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By Woodrow J. Hinton
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Calista Flockhart
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Her shrieks are familiar. So are her indignant stares. Pushing a bicycle through a drenching cloudburst, her clothes soaked to the skin, Calista Flockhart talks the Shakespeare talk with the purest intentions as the lovelorn Helena in director Michael Hoffman's lush adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Just one of many recognizable faces (Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci and Rupert Everett) in the film's celebrity-driven ensemble, Flockhart's Helena receives much of the Midsummer Night's Dream spotlight as one of the play's key young lovers.
But when Flockhart's trademark lips -- eternally puckered and curved at the edges like some joking clown -- yell "Demetrius!" to a disinterested lover, you can't help but think of her popular TV dramedy Ally McBeal. It is a common problem with TV celebrities who chance the leap to feature films: Their utter familiarity shatters any sense of make-believe.
Flockhart might be cloaked in the flowing dresses and floppy hats appropriate of the film's 19th-century Tuscany setting, but it doesn't matter. At any given moment you expect the TV starlet to walk on-screen wearing one of McBeal's infamous micro-miniskirts. For a story that thrives on its playful fantasy, it's a crippling handicap.
You have to give Hoffman credit for creating such cinematic eye candy. One can't imagine a lustier setting for Midsummer Night's Dream than 19th-century Italy. Here is a lush and pretty tableau of green hills and thick forests made even more magical by the addition of make-believe spirits. Hoffman's Midsummer Night's Dream flaunts its fairy-tale spirit. There is the flirt of light from Tinkerbell-like fairies and a hidden cavern filled with satyrs.
Here is one of those rare films that qualify as aromatic. At moments you can actually taste Hoffman's Midsummer Night's Dream. Against its backdrop of gurgling fountains and piazzas, there are baskets of ripe tomatoes and garlic. Pasta dough is rolled flat across a table. Meat roasts slowly on a spit. There are cups of espresso and glasses of wine. Midsummer Night's Dream is more live-action Bon Appetit than Shakespearean comedy, and through it all, the fairies fly through the sky with playful abandon.
This Midsummer Night's Dream flaunts its period details: elaborate costumes, big floppy hats, flowing dresses of silk and lace tied at the waist with long sashes. Wardrobe takes center stage -- much like Hoffman's previous costume drama Restoration -- another film that emphasized set dressing over story. Shakespearean films have always emphasized design. So it's no surprise that the most beguiling thing about Midsummer Night's Dream is its magical, make-believe forest. It is an artificial setting with all the glamour of an old-fashioned movie sound stage. Such visual extravagance makes Midsummer Night's Dream no different from some special-effects blockbuster, putting priority on production over story and performances. There are no bold performances in this Midsummer Night's Dream, or as many laughs as one would think. Really, this is just a cinematic collection of pretty pictures.
Young love hits a roadblock when a possessive father refuses to allow his daughter Hermia (Anna Friel) to marry the man she loves. He insists that she marry Demetrius (Christian Bale) who is also the target of Helena's unrequited obsession. A cruel ultimatum is made: Marry Demetrius before the next full moon or be prepared to die. But in a magical forest, romance comes to comic life.
An acting troupe in search of rehearsal space crosses paths with the fairy queen. Mischief arrives in the form of flower petals that will make a man and woman dote on the next person seen. It's a familiar story. Although Hoffman sets his Midsummer Night's Dream apart from countless stage versions and seven film adaptations (including a 1935 version with James Cagney that was nominated for Best Picture) by focusing on the "meteoric rise of a newfangled creation" -- the bicycle.
Midsummer Night's Dream doesn't fall into the category of tights-and-swordplay storytelling. This is naked Shakespeare, made all the more sexy by its attractive cast. Now, with the Bard's work reaching its 400-year mark, movies continue their newfound Shakespeare love affair. Not that the vacantly glossy Midsummer Night's Dream will boost Shakespeare's cinematic tradition. One has to admit: Hollywood's growing obsession with Shakespeare keeps getting more and more perplexing. Economic repetition probably explains a lot. Shakespeare in Love did bang-up business. So the Bard will continue to be tossed out in any and all variety of film adaptations. A Shakespearean movie no longer requires Kenneth Branagh, although Midsummer Night's Dream audiences will probably wonder where Gwyneth Paltrow is.
Midsummer Night's Dream tweaks the nose of Club Shakespeare purity. Unlike, say, Branagh's Hamlet, which was shot with uncut text (making it the second-longest English-language feature ever made, only two minutes shorter than Cleopatra), Midsummer Night's Dream's problem is not with its updated Italian setting. In fact, it's the more adventurous movie Shakespeares -- 10 Things I Hate About You's high school setting for The Taming of the Shrew; Baz Luhrmann's Latin-American William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes; Al Pacino's documentary Looking for Richard and Ian McKellen's 20th-century European proto-fascist version of Richard III -- that have made the biggest impact. Hoffman would have been wise to follow the lead of his star-crossed casting and push the film away from its iambic-devoted dialogue.
And while the Hollywood tradition of Shakespeare is rich with many powerful moments -- Marlon Brando's Mark Antony in Joseph Mankiewicz's 1953 film Julius Caesar; Orson Welles' arty, black-and-white films of Chimes at Midnight, Macbeth and Othello; Laurence Olivier in his 1956 adaptation of Richard III; the summer-of-love flavor of Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet and Roman Polanski's 1971 Macbeth -- Hoffman's Midsummer Night's Dream offers little other than visual flair. In fact, when compared to Peter Greenaway's radical 1990 film Prospero's Books, Midsummer Night's Dream comes off as visually flat. Hoffman would have benefited from borrowing a page from other Bard-obsessed filmmakers such as Derek Jarman and Akira Kurosawa: Remake Shakespeare as your own. When you think about it, movies -- especially current Hollywood productions -- aren't meant to go iambic pentameter.
Other literary-film trends such as Henry James (Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square) and Jane Austen (Emma, Clueless and Sense and Sensibility) have fizzled out. Still, this Shakespeare boom rolls on. You would think the guy has an agent. And now, after a period of academic re-evaluation, films of Shakespeare make more of an impact than a stack of books. But flip through a copy of Shakespeare on Screen: An International Filmography and Videography and it's evident that Midsummer Night's Dream is not one of the Bard's stellar efforts.
Here is further proof that any Shakespearean film that remains true to the Bard's language creates audible confusion. Modern movies should not require a decoder book. While there are some joyful moments in Midsummer Night's Dream -- mostly visual -- they should offer so much more. It was poet Ted Hughes who called Shakespeare's writing "weirdly expressive." Maybe it's appealing onstage. In the case of Midsummer Night's Dream, it's an annoyance.
Watching Midsummer Night's Dream is to realize what odd bedfellows mainstream Hollywood and Shakespeare make. One wonders: Did Midsummer Night's Dream retain its traditional dialogue so as to appear more authentic? If so, it's no different than Pamela Anderson Lee putting a pair of glasses over her breasts and declaring herself an egghead.
It has been said that Shakespeare's long-term survival depends not on academe but on Hollywood. There's also a flip side to such a statement: If Shakespeare is to make it in the movies, filmmakers have to be willing to drop the antiquated artifice and replace the gibberish when appropriate. Midsummer Night's Dream is one of those appropriate times.
Despite a dramatic burst of light -- as morning returns to the lush Italian countryside exposing its young naked heroes -- Midsummer Night's Dream's attempts at sexy storytelling fail to jump-start its lethargy.
Still, by film's end you have to admit, Midsummer Night's Dream's celebrity ensemble plays dress-up well. They display evident enthusiasm. You can imagine the entire lot saying "Hey gang! Let's put on Shakespeare." But whatever interest occurs while watching celebrity actors such as Pfeiffer, Kline and Flockhart try to build characters that are Shakespeare-worthy, the initial spark loses its fizz early into the film's middling moments.
Just watch Tucci as the mischievous Puck. He is the cast equivalent of all that ails Hoffman's film. With his pointed ears, horns, hairy chest and even hairier legs, Tucci's Puck is a visual delight. So why does Midsummer Night's Dream give Tucci little to do other than dance with a bicycle and ride a giant tortoise? Overwhelmed by the film's visual extravagance, Tucci's performance becomes little more than a pile of countless expressions. We know he is a man of ample physical comedy. When he utters the famous words "Lord, what fools these mortals be," you know he is ready for dramatic takeoff. Shackled by a lifeless adaptation too concerned with getting the words right, Tucci is all dressed up with nothing to do.
Everett, tanned and buff as Oberon, fares even worse. His is a painfully bland role. Pfeiffer glitters as the fairy queen, her blue eyes even more dazzling against a crown of gold leafs. Her pink lips shine with a boost of lip gloss. She is a powder-puff Titania, asleep in a cradle hoisted to the sky with vines, the perfect role model for the film's Max Factor cosmetics. Pass the display in the movie theater lobby. Flip past an advertisement in a magazine. Now you too can have lips the color of a fairy queen. This merchandising campaign is further proof that Midsummer Night's Dream has its priorities backward. There's nothing wrong with selling fairy-talelike beauty in the tube of Mustard Seed lipstick. One only wishes someone would have bothered to make a good movie first.
Only Kline shines, hitting the right comic high notes as Nick Bottom, a local weaver and amateur actor who takes his dramatic fumbling far too seriously. Kline is the only member of the film's starry ensemble cast who's willing to settle down and have fun. With his brocade vest and bow tie, he is a dapper fool. Watching a jug of wine being poured over Bottom's white suit is pure slapstick joy. And when Bottom changes into an ass -- becoming Titania's object of affection -- Hoffman's Midsummer Night's Dream finally finds a spark of life.
It's the film's star-crossed young lovers who are supposed to drive this story. Bale, so good as a suburban family man in the current British drama Metroland, is a blank beauty here. Friel -- so beguiling in the PBS-televised adaptation of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend -- makes an uninspired Hermia, nothing more than curves and a heaving bosom.
But it's Flockhart -- already so familiar as TV's micro-miniskirted Boston lawyer Ally McBeal -- who really squelches Midsummer Night's Dream attempts at flirtatious farce. It's odd that someone as young as Flockhart (age 33) could be stereotyped so fast. It's the power of television: a force that wipes away the mystery so relevant for a screen actor.
Flockhart is never able to fill the screen with a presence that goes beyond the requirements of the tube, even when Helena begs "be used as you use your dog" to the unresponsive Demetrius.
Any tabloid gossip of Flockhart's thin build fails to be relevant to Midsummer Night's Dream. Her flowing dresses and floppy hats provide ample period camouflage of any weighty concerns. Flockhart, like everything else in the movie, looks great. Midsummer Night's Dream's lush setting really emphasizes her delicate beauty. It's her clumsy performance, two steps away from Ally McBeal-like melodramatic double-takes, that tears a hole in the film's attempts at movie make-believe.
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Rupert Everett as Oberon and Stanley Tucci as Puck
create some mischief in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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Granted, I've never seen Flockhart in any of her off-off Broadway roles or the 1994 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie. So, for me, the impression of Flockhart as simply Ally is made even more powerful. But I have to admit, despite all the period gift wrapping that surrounds Midsummer Night's Dream, all I could think about when watching Flockhart step on-screen was Time magazine's argument that Ally McBeal has killed feminism. Theirs is a complex argument. Mine is much more direct: Flockhart is the killing blow in Midsummer Night's Dream.
Forget the size-2 Richard Tyler gown Flockhart wore to the 1998 Emmy Awards. Toss aside all those Jay Leno jokes and news of the L.A. radio station that threatened to send truckloads of Twinkies and Ring-Dings to the McBeal set. Public scrutiny of Flockhart isn't the problem. The decisive blow is that Flockhart doesn't bring Helena to life in a way to make public scrutiny go away. Yes, Flockhart is as slender as a reed of grass. On TV, however, Flockhart is sweet and kooky. Here, as the tenacious Helena, she's just bland. The film itself even outshines her as better window dressing.
There is something about TV actors and film that don't match well. In an era when TV stars such as Dawson's Creek cast members James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes and Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sarah Michele Gellar and Seth Green find themselves leading feature films, it's easy to forget the clichéd examples of Clint Eastwood, John Travolta and Michael Douglas as successful TV actors who bridged the gap. Consider the mixed track record of George Clooney, Will Smith, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Martin Lawrence. Really, when you think about it, is there anything special about seeing Friends' Jennifer Aniston in a film?
There is something exciting about watching Flockhart in her weekly TV appearances. Now, on the big screen playing dress up with the rest of her Midsummer Night's Dream ensemble, she lacks the necessary spark. She's transparent. Of course, the difference is that Fox's Ally McBeal is a megahit, while Fox Searchlight's (same corporation) Midsummer Night's Dream is a major disappointment.
If Shakespeare has gone Hollywood -- and he has -- at least in other extravagant productions such as Branagh's Hamlet there were world-class performances by Branagh and Derek Jacobi to make the film worthwhile. There are few performances to admire in Midsummer Night's Dream.
The film's comic payoff comes late into the film when Bottom and his fellow amateur actors prepare a play for the local Duke (David Straithairn). Dressed in his gladiator finest, it is here that Kline finally brings the film some much-needed laughs.
If Shakespeare is at the heart of the Western culture, you would think it would be impossible to get a movie about the Bard wrong. Hollywood hasn't figured out Shakespeare yet. In Midsummer Night's Dream, it's even difficult to understand a word he's saying. If there is a such a thing as a Hollywood Shakespeare fixation, Midsummer Night's Dream kills the horse it rode in on.
CityBeat grade C.
