Firstly, my apologies for my tardiness in posting for “As You Like It”. Better late than never though J
Secondly, I have discovered through reading “As You Like It” that Shakespeare invented the chick flick.
Okay, maybe not the inventor; but he had the romantic comedy thing down! I guess I kind of expected the comedies to be more straight funny type comedy. But I found that, while they are pretty dang hilarious, they also explore a lot of deeper issues. "As You Like It" isn't just a love story, and it isn't just a funny story; it's also a story about best friends, and about gender roles, and about family ties and family betrayals. I think that’s one of the reasons we girls like this whole “chick flick” thing. It’s funny and gives us our sappy-love-story fix, but also lets us work through the deeper emotions and struggles, and usually leaves us feeling just a little more hopeful. Pair that up with a bucket of ice cream, and we’re good to go!
I had originally planned to do a poetry collection for each play I read, but I could not, for the life of me, find any poems about “As You Like It”. I was, however, able to watch the 2006 Kenneth Branagh film version of the play. It worked out kind of perfectly actually, because I had just finished pondering the chick-flick-ness of the play, and then I actually got to watch it in chick flick format.
I really enjoyed the movie, but aside from just enjoying it, I was really surprised at how much insight it gave me into the play. Watching it performed added a whole new level of depth to it for me. On the flip side of that, however, there were some things that I thought were cheapened by the film, and had more depth in my own imagination. I decided to come up with a list of things I think were deepened or enhanced in my perspective, and things that were affected for the worse after watching the film version.
Enhancements
- Easier to understand: This film version followed the original script pretty closely. I felt like I understood it all pretty well when I read it, but I was really surprised by how much easier it was to follow the dialogue when it was spoken. Maybe that is because it was paired with non-verbal communication cues that you don’t get when just reading the words.There was a specific scene in Act 2, Scene 7, where Jacques has just returned from talking to Touchstone, and kind of goes into a little rant about Jesters and how they have so much more freedom to speak actual wisdom than other people. As I watched that scene performed, I realized there was so much depth to what he’s rambling about that I completely missed when I was reading it.
- More emotion behind events: Having actual people trying to portray the characters gives you the chance to actually watch emotion working behind the words that you read. In the beginning of the play, there is a scene with Celia and Rosalind, and Rosalind is mourning the loss of her banished father, while Celia tries to comfort her. When I read that part, I imagined her being just kind of melancholy or mopey, but in the movie, she was sobbing when she said the lines. I was a little surprised, but it added so much more depth to the emotion I saw in the characters.
- A varied interpretation: This particular film is actually set in nineteenth century Japan. Obviously that was a lot different than what I’d imagined, but it surprised me how well it actually worked! Also, there was a lot of racial variation in the actors, which was different than my imagined all-british cast. But that worked as well. It was fun to compare my imagined characters with the people someone else chose to represent them.
- Deeper connection to characters: As I mentioned before, non-verbal cues really deepen the level of understanding, and along with that, it deepens the emotional connection that the reader or viewer feels to the people in the story. It was really interesting to me how I felt so much more attached to the characters after watching the story performed than I did when I only read and imagined them.
Negative Effects
- Mismatched interpretations: It can be very frustrating when watching a film version of a play you've already imagined in your head is that if the maker of the movie sees it differently, it change your experience of that character for the worse. One of the things I liked very least about this movie was how the filmmakers chose to portray Touchstone. I felt like it was an enormously lopsided portrayal, which made the bad in him worse, and showed pretty much nothing of the good. It kind of undermined the earlier speech about jesters, and I really don't think Shakespeare intended to be how he was portrayed in this movie.
- Changing the script: It often becomes the task of the movie maker to decide which parts to trim out of the original play. This movie followed the script very closely on the parts it included, but left some things out that I thought were more important than some of the ones they left in.
