Richard II
2001: John Farrell

Starring Matte Osian as Richard, this received almost no exposure. After viewing it, I can see why. It seems to be mindlessly pursuing the trend in modern-dress Shakespeare histories marked most notably by the Ian McKellan version of Richard III, but it is made with almost unknown actors, and with a budget that just may have topped ten dollars. It seems to be set in the wild enclave of a Latin American guerrila: everyone is dressed in fatigues and berets, and machine guns are everywhere in evidence. The score seems to have been knocked together over a weekend on a MIDI keyboard, and resembles nothing so much as a very weak imitation of the score from the game “Myst”. The sets seem to be disused bunkers somewhere...but it’s not clear than any of it matters. What’s more, either the DVD transfer was very sloppily done, or the original was shot on an inexpensive digital video camera: for something made in 2001, the image quality is surprisingly low. The latest iPhone could run circles around it.

From my point of view, the most important ingredient in any Shakespeare production is the performances themselves, and unfortunately these are on beyond lackluster. At least some of the actors seem to be confused by the words, which they occasionally mispronounce (cf. “lowering hate” in the first section — which should rhyme with “souring” rather than with the opposite of “raising”). Even when not completely butchering the language, they seem to be spitting out words rather than expressing the ideas those words were intended to convey. John of Gaunt’s speech is cut almost completely, and the rest of the text is mercilessly butchered as well. Pared back to barely an hour and a half, it erodes the text further by giving over lengthy sections to gunfights lacking dialogue altogether. One gets the sense that the makers were really rather bored with Shakespeare, and wanted to convey their indifference to the viewer. If that was their intention, they succeeded: the end product seems too long by about an hour and a half.

There are a few terrific visual moments — as when the exiles are passing down a long road with a huge looming moon overhead, but ultimately that’s just about clever cinematography, not about Shakespeare. It could have appeared in almost any movie with roughly the same content.

Worth seeing chiefly if you are a completist and want to see all the examples, or if it would be a great deal of trouble to avoid. Otherwise don’t bother.

Buy Richard II from Amazon.