467 - O, United States, 2001. Dir. Tim Blake Nelson.

(Thursday, April 12, 2018

467 - O, United States, 2001.  Dir. Tim Blake Nelson.

"The preacher says all my sins is warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo."

"Well, the two of us was fixin' to fornicate."

"Care for some gopher?"

"Oh, George . . . not the livestock!"

"We thought you was a toad!"

These are the words of that immortal bard Delmar O'Donnell.  The third tenor of the three amigos in O Brother Where Art Thou?  As played by Tim Blake Nelson.

Everyone knows George Clooney.  Many people know John Turturro.  Who is Tim Blake Nelson?

A smart man.

Classics major.  Brown.  Phi Beta Kappa.  Juilliard.  Seattle Rep.  Manhattan Theater Club.  Playwrights Horizon.  New York Theater Workshop.  Delacorte Theater.

How many movie actors have plays for sale at www.dramatists.com?

Tim Blake Nelson has two.  Eye of God (premiere 1992) and The Grey Zone (premiere 1996).

He has also written the play Anadarko (1998); the screenplays Kansas (1998), Leaves of Grass (2009), and Anesthesia (2015); and a one-act, "and the will becomes a garden again," included in a night of six, along with those of Jon Robin Baitz, Neil Labute, John Guare, Peter Hedges, and Wendy Wasserstein.

Among others.

He has directed his own work--Eye of God (1997), Kansas (as a short film) (1998), The Grey Zone (2001), Leaves of Grass (2009), and Anesthesia (2015)--and some television.

He was a member of the sketch comedy troupe The Unnaturals, which had its own TV show.

So when you want to adapt William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello to the big screen, rewriting it for contemporary teenagers, it makes sense to hire as your director a man who has cut his teeth on Shakespeare.  From Classical Studies to Shakespeare in the Park.

Not to mention the man who played the Flight Captain in Ethan Hawke's version of Hamlet (2000).  Juicy.

If only he had written the screenplay.

The screenwriter, Brad Kaaya, does not play quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.  That is another Brad Kaaya.  This Brad Kaaya comes from television and has participated in a couple of comedy spoofs.

For example, The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It (2010).  Sounds hilarious.

The average English speaker knows between 10,000 and 20,000 words.

William Shakespeare uses 31,534 different words in his work.

Brad Kaaya uses at least one.  The F-word.  Someone must have told him the film would be directed by Marin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino.

Which is not to say that real teenagers do not use that language, but that in the film it feels forced.  As if the filmmakers are trying too hard to be cool and fit in with the younger crowd.  While at the same time the young actors are trying really hard to behave like adults.  Othello was a seasoned warrior, a full man, and he and Desdemona were married.  The lead in this film, Odin, is a high school sophomore, and he and Desi are going together.  If you are an adult you might find it tedious to watch children posing before other children.

But before we protest too much, methinks, let us say that the film is fun.  Oops.  I suppose that is its biggest give-way that we are not dealing in truthful emotions here: everyone dies in the end and rather than undergoing a tragedy-induced catharsis, we find it fun.

The film actually suffers when it tries too much to hit all the Othello plot points.  It is like a video Cliff Notes.  A visual SparkNotes.  A filmed No Fear Shakespeare.

It does better when it lives inside its contemporary milieu and forgets its source material.  When it is a basketball film, a high school film, a love triangle-revenge-betrayal film, that is when it becomes enjoyable.

All of his life Hugo wanted to fly, to live like a hawk.  Odin is a hawk.  And that makes Hugo jealous.  But what Hugo has done has caused him to believe that people will now pay attention to him.  And as he goes down in infamy, he believes the attention paid him will cause him to fly.

Jealousy.

That green-eyed monster.