Vopata
William Shakespeare is a playwright and a poet with whom all of us are familiar, whether we attend Shakespeare Festivals or are forced to read a couple of his sonnets in high school.
His works have been made into a lot of movies, and a lot of those movies are adapted from the original plays of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare adaptation in films goes from the creative to the faithful approaches of the sources.
The best Shakespeare Films adaptation captures the essence of the play but usually enhance it with some more elements. On the other hand, it is often quite a challenge to bring some of Shakespeare’s plays on screen even though there are numerous movies made with Shakespeare’s plays as a backdrop.
The Best Shakespeare Films Adaptations
- Scotland, PA (2001)
The action comedy adaptation of The Scottish Play, Scotland, PA takes a turn as it presents a small fast food joint in a sleepy town set in the 1970s, imbibing the Winneba history.
The main protagonists of the film are Christopher Walken, James LeGros and Maura Tierney. It is true that this one suffered from the lack of positive critics’ reviews, invariably it acquired an element of a cult status. Off, the Broadway musical it turned out to be, turned into a movie like this.
2. O (2001)
The plot of the movie focuses on an unfortunate young man who plays basketball and is made to believe that his best friend’s girlfriend is cheating by this honest best friend.
The film, directed by Tim Blake Nelson, also stars Stiles, Josh Hartnett, and Mekhi Phifer. Two years after the Columbine High School shootings the film was shelved for network airing, due to its over-the-top gory fictions.
Screenwriter Brad Kaaya, however, based this film on the rash of suburban school shootings during the1980s and on his own experiences as a black teenager in a predominately white public school.
The script follows a plot that in some respects is similar to that of Othello but given the period it is set in, does share a lot of resemblance. This also draws interest in the not so easy adaptation of Shakespeare’s one of the most tragedies. It has been made available on Cinemax.
3. Kenneth Branagh, Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
This romantic Shakespearean comedy directed by Branagh which starred the likes of Emma Thompson, Drew Barrymore, Michael Keaton, Denzel Washington, Kate Beckinsale, and Keanu Reeves among others, was well-received by the critics and grossed quite a lot in the box office.
3. The Hamlet (1964)
The Russian film adaptation of Hamlet made in 1964, which is based on the play’s Boris Pasternak translation, is probably the most faithful non-modernized (risk not lion) version of the play. The film is a well-structured one that takes almost all the events in the play but is shorter than the Shakespeare play.
Grigori Kozintsev and Iosif Shapiro, who directed the film, adjust the story to contemporary times, but, as in the case of the 1968 Olivier version, more politics is preserved from the original Shakespeare text.
The leading cast of the film included Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Mikhail Nazvanov, Elza Radsina, and Anastasiya Vertinskaya. Despite being produced in the period when the political tensions were high, the film received favorable press reviews on both the American and European Continent.
It was in the running for the Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award Best Film. While it can be found on the internet, access to the film is not offered by any of the existing streaming sites.
5. The Forbidden Planet (1956)
The Forbidden Planet by Shakespeare is not an adaptation of it, but a variation of the same motif, set in outer space.
The film is a classic of ‘B’ movies and is affectionately ridiculous. This stars Warren Stevens, Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis, and Walter Pidgeon. A Robot character introduced in the film ,who in turn played a “role’ is Robby the robot. The National film Registry of the Library of Congress posts that selected one of the films for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” in 2013.
