Hal Kitchen
I think it’s probably a safe claim that no other writer has been more influential or more frequently adapted to film than William Shakespeare. His catalogue of plays, most of which are considered masterpieces of world literature continue to fuel the imaginations of other writers for over four centuries. To this day people are still keen to see his works re-imagined on film. There’s the rub, for re-imagined they must be. Certainly, many straight adaptations exist and many filmmakers have taken a stab at creating the “definitive” version of Othello or Hamlet. Besides providing English lit teachers with helpful study aids, films like the 2004 The Merchant of Venice or 1971’s Macbeth don’t really add very much to the canon that justifies their creation. Some demand a faithful adaptation. However, what exactly is the artistic merit in recreating as exactly as possible the stagecraft of a more than four hundred year-old source?
Certainly the language is of paramount importance. Shakespeare was a poet as much as a playwright, but I’ve long held that if you want Shakespeare to work on film, you have to take a sideways approach at it. All the best adaptations, bring the material to life in an audacious and unexpected manner, and these ten examples are exemplary not only in how to adapt a play but how one should go about remaking any kind of popular material, creating something uniquely personal and matching the creative energy of the original author.
Macbeth (1948)
Orson Welles’s post-war adaptation of Macbeth might be the most faithful adaptation I’ll allow on this list. Macbeth is one of the easier Shakespearean plays to adapt and stage, it’s a sure fire crowd-pleaser with ghosts and murder and swordfights aplenty, and it’s also comparatively short as Shakespeare plays go. Hence its “unlucky” reputation, invoking the name of “the Scottish play” in vain was supposedly a bad omen that the current production would soon close and that the theater would shortly be pulling out the kilts to get butts back in seats. However, any single frame of Orson Welles’s Macbeth makes it clear that this was no rushed and salacious effort to fill the stalls, rather a creative opportunity that one of cinema’s most voracious creatives sought to mine for all its worth. Still though, one could argue that Welles was actually doing something similar.
After the success of Citizen Kane and the turbulence of The Magnificent Ambersons, Macbeth did see Welles revisiting a past success. Welles career began on stage with his celebrated and controversial version of Macbeth, initially staged in Harlem. It was one of the first Broadway shows ever to have an all-black cast, and the striking expressionist stagecraft and horror atmosphere of which greatly influenced his later, perhaps less subversive screen adaptation. Welles seems like a director who spent his whole career searching for stories grand enough to fill his canvases, and it’s no surprise that having cut his teeth on the stage. It took him less than a decade to seek out such stories in transposing the classics to film. There’s a sense of Shakespearean tragedy to nearly all his works, and some of his best efforts came directly from the Bard’s writings. Orson’s treatment of Shakespeare’s ripest fruit is pure Wagnerian splendor and teutonic anguish. Macbeth finds Welles at his most daring, expressionistic and uncompromised, playing every note with full bombast and intensity, displaying the same do or die attitude as does his antihero in his final moments.
Welles took the lease of cinema and married it to his roots in theatrical staging, creating a nightmarish expressionist’s hinterland of mist, stone, and blackest skies, populated with furious tormented souls ripped directly from Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. Welles, of course, plays the title character, casting him as a tortured vainglorious drunkard. Jeanette Nolan is fantastic as Lady Macbeth, even if her character is perhaps less consistent than other versions. Narratively speaking, it’s a fairly orthodox adaptation, shifting around some of the sequencing and converting many of the soliloquies into voiceover or dialogue. It’s a rigidly stage bound and histrionic version, taking what could be achieved on stage and blowing it up tenfold on screen, while still maintaining the theatricality and requisite reliance on suspension of disbelief. The acting, particularly from Welles and Nolan is running full-force, with the close-ups animating their features as they act to the cheap seats. The language of the play is intact, but all the attention is going into the look and the presentation, without much care for delivery.
The costuming is Asiatic in inspiration and, by the end, Welles looks positively demoniac, brandishing a spear, a crown of horns, and profuse beads of sweat clinging to his wilting mustache. The sets are even harsher, all imposing and impossible walls of unvarnished pickaxed stone and high weather beaten cliffs wreathed in fog lit with a interrogative spotlight. Welles opens the film at a ghoulish pitch of intensity and goes up from there, with his characters living hunched atop windswept plains suspended above abyssal madness.
What weaknesses the film has, apart from its evident lack of interest in subtlety, mostly come from the play itself. The scene with Malcolm, MacDuff and Ross never works in any version, and it doesn’t here. MacDuff’s reaction is written too emotionless and no version that includes such a scene manages to ameliorate this flaw, this one including with it Dan O’Herlihy’s MacDuff in the weakest performance in the film, closely followed by Roddy MacDowell’s limp, uninspiring Malcolm. An almost paradoxical by product of the film’s intensity is that it can be somewhat slow, in the first half especially with its arch, resolute tone potentially somewhat draining. No matter though, you’re here to see one of American cinema’s greatest risk takers bust a gut as folklore’s most infamous tragic madmen in an unhinged high art theatrical hellscape and that’s exactly what Welles delivers.
Throne of Blood (1957)
Perhaps no director better defines this category, that of reimagined Shakespeare adaptations, than Akira Kurosawa, who achieved many of his most well-recognized and acclaimed successes through sideways adaptations of Shakespeare’s great historical tragedies, of which Throne of Blood is arguably the most successful. Adapting Macbeth under the guise of a big-screen samurai epic, Throne of Blood follows an ambitious general as he is persuaded to murder and usurp his lord, succumbing to madness and delirium in the process.
In adapting Macbeth, Kurosawa not only changes the setting, with feudal-era Japan– a very natural fit for Macbeth‘s tale of warmongering, power, violence and hubris– but strips the story back to its most essential elements, returning it to its mythic foundations. There’s a lot of influence from Noh theater, especially in the characterization of Lady Washizu and the ghostly fortuneteller—proper old school movie magic that one. Kurosawa’s work here is a masterclass in adapting for screen, reducing the dialogue and runtime and creating atmosphere and characterization through cinematography and set design rather than the poetic language and soliloquies of the original. He does also make some changes that improve the overall narrative and bring it into focus somewhat, excising many extraneous plot points while taking familiar images and story beats and breathing new life into them. Surely, there could never be any better version of “Burnham woods coming to Dunsendane” than its otherworldly depiction here.
Despite Kurosawa having already proven his status as a legendary action director by this point, his Macbeth is less action heavy than most adaptations, with the few action beats used perfectly to contribute to the overall tone of paranoid and dread. Nowhere is this better articulated than in its unforgettable climax which has still lost none of its power to shock. The original’s mano-y-mano duel with underdeveloped nemesis MacDuff is traded for a jaw-dropping sequence where protagonist Washizu’s (Toshiro Mifune) own men turn on him. His hopes of immortality evaporating before him like mist. Rather than any vainglorious hell hound fighting on to the bitter end, he becomes a wild animal trapped in a cage, scratching at the walls, desperate for escape as all his power collapses upon him. It’s one of the defining images of both Kurosawa’s and Mifune’s careers, and thereby of Japanese cinema itself.
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
An even freer adaptation of its source material than Throne of Blood was The Bad Sleep Well bending Hamlet. Akira Kurosawa soon returned to Shakespeare for inspiration for his next work, reuniting him again with regular collaborator Toshiro Mifune, whom it cast in the role of an executive assistant conspiring to bring down his corrupt employers from the inside. It’s such an outward departure from the source material, and moreover, keeps its cards so close to its chest, that it might even be possible to watch the whole thing without realizing The Bad Sleep Well is taking such heavy inspiration from Hamlet. It’s kept as a twist that the quiet, stoic executive assistant hanging in the background is actually behind the conspiracy to get under the skin of the callous company director. Once the penny drops, it seems obvious, as the cunning, immovable Nishi slowly executes his multi-phase plan to avenge his father’s suicide on the board of executives who drove him to despair and bring them all to justice. There are other character echoes like Nishi’s wife Yoshiko (Kyoko Kagawaa) and best friend Tatsuo (Tatsuya Mihashi) playing a very similar narrative function to Ophelia and Horatio, and the characters of Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius spread across the board of directors. The plot and stakes are admittedly very different, with Nishi trying to expose his nemeses to the authorities rather than kill them. It is similarly convoluted and with that same central terror: the fear that guilt and indecision can weigh so heavily on you, while others commit one heinous act after another while showing no sign of shame or retribution.
It’s easy to forget, considering his usual humanist outlook, what a genuinely angry filmmaker Kurosawa could be at times. Films like this and Scandal (and to a certain extent Ikiru) speak of a real, unbridled moral outrage when confronting injustice. Mifune’s stern control and confidence here could hardly be further from his feverish intensity in Throne of Blood. He still possesses an extraordinary magnetism and comes off as an absolute force of nature. Similarly, Kurosawa’s direction manages to extract the mythic, horror-inflected intensity and drama out of the comparably mundane setting. Turning war-torn Scottish highlands into feudal Japan is a fairly lateral move, but the modern day boardroom might seem a poor substitute for the royal court of Denmark. However Kurosawa and his cinematographer Yuzuru Aizawa film the modern urban setting with as much mystery and foreboding as the forests and castles of Throne of Blood and the stellar lineup of actors assembled do a magnificent job giving their parts as much dramatic weight as their theatrical counterparts.
West Side Story (1961/2021)
I want to include both versions of West Side Story because, although I prefer the remake, I have to give credit to the 1961 original. Of course, the real original here was the stage musical so I guess that should get the credit for this inspired modern reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, the famed story of two young lovers whose interracial romance is the catalyst for tragedy and violence between their two affiliated street gangs. The 1961 version has its merits, but I do have to say that the 2021 Spielberg version is better by almost every metric. The only thing I can say the 1961 version does better is that, by the standards of its era, it was significantly more groundbreaking and the dancing may be somewhat better. However, the singing is definitely better in the new one, as is the acting in general. Plus, Maria’s actually a Latina who can sing this time and not a white woman in spray tan doing lip-sync. Nonetheless, both versions are near-perfect masterpieces. If I were to make a list of the ten best movie musicals—stay tuned, why not—I’d probably include them both, even if I had to use up two spots to do it.
Making Shakespeare’s work feel modern and relevant is always a big ask. I just don’t think you can have characters on set in modern dress speaking the way Shakespeare’s characters do. Making that dialogue sound natural in a modern setting is nigh impossible, and it’s hard enough to do it on film at all. Baz Luhrmann kind of got away with it by stylizing his film to the moon and back, but even he made it kind of annoying (Sorry DiCaprio heads, it’s not on this list, though here’s a shout out to the best Mercutio and Tybalt cinema’s ever seen though. They were the real power couple). The Catch-22 is that if you update the dialogue you lose one of the core appeals of a staging: hearing the verse. Replacing it with something equally interesting is a tall order but West Side Story justifies the decision by leaning into the modern setting, creating a New York neighborhood that’s as irreplaceable a character in the story as Tony or Maria. And, of course, there are the songs, who needs “wherefore art thou Romeo?” when you have “Maria?” Who will miss “a plague on both your houses” when you’ve got “Cool,” and “America,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Something’s Coming?”
I also do think that the story is just better in West Side Story. It feels more truthful. There’s a lot of small changes that make it easier to buy into and dilute the contrived elements of the plot. Just the fact of Maria surviving at the end makes such a huge difference to what the audience takes away from it. It’s no longer the tragedy of two star-crossed lovers but a condemnation of racism, tribalism and street violence. The newer version by Spielberg leans further into the racial and sexual motivation of the Jets—another reason it’s better. It just has more to say, but it’s firmly established in the original too, with Anita’s near rape not only a shocking turning point in the narrative of both films but a very understandable narrative justification for the miscommunication at the end. The tragedy doesn’t come about through a silly misunderstanding but as the natural end result of a series of circumstances that make a happy ending impossible.
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
No, Akira Kurosawa isn’t the only director who’ll appear on this list more than once. Just as his Macbeth showed off all of his peerless youthful energy, Chimes at Midnight finds Orson Welles at his most poignant, tempered and tragic. It’s one of the most inspired adaptations on this list, and, in its own way, is one of the most faithful, preserving much of the original verse and setting. It’s genius lies in the restructuring. Sir John Falstaff is a minor character who played the role of comic relief in several of Shakespeare’s historical plays and comedies, appearing in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, taking center stage in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and finally making an off-screen appearance in Henry V as several other minor characters recount the events surrounding his death. Brilliantly, Chimes at Midnight extracts his comic appearances from each of these plays, and in putting them end to end, transforms them into the most heartbreaking of tragedies.
The boisterous wayward knight, full of tall tales and exaggeration, has long been a familiar and much loved archetype, one for which Falstaffian has become a prime adjective. It might very well have been the role Orson Welles was born to play, especially in his later years, few other parts might contain quite his girth of personality, and he nails the dottering, lovable sot’s charm and warmth. Welles was as noted for getting great performances out of others as for his own grand presence. In Chimes at Midnight, he’s partnered with some of the greatest Shakespearean actors of their generations, guiding us through the slow, inexorable transformation from farce to heartbreak. John Gielgud (more of him later) is the undeniable definitive Henry IV, where his stern, pained disappointment in his son antagonistic is simultaneously understandable and heartfelt. Keith Baxter is superb as the Prince, surpassing Olivier’s portrayal with hardly as much screentime. His victory at the Battle of Shrewsbury becomes a vital turning point. We sense just through his performance that the halcyon days of revelry are done, and Hal the boy is buried beside his defeated enemy Hotspur.
The last third of Chimes at Midnight is one of the saddest final acts of any film ever made, as the years steadily wind down and the ultimate theme of the story reveals itself. Chimes at Midnight is the definitive Shakespearean story about aging and mortality. The tragedy of never growing up is that your friends still might. Youth deserts Falstaff, leaving him alone with his memories as his life ebbs away, and Margaret Rutherford’s Mistress Quickly is left to deliver the most devastating eulogy ever penned.
Theater of Blood (1973)
Like Chimes of Midnight, Theater of Blood is a film not content with adapting just one of Shakespeare’s plays, but chooses to recreate choice scenes from a multitude of them. That is however where the similarities between them ends, for even in a category of films defined by a lack of convention, Theater of Blood is its own manner of film entirely. In the end credits of this film, there’s a crew member credited as “choreographer of meths drinkers”, which might just be the most gloriously absurd job title in cinema.
A splendidly tasteless piece of theatrical camp horror comedy, Theater of Blood stars Vincent Price in what might very well be the greatest performance of his career in the role he was born to play as Richard Lionheart, an actor who, along with his troupe of drunken vagabonds, exacts his bloody vengeance against the critics’ circle who tarnished his legacy. It’s a vicious and maliciously dark and funny slasher reimagining of Shakespeare’s bloodiest moments, as Price’s vindictive vaudevillian dispatches his victims in a manner befitting the bard’s twisted imagination, like a sadistic theater kid’s version of the Saw films.
The film has a fantastic cast, all of whom seem to know precisely what sort of film they’re in, although they seem to each differ in how best to deal with that information. Some, like Michael Hordern, Dennis Price, Diana Rigg and Ian Hendry, are pure professionals about it, doing their best to take the barmy mess seriously. Others rise to the occasion and seem to be having great fun doing it, like Eric Sykes and the peerless Harry Andrews. Others like Arthur Lowe and Coral Browne seem resigned to merely grin and bear it, hoping their characters are killed off before they have to do too many scenes. Naturally, Vincent Price relishes the role of a lifetime as the bloodthirsty ham and his cavalcade of disguises, including, besides his roster of Shakespearean roles, some less successful disguises as a Scottish masseur and a bohemian hairdresser. Imagine a version of Paddington 2 where Hugh Grant is a serial killer and you’ll be somewhere along the right lines.
There’s a dry and absurd vein of gallows humor running throughout the film and does frankly get a bit one note at times. Its set pieces are as hit or miss as the performances with the last couple of murders getting a bit tired and labored. Theater of Blood is a gamey piece of trash that’s good and bloody fun for the sickest of drama scholars who’ll delight in discovering the depths of its knowledge and more creative in-jokes.
Ran (1985)
You might understand why I didn’t bother narrowing my Kurosawa picks down to just one alternative Shakespeare film. Ran and Throne of Blood are two of the greatest films ever made, they just happen to both be Shakespearean adaptations. I couldn’t exclude either of them and once I’d included them both, I struggled to find a reason to exclude The Bad Sleep Well. Any opportunity to praise my favorite director I guess.
A more faithful adaptation of King Lear than The Bad Sleep Well was of Hamlet, Ran is arguably the greatest epic ever made of any of Shakespeare’s stories. Ran takes the story of King Lear and transposes it as Throne of Blood did to Sengoku era Japan, recasting Lear as Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai), a brutal warlord who has successfully unified his region only after decades of bloody conflict. Age and senility catching up to him, he makes the fateful decision to pass the day to day running of his feifdom onto his three sons Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu) and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu), inadvertently dividing his family and pitting them against him and against one another as they vie for control and esteem. Each fall under the spell of the vengeful daughter of one of his defeated enemies (Meiko Harada).
Shakespeare was a playwright and so wrote within the confines of the stage. His battle scenes were limited to what could realistically be evoked between the walls of the Globe theater—which once pushed it too far in this regard and burned itself down with a prop cannon. Within his historical epics, Shakespeare presented his audience with many a battle. Ran (it’s title most accurately translated as “tumult” or “pandemonium”) takes what is arguably Shakespeare’s darkest play and, with the medium of cinema, expands it to a storytelling mode that would impossible in any other form. The film’s most unforgettable sequence– the siege of Saburo’s castle at its midpoint– plays out largely without dialogue or even sound effects, just Toru Takemistu’s haunting Mahlerian score playing over images of battle and devastation as the ambitious and vainglorious eldest sons of Lord Hidetora betray their father and massacre his loyal retainers. This privilege given to the moving image itself is as far removed from the confined position of theater as can be achieved on film, with Kurosawa doubling down on the approach forecast with Throne of Blood.
Of course, he did not completely reject the character and story of Shakespeare’s King Lear, with many elements adapted intact. Kurosawa has at his disposal as large a canvas as anyone in cinema and utilizes that to tell his story. There are a few choice pieces of dialogue that are hard to shake from the mind, and even a few notes of humor—Kurogane’s backhanded defiance of the vindictive Lady Kaede, for example, and the essential presence of one of Japan’s most celebrated drag stars Peter in the leading role of the devoted court jester Kyoami—that anchor the film’s epic tragedy, but it is the vistas, the seemingly endless battles, and the Oscar-winning costumes that create so much of the overall effect of Ran.
However, perhaps no image anywhere in Kurosawa’s filmography burns itself into the mind quite so indelibly as the increasingly disheveled and haunted figure of Lord Hidetora himself. Tatsuya Nakadai was himself one of the greatest actors who ever lived and though less prolific a collaborator with Kurosawa than Mifune or Takeshi Shimura were, his performance as the proud and severe warlord succumbing to the poison of war and madness that he himself released on the land stands as one of the most extraordinary contributions any actor ever made to his work. On the subject of incredible performances, it must be conceded that the most severe mark against Kurosawa is the real lack of great roles for women in his overwhelmingly male films, which is why it’s so great that this film not only features a magnificent showcase for the flamboyant Peter but one of the all time underrated villain roles for Meiko Harada as the femme fatale wrapping the proud and stupid warlords around her finger one by one. It would be easy to dismiss Ran as pure bloated spectacle, but its most resounding success lies in bringing these three characters so vividly to life.
Prospero’s Books (1991)
There are some fantastic films on this list, Shakespeare’s writing provides such rich material and some of the greatest minds of cinema have taken a whack at adapting it. However, to my mind, this film, Prospero’s Books, is the best film on this list. It is a film unlike any other, yet also belongs to an esteemed category, as does Ran, of films that exist on the very periphery of what is possible within the medium–hammering upon its walls, filling the artistic space with as much as possible and expanding the limits of what we understand film to be. It is cinema, but it exists also as sculpture, painting, opera, ballet, theater, photography and high fashion, while also, in so doing, demonstrating cinema’s superiority over those other disciplines, for what other one of them could so encompass them all?
Prospero’s Books is Peter Greenaway’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and though it doesn’t exactly take liberties with the source material, taking much of the verse as read, it approaches it in as imaginative and left-field a manner as possible. It cannot be overstated what a magical, strange curio Greenaway and his cast and crew concocted with this one. You expect an oddity from the director of Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but this takes the cake for pure impressionist virtuosity and baroque bacchanalian beauty.
The film tells the story of Prospero almost entirely in his own voice, as he (John Gielgud) narrates the tale while the rest of the characters enact the drama through vivid renaissance tableaux anima including operatic singing and expressive dance. Running parallel, is a cataloging of the books in Prospero’s library. Their intimate heretical wonders and fantastical insights into the mysteries of the universe provide symbolic commentary on the events onscreen. Nowhere in cinema are the literal and symbolic expressions of a story more intimately and imaginatively intertwined than in Prospero’s Books, where Greenaway’s carnivalesque visual and aural sensibilities and senses of humor and romance render the story in shimmering rays of light and exhilarating storms of music and movement.
Scenes are often laid over one another, or framed by living backdrops of splashes or spectral audiences. The spirits of the island are embodied by a troupe of (mostly naked) dancers and singers whose movements were choreographed by Michael Clark (who also portrays Caliban). Their presence adds to the impression of Prospero’s Books as a film that is always on the move, though the camera rarely turns, instead dollying through the film’s exquisite repertoire of extraordinary sets. I would defy any reader to find a film with more opulent costuming, exhilarating scoring, radiant use of color and lighting, indulgent set decoration or sheer potency and grandeur. It could be wearying or bothersome if not for its infinite variety, undeniable virtuosity and stirring, whimsical sense of romantic poetry. It’s a marvel to behold with every element of the production and performance striving to match the brilliance of Shakespeare’s verse and I cannot declare any one of their efforts to have been in vain. It’s a unique, overwhelmingly generous and wondrously successful attempt to marshal every element of cinema to create a work as ambitious and timeless as the play it’s based on and may be one of the greatest films ever made.
The Lion King (1994)
Probably the loosest alternative Shakespeare adaptation on this list—certainly tonally—and definitely the most popular, The Lion King‘s adaptation of Hamlet takes the story’s essential premise—a prince’s uncle killing his father and usurping his throne—and uses it as the catalyst for a very different sort of story. It’s the only kids’ movie on this list, though not the only musical. Even if it wasn’t mine personally, it was surely the first exposure for many to the works of Shakespeare, even if you likely didn’t understand that’s what it was at the time.
The Lion King reframes William Shakespeare’s story of Hamlet in a number of ways. Firstly, by casting singing and dancing cartoon lions. However, what gravitas you lost through Matthew Broderick you regain through Jeremy Irons and the late James Earl Jones. The real inspiration with The Lion King lies in backing the story up. The Bad Sleep Well told its Hamlet by jumping into the story even later than the play does, effectively opening with its play scene analogue and back-filling us from there, just as the play does opening with the wedding. The Lion King does the opposite, allowing us to spend time with its hero’s father and see the bond they have together, the responsibility Mufasa intends to bestow on his son and the resentment Scar harbors against them both. This also removes the ambiguity surrounding the young prince’s motivations. We see Scar killing Mufasa. We the audience know he’s guilty, but Simba doesn’t. This is the biggest shift of all, reframing the story’s theme from the pursuit of revenge and justice to the taking up of responsibility and owning up to one’s mistakes.
It’s actually here that The Lion King kind of drops the ball though, because Simba isn’t responsible for his father’s death. He only thinks he is while we the audience know different. Simba’s inner conflict isn’t resolved by him owning up to his guilt, but by him discovering his innocence.
So, no I don’t think The Lion King is as strong a reinvention as the others on this Shakespeare list. It is however The Lion King, one of the most recongizable and successful film and theater properties of all time. Who can really argue with that? I don’t think that a straighter reimagining of Hamlet for kids– a la Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame would’ve had quite the same success. I can safely say it wouldn’t because The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a much better movie than The Lion King with better songs. It hasn’t seen remotely as much success (Disney haven’t even remade it yet!) because it was too close to the original. It felt too much like a classic piece of literature repurposed for the enlightenment and entertainment of children, while The Lion King played it looser and avoided that uncanny valley of unfashionability.
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s worst play. That’s fair to say right? There may be other lesser known and less beloved plays in his catalog, but we can all agree that this one straight sucks. It’s inherently misogynistic and, while obviously we should expect nothing less from a man writing over five-hundred years ago, we can at least acknowledge that The Taming of the Shrew is just awful. It did of course find a second life via its adaptation into a broadway musical (actually Bella and Samuel Spewack tried it a decade before Sondeheim struck gold with West Side Story), but although the tacky and airheaded Kiss Me Kate has its fans, I am most certainly not one of them.
You could therefore be forgiven for believing that making anything at all watchable out of The Taming of the Shrew was always going to be a bridge too far for even the most imaginative of creatives. Enter Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah, screenwriters of one of the best teen rom coms ever made, 10 Things I Hate About You who were brave enough to give it the Clueless treatment and transform Shakespeare’s most horrifically dated play into a fun, sweet, and charming romp with a genuinely shocking amount of heart to it, bringing the same spry and neat observations of gender norms that so elevated their later work Legally Blonde.
Like it’s obvious influence, 10 Things I Hate About You transposes the story to a West Coast American high school, with a canny spin on the basic premise and a few wry homages to the play, while still developing the story in a fresh and inspired manner. Here, Kat is Katarina (Julia Stiles) a high-school senior whose outspoken feminist attitudes and antisocial inclinations make her an outsider at her school. However, her younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is a social butterfly, bridling at the rules of their overprotective father (Larry Miller), who has decreed that she cannot date until her sister does, knowing that Kat would never succumb to the immature charms of any of her classmates. Bianca, being naive and beautiful, is highly sought by both nice freshman Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and vain jock senior Joey (Andrew Keegan). So, someone must be found to woo Kat, with the task falling upon unpredictable outsider Patrick (Heath Ledger) who Joey pays to make romantic overtures to Kat.
Credit should definitely go to Smith and McCullah and director Gil Junger for making 10 Things I Hate About You work. However, the credit for making it a modern classic should go to none other than Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, whose star-making performances are the unquestionable X-factor here. Stiles gets to play Kat as an independent and intelligent young woman who just needs someone else to prove they’re worth giving a chance more than she needs to change anything about herself. The devastatingly handsome Ledger manages to prove just that as the anti-social weirdo who turns out to have a heart of pure gold. It’s a fresh and intriguing dynamic as Patrick unselfconsciously goes through the motions of pursuing Kat and his seduction attempts imperceptibly turn into something genuine once they begin to work. They’re a terrific romantic pairing with a well-developed relationship and buckets of charm, giving the film a strong story and emotional center and turn the film into the direct antithesis of the original story’s gender politics. It’s a smart and modern take on the source material that doesn’t feel too labored, as if it’s trying to one-up or outsmart the original, it just feels like a creative opportunity capitalized on by approaching it sincerely and thinking outside the box.
I think that’s the point I’m trying to make with this list on Shakespeare. Adaptations don’t have to be faithful to their sources to be considered successful. Adaptations aren’t a challenge to make the most accurate version possible, but an opportunity to capitalize on, taking something that has good bones and thinking “how would I tell this story?” Shakespeare’s works have been around for over five hundred years and they’ve endured because of the timelessness and classicism of their plots and themes. They should not be monolithic. They should be changed and played around with, not just recreated, with some fresh gimmick and the same goes for any canonical work.
Love the Greenaway love!