” - in such high esteem, and was so pleased to rediscover him in “Little Dorrit”. This face – I just couldn’t get away from it! It certainly isn’t attractive but there is a whole LANDSCAPE in it which is even changing towards the end, completely, like a real landscape does, neglected and beaten down by the passing of time … 

I know I got sidetracked because it is ages that I wanted to write this and – what I didn’t even know until now: because it is such great proof of HOW MUCH times have changed. And this is even why it is such a stellar example for what I wanted to state about “justice”. Because there actually WAS a greater interest in the human angle back then and, consequently, in characters that don’t fit the norm and aren’t redeemed automatically for being good-looking and “cool”. So it would have been great to give the Oscar to Naomi Harris because she played ugly and cracking “beautifully” and didn’t spare herself anything. (But I am still secretly pleased of course that Mahershala Ali got it …) 

And these observations brought me closer to why I think “Moonlight” is so exactly what I like. Even the “bad” mother and drug addict, in my opinion, isn’t “exposed” and stripped of her dignity – probably “protected” by great and truthful acting, though it is impossible to determine where this impression comes from. It originates probably even mainly in the way this story is told (of which the actors still have the biggest part, even though the camera is almost as important): subjectively, avoiding to pass judgement in any form, but with these big paradoxes underneath which induce the audience to finding their own point of view. In the protagonist’s orbit a drug dealer is mostly somebody who has “made it”, who has become powerful and rich. But I am rather certain that he abandoned his role model nonetheless because he learns that Juan “destroyed” his mother. And nonetheless he genuinely hates her for what she has done to him. He even says so AT THE SAME TIME he acknowledges his bond with her that will last as long as both of them are alive. There is no way out of it – as there is no way out of who he is. Living it will be quite enough of a challenge.

Now I have finally arrived at what in my opinion is the most beautiful thing about the film – and why I think there should have been a “shared” Oscar for the leading actors of “Moonlight” (even though I would have felt sorry for Casey Affleck whom I admired very much in “Manchester at the Sea”). But this was something I have never seen before: how faithfully the older actors “absorbed” their younger versions in their acting. Especially Trevante Rhodes who plays the adult, “Black”. I almost gasped with surprise – I think I did, actually – when I suddenly saw the vulnerable young man you have come to know kind of “break” through the “armoured tank” of muscle, coolness and gold teeth. Kind of like the light suddenly breaking through the clouds and changing the landscape completely. As for many of the greatest achievements he didn’t “get” anything for it – except maybe the future opportunity of playing more great characters, which I certainly hope for. (And a place in the “hall of eternal admiration” of people like me who care for this kind of thing. In my case in such illustrious company as the “showdown sequence” of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, or Ralph Fiennes as Richard III. Which won’t matter to him because in my case he will never know …) Yet, of course he got something lasting out of it which is THIS FILM that albeit all the great work of other people would have FAILED without this. And I just hope he can SEE that himself, like the spectators can. I often wonder if actors can and am skeptical. I suppose they are too much “caught up” within their characters, like musicians in the middle of an orchestra cannot really hear the sound the orchestra is making. Anyway – looking forward to seeing him again, even if it will be five years, or ten years … And THIS is of course the “political” implication of giving the Oscar to a film like “Moonlight” which is REALLY important. I just hope it WORKS!