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movie tom hiddleston

[movie] I Saw the Light

I was legally required to see this movie, because Tom Hiddleston. Well, and because I actually really like Hank Williams, so I was excited about a biopic for him, even if my initial reaction to the announcement was oh dear god but Hiddleston sounds so British.

Silly me.

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I’m not a native of the south (and I’m also not great at accents), but Tom Hiddleston made for a convincing enough Hank Williams. More importantly, I think he did justice to the music. For example, Move It On Over (original) and Move It On Over (movie), even if it never sounded quite twangy enough. (Though how much of that is due to differing recording quality is open to question.) When I have some extra money (sob), I’ll probably see about picking up the soundtrack. It’s on the list at least.

I Saw the Light covers about eight years of Hank Williams’s life, from his marriage to Audrey in 1944 to his death in 1952. It’s a simultaneous career ascent and personal descent that ultimately kills him, and the movie’s not shy about the fact that the man had some serious substance abuse problems and was no angel. In many ways, it plays out like any other biopic of an artist tragically dead at a young age because he (or she) is pulled in too many directions at once, has no stable home life, and is enabled in the abuse of drugs by so-called friends and doctors-in-name-only.

There’s a lot to like about I Saw the Light. The principle cast–Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams, Elizabeth Olsen as Audrey Williams, Bradley Whitford as Fred Rose–all turn in excellent performances. It’s a very nicely shot movie. The sound is excellent. There’s a different tone here because the artist in question did country music rather than rock, which lends some extra interest. Country music (and its fans) don’t get a whole lot of love in film, so it’s refreshing to have a movie that seems to really get why this music speaks to people.

But–and this kills me to say this because I wanted to like this film so much more than I did–it feels like a collection of at times disconnected scenes out of a man’s life rather than a movie. The music and the good performances aren’t enough to really pull together what suffers from a fundamental problem of writing and editing.

Books and movies are obviously two very different media that approach things in very different ways, and nowhere is that more evident than in biographical film versus biographical books. Human life generally doesn’t have a discernible plot arc or an overall theme. We’re far too messy for that. Good biographies in book form not only transmit the dry facts of someone’s existence, but find a way to weave together events to show the whole person, their development, the way they touched the world, the way the world touched them. But it’s not something that’s generally going to fit ye olde three act format. And you can get away with that in a book because you have so much more time and space to build.

In a movie, you’ve got about two hours, and the need to hold someone’s attention for that entire time. Part of it is a matter of audience expectation–I go into a movie with much different expectations than I have going in to a documentary film. You expect a story out of a movie. That’s the reason biopics infamously play fast and loose with details, because reality bends to serve the art–and the art it’s serving is the story, the theme. I came out of 42 and Lincoln and Walk the Line feeling the satisfactory open and close of those stories, knowing what the director and actors were trying to say and how they felt the life of that particular person fits into the human experience both past and present.

And sadly, I Saw the Light misses out on that. I got some hints that there were dots the film was trying to connect, between the titular piece of music that makes its two appearances (the second in a heart-breaking and historically accurate way), the time or two Hank Williams talks about darkness in his music. But it failed to gel into a coherent thesis from where I sat, never quite connecting the details to the music in a satisfactory way.

I think it’s a movie that’s worth watching if you like Hank Williams. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did and it’ll work for you where it failed to work for me. I’m just sad that a movie I anticipated so much didn’t stick its landing for me.

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movie tom hiddleston

[Movie] Crimson Peak: Love and Monsters

Buckle in, kids. I have thoughts.

First, a generally spoiler free quick review. (The spoilers will be coming hard and fast later, never you fear.) I’ve seen this movie twice now, and I like it more on second viewing than I did the first time around. Which is to say that I enjoyed it enough at time one to want to see it again, but this second time I was able to pick up so much more detail and richness, I’ve really gone from like to love.

Crimson Peak is a gothic romance in which innocent and violently orphaned budding writer Edith is romanced by Baronet Thomas Sharpe, overseen by his unblinking and intense sister Lucille. It’s obvious from the beginning that the Sharpe siblings are up to no good, the real question is how deep the corruption goes. When Thomas brings Edith home to Allerdale Hall, a house that’s a near-living embodiment of director Guillermo del Toro’s aesthetic and rotting austerely from the inside out, she must unravel the mysteries of Thomas’s recent past in order to survive her own future. She’s helped, for certain values of help, along in this endeavor by the numerous female ghosts that haunt Allerdale, but the true horror is not found with the dead, but the living.

The cast–Mia Wasikowska as Edith, Jessica Chastain as Lucille, Tom Hiddleston as Thomas–is what makes the movie. Edith acts as an excellent foil for Lucille and Thomas and a catalyst for internal struggle and development. The movie’s aesthetic has the richness we’ve come to expect from del Toro, an exemplar of the literary gothic that I personally love to witness but cannot stand reading, since I find the dark depths and layering visually appealing but impenetrable and normally overwritten in prose. With a less compelling cast there could have been a style over substance problem; the story of the movie and its purported mysteries aren’t really that twisty or terribly mysterious. The strength is in the characters and their relationships, and between the acting and visual delivery, del Toro has put together something that adds new depths to old tropes.

(And let’s face it, you could cast Tom Hiddleston as a Great Old One in a Lovecraft movie and I’d come out of it saying, “Well, but what about the inner life of Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young?” Damn the man and his puppy dog eyes. He made me like Coriolanus, for fuck’s sake.)

And this is the part where we get into the SPOILERS. Do not continue if you wish to remain unspoiled. I’m going to break this up into loose, non-sequential sections.

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Lightspeed and UNICEF UK

Just in case you hadn’t heard yet: I HAVE A STORY IN LIGHTSPEED AW YEAH HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW

I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. I’m in a TOC with NK Jemisin. MY HEART CANNOT HANDLE THIS.

Anyway. Whew. Deep breaths. Yes. The Tell Me There Will Be No Pain is in December’s issue of Lightspeed, now available from many a fine purchasing establishment. If you want to wait (and you shouldn’t), it will be available online on 12/30. Trust me, I’ll say something on my blog when that happens.

Colonel Rathbone attends my final debriefing. I’m wearing a paper hospital gown that doesn’t cover my ass; I’ve got a breeze where no breeze has any right to be, from the back of my neck right down where the good Lord split me. But despite that I’m sweating, the backs of my thighs sticking to the paper covering the hospital table. The metal contacts set all around my head feel cold, sending little shocks that make my teeth itch…

Technically, this is actually a reprint, since the story was originally published in the special edition of Women Destroy Scifi that went to the Kickstarter backers. Not exactly a wide release, if a special one that had me super excited. So I’m really happy that this story will finally be widely available to read. It’s an important story to me, and probably the best one I’ve ever written thus far.

And also:

Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 11.47.01 AM

$385 encompasses the original payment plus the reprint payment for being in the December issue. And you might recall what this means; it’s the same deal as two years ago with Comes the Huntsman. Story written as a birthday gift for Tom Hiddleston, funds get donated.

I hope you all run out and get this issue of Lightspeed right now. This story is incredibly important to me, for a lot of reasons. And I hope you’ll consider supporting UNICEF with me this month as well.

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tom hiddleston trip report

Hello from London

It’s been a busy, busy several days. I’m in London right now, more project stuff. I helping with this so much I can’t even tell you.

I also saw Coriolanus for a second time with friends. I’m glad I had the opportunity, since there’s so much more to pick out on a second round, particularly if you sit in a different part of the theater. Still impressed that Tom Hiddleston has brought such depth to Martius the prideful douchebag. Still want to write Aufidius and Coriolanus slash, but I just couldn’t swing the iambic pentameter. On second viewing, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen’s performance really leaped out at me more. There’s so much she does with just looks and very subtle facial expressions. But everyone in that play is good, we already knew that. (Rochenda Sandall is definitely my favorite part of the ensemble cast.)

One thing that did strike me on this go around was, like in Hamlet, just how much subtle funny there was in the play. What makes those lines funny is entirely the delivery–particularly since the jokes sometimes aren’t as apparent to the people in the audience today as they might have been back when the play was written. The timing and tone of it was all excellent. And it makes me wonder why Shakespeare movies often seem intent on sucking the bits of humor out of the play. It’s a nice relief from the feeling of impending doom inevitably comes with knowing the play is a tragedy.

Oh, and the chairs still steal the show. I wish I could have had my picture taken with one. I was all set to make that incredibly awkward request, but couldn’t track down the right person to ask in the mess of people after the show. Sadness. I also did make the attempt to queue for the stage door after because I was so bereft after being kept from the chairs I thought that might fill the gaping void in my heart. But wait, that would violate my life goal of never actually meeting Tom Hiddleston! Fear not, gentle readers. The queue got cut off somewhere like 5-10 people in front of me. The fabric of space and time is still safe, as we passed quietly by like ships in the night.

London (but probably not Tom Hiddleston. Probably.) has now destroyed my right shoe. There’s a crack across the sole, and it made for an incredibly squishy and uncomfortable walk back to the flat from my dinner with Ingvar. (Ingvar showed me mercy this time and did not ply me with alcohol.) I think instead of buying another set of Pumas (though there is a Puma shop in London, I checked) I’m going to just go whole hog and get a pair of Doc Martens. I honestly think they’ll be more comfortable for all the walking I’m doing anyway. I don’t think the thin soles of Pumas have necessarily made the plantar fasciitis in my right foot worse, but I honestly don’t think it’s helping, either.

So tomorrow, there will be shoes. I am also planning to take the train down to Waterloo station for the sole purpose of taking a ride on the Waterloo & City line, because Ingvar told me that’s the deepest of all the lines (and it literally has only two stations) and that sounded kind of cool. I have a feeling it will be one of those things that sounded much cooler than it will actually turn out to be, but I’ll bring a book and look forward to riding seven thousand escalators up to the surface so I can blinking, step into the sun…

(Join with me now: Because there’s more to see than can every be seen, more to do than can ever be done…)

Also, you should know I have started a new writing project. Its title is simply Tea. And that’s all I’m saying about it for now. I’m just going to boil in my own amusement.

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shakespeare tom hiddleston

Coriolanus: Adventures in Aggressive Furniture Arranging

Back from Coriolanus. All I can think right now:

DRAMATIC MUSIC CUE! QUICK, REARRANGE THE FURNITURE.

Okay I’m sorry. I know. I KNOW. It’s a very serious play. And it is. There is a definite non-zero quantity of fake blood that gets used, to great effect. But goddammit people, I’m only human.

First off: these tickets were acquired by queueing at the box office in the pre-dawn depths of the morning. The tickets I got via Barclay’s Front Row are for two weeks hence, at which point Mike isn’t going to be with me. And Mike likes him some Shakespeare too, so he wanted to try to see the play while we were in the UK for Christmas. I wasn’t sure if it’d happen since I’d been getting a kind of scary impression about the queue. Well, just to add a data point, we walked over to the Donmar and got there around 6:50. We were something like 17th or 18th in line, and by the time we got in to the box office there were still a couple of returns seats available in each show for the day, and what sounded like a decent amount of standing room. The biggest problem was really that it was cold, so if you want to try to nab tickets and don’t mind standing in line for about three hours, you ought to be good to go. Just wear some wool socks and bring a book to read. (And if you go to the Cafe Nero nearby to get a tea to warm your hands, tell Bruno the adorable trainee barista I said hello.)

I’m feeling very scattered about the play in general for several reasons. I’m familiar with Coriolanus, but not as much as I am with, say, any of the Henries, so I spent half the time just keeping up and rolling around in the language like a dog in a nice grassy yard. And during intermission while I was waiting in the toilet queue someone who recognized me from the internet came up and said hi, and told me she likes my work and that just kind of filled me with so much squee I still haven’t recovered. GAH I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

Anyway. Coriolanus. I’m still really thinking about the set design, the sound, the costumes, all that. For all I joke about the aggressive rearranging of the furniture, that was used to great effect throughout the play. I’m less sure about the bit at the beginning, where everyone was on stage, seated at the back. It was nice in that it let us put faces to characters–which is very helpful since the characters have unfamiliar names, and many start with the same letter (eg: Volumnia, Valeria, and Virgilia, whom I ultimately gave up on and just kept mental track of as Mom, Wife, and Their Ladyfriend) which is the sort of thing that normally makes editors scream at writers but Shakespeare can do whatever the fuck he wants; he’s dead, and he’s Shakespeare for god’s sake.

Some of the sound (particularly musical cues) I found kind of distracting in a bad way, and some of it was very interesting, like this staticky sound that I want to try to track when I get to see this play again at a later date because I have thoughts. But I actually liked the moments of complete silence scattered throughout the play best; they were used to incredible, often heart-wrenching effect.

The costumes took some getting used to, since it was this kind of funky mishmash of very modern looking stuff with added leather armor bits, but that’s the kind of thing I can roll with. I’m not sure if I’ll ever forgive Coriolanus for causing me to have the following conversation with Mike, however:
Mike: Okay, so Coriolanus’s wife. Just… what was with her shoes?
Me: …what do you mean?
Mike: Just, they looked like they wanted to have laces like boots, but they didn’t. Why is that?
Me: I don’t know, I guess they were designed that wa–wait a fucking minute, are you asking me about women‘s shoes? Oh for fuck’s sake.

And of course the chairs. They were basically 85% of the set, and for all that I’m giggling like an immature little shit about them now, when you’re in the moment and just riding along with the actors it’s excellent stuff. The chairs do a lot of actual furniture duty, but they also play walls, shields, objects waved in the air in celebration, etc. They got kicked and thrown around by the actors, and I can say with all conviction that I saw no stunt chairs being used. Hardest working furniture in London, hands down. That the chairs didn’t get a credit in the program book really makes the entire exercise a sham.

Okay Rachael stop being an asshole now

Mixed feelings on some of that or no, it was very visually interesting. And of course since it was the Donmar (god I love that theater), we were all practically sitting on the stage anyway so you could see everything.

I’m going to go on and on randomly about story and character a bit now, so… spoilers I guess? But come on, it’s not like we all don’t already know how the play ends. Or at least you know if you’ve read it, which I always recommend you do first when you’re going in for Shakespeare unless your bard-fu is strong. (And if it is that strong, you’ve probably already read it, eh?)

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movie tom hiddleston

[Movie] Thor: The Dark World

[Seven pages of frantic key smashing later…]

I will keep myself pretty spoiler free for now. There is SO MUCH MORE I want to say, but I need to think, and not have two extremely generous beers flowing through my bloodstream, and see this movie a few more times before I can reach Pacific Rim levels of nerdly overthinking.

As usual for these kinds of movies, there is a MacGuffin. And it’s a silly MacGuffin, though not quite to the level of red matter thank goodness. But the McGuffin really doesn’t matter in the slightest. What matters is that this movie is having fun. And you get to have fun with it. The Dark World filled me with Nutella-flavored glee.

And it’s pretty. Oh gosh is it pretty. And so much snark. So, so much snark. This is the movie I wanted in every way.

I’d actually started getting worried that it would be a bit too much Loki (yes, I do believe there is such a thing despite the fact that he’s my favorite You Little Shit of a character ever) just considering the released footage and the fact that you literally cannot turn around without seeing Tom Hiddleston promoting the movie, to the point that it would almost be a bit creepy if he weren’t an adorable life model decoy made out of sunshine, curly blond hair, and swan-murder. But no. The amount of Loki is perfect and viciously jocund.

And Jane is most excellent. Have I mentioned I like Jane? Because science. This movie finally made me buy Thor/Jane, which I appreciate after being left in such a state of Meh after the first movie. Jane got to be the smart, strong in her own way character I always wanted her to be.

Really, I don’t have a lot of complaints other than I would have always loved more. At least we got a bit of time with all of the side characters. (Darcy-senpai!) They did the best they could cramming that much awesome into 112 minutes. The movie definitely didn’t feel that long, which is always a very good sign. The only reason I knew time was passing as such were the increasingly plaintive signals of distress coming from my bladder. (I did mention the two generous beers thing, yes?) And it had a bonus unexpected mini-heist movie right in the middle because why the hell not. Really, I’d love to see a bit more genre play like that, it was fun.

And there are some excellent cameos that made me repeatedly slap my housemate’s leg but it’s okay she still likes me anyway. If you liked the first Thor, I have little doubt you’ll like this one even more. Because this movie is honestly more fun, and determined in that special way Marvel movies have mastered to be a motherfucking comic book movie, exuberant and larger than life and unabashedly cheesey.

Stay all the way to the end of the credits. All the way. There are two extra scenes. (Marvel, this is getting a bit silly, when will it end?)

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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 4: Henry V

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start.

This. The Saturday I’ve been waiting for! Favorite play ever, favorite actor ever, go!

Rather than start this review with seven pages of frantic keysmashing, allow me to just say: Fuck yeah. With bells on.

There was everything to love about the performances turned in for this version of Henry V. Tom Hiddleston was superb. I’ve already gushed and gushed about him as Hal in Henry IV part 1 and part 2. At this point all I can really add is chocolate sprinkles delivered by a magical sparkling unicorn of pure badassery. Which is to say I thought he made a darn good Henry V.

What I noticed most about this Henry V was a pronounced somberness. Hiddleston shows clearly that Henry feels the weight of all his decisions. At the same time, there were lovely moments of supreme temper (such as in Act I scene 2 when he receives the Dauphin’s mocking present) and at the end of the battle of Agincourt with the enraged delivery of:

I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant.

And then there was the end of the siege of Harfleur:

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are the cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?

That is one scary as hell speech, and Hiddleston delivers it with terrifying implacability. (And achieves a wonderfully disbelieving look from Anton Lesser’s Exeter, but more on that later.) I also was pleased that he still preserved the hints of playfulness that live on in the more responsible Henry. When he confronts the soldier who picked a fight with him when he was in disguise, and later tries to woo Katharine, we’re reminded that there’s much more to Henry than a stern and bloody soldier.

There’s just so much complexity to the character, so many tones and notes, and it was all there. Of course, I can’t go on without mentioning the two greatest speeches. I actually watched the “Once more unto the breach” speech three times, since the first time the delivery was so different from what I’d been expecting that   I needed another view. The tone was much less bombastic than what I’m used to seeing, which I think is ultimately for the good. It suited Hiddleston’s take on Henry well.

And the Saint Crispin’s day speech. My god. Tears. Perfect.

What really sold Henry’s more scary moments was actually the presence of Anton Lesser as the Duke of Exeter. His reaction to Henry at Harfleur, his confidence in his king, his shock when Henry orders the prisoners to be killed at Agincourt all add up to show even the court didn’t quite understand what they’d get by awakening Henry’s “sleeping sword of war.”

I honestly didn’t feel all that enthused about Lesser as Exeter in Act I scene 2, but by the time we get to Act II scene 4, I was sold:

Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
Come here himself to question our delay…

At which point I realized that Exeter is a soft-spoken, fearless badass. I was rather amused in Agincourt as well, when he’s speaking with Henry on the battlefield. Everyone is just coated in blood and mud, and Exeter is clean except for some splashes around his hem. Because he is just too much of a badass for dirt.

Paterson Joesph did very well as the Duke of York, and I was extremely charmed by Melanie Thierry as Katharine. Really, I liked the whole cast, but those are the ones that really stood out to me.

Also, while there was a bit of shaky cam in the battle, I have no objections to it this time. It didn’t make me feel motion sick, and I could actually tell what was going on. I was surprised that there were bits of the battle in slow-motion as well. Overall, I thought it was all right, particularly for a BBC production. Tom Hiddleston, Paterson Joseph, and Owen Teale (hope I’m spelling that right, the credits were kind of blurry) as Captain Fluellen were the ones that really did the heavy lifting on the battle. They all had some serious crazy eyes going.

The acting was good. That’s going to guarantee I’ll be regularly re-watching this when I need a Henry V fix. Some things, I didn’t like so much. The score, for one. I found it intrusive in Henry IV part 2 and even moreso here.

I’m also fairly stunned by just how much they cut from the play. Obviously, this was for time constraints, but it was jarring nonetheless. I actually watched the movie with my pocket Henry V in hand so I could follow along, because I’m just that kind of nerd. It meant that I felt like I was tripping over a rock when something was missing.

Several characters didn’t even make it in, notably Gower, and Henry’s two brothers, Gloucester and Bedford. Which seemed particularly strange to me, since they were present in the two parts of Henry IV. I guess this time around they had something better to do than go murder the shit out of the French with their big brother. Or maybe they just got stuck in the pre-Olympic traffic in London. We’ll never know.

With the loss of Gower as a character, that meant we lost most of the character development scenes with Fluellen, which I think are a shame since Fluellen’s quite fun, and he has an excellent enmity with Pistol that doesn’t get nearly as much play because of the deleted scenes. Act II scene 2, where the traitors are revealed and taken away was eliminated.

Now, I can understand doing away with it for time constraints, but it’s a really good scene for Henry:

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy…

If nothing else, it’s another big point in his development as being so merciless as we see him later.

Also missing is Act V scene 1, where we find out the sad fate of Pistol (his friends are dead, his wife is dead, he’s going back to England to be a thief). While again this isn’t important to Henry, sine we’ve had Pistol throughout the play it does bother me that he’s just left without any kind of conclusion.

Act III scene 7 is also mostly absent, which I was disappointed by. It’s the French camp scene, which always seemed to me to be important setup for the battle at Agincourt – it shows how overconfident the French were, how outgunned the underdog English seemed. That also takes a lot of development away from the French characters, since they really only have a couple of scenes, so seeing them die in the battle later has a lot less impact I think.

I’m also puzzled about the choice to leave out the bit where the French kill all the boys at the English camp and set fire to the baggage. While Henry does order the English to kill their prisoners before that, it’s actually the catalyst for him screaming about how utterly enraged he is. (“I was not angry since I came to France…”) This has the effect of making what was previously Henry’s reiteration to kill the prisoners seem much less justified. So I suppose if the point was to remind us that the man is absolutely brutal when he feels he needs to be, it does do that.

Anyway. I wonder if those scenes are gone entirely, or if maybe some might have been filmed and we’ll get to see them when there’s not the time constraints of television. I guess we’ll find out.

And of course, the inevitable comparison to Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V. That movie was my first love, so to speak, so it’s not really fair to compare the two. I’ll be watching both movies when I want a Henry fix. I hope they can manage to take turns and not fight, because I do love them both and they have very different qualities.

But I will tell you this. Man, I miss Patrick Doyle’s score for the movie. (And sorry, John Hurt. Derek Jacobi wins. He will always be Chorus in my heart.)

If you want to watch this wonderful Henry V, here’s a recorded livestream, which has something like 10 minutes of sports in front of it. Also a direct download. And you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer if you get Expat Shield, which is how I did it. (I actually started watching an hour late – shame on me! – because I was out carb loading for tomorrow at a Chinese Buffet.)

As of this writing, by the way, Branagh’s Henry V is available on instant play for Netflix. If you haven’t gotten to watch it, you should. It’s 23 years old but still fantastic.

Henry V is probably the most straightforward of the history plays (less politics, really, more Henry being a shiny badass on a horse) but if you had trouble following it here’s a quick synopsis.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 3: Henry IV Part 2

Finally got to watch this, and not a moment to soon! Darn field work for standing between me and Shakespeare anyway. It’s okay, baby, I’m here for you now. I’ll never let them tear us apart again.

Henry IV Part 2 starts off with scene 1 and 2 being intercut again, as it was in Part 1. This, I like less than I did. It made more sense in Part 1 so we could understand a bit better why Henry IV is having such problems with his son. In this, it’s making Falstaff being, well, Falstaff with what is the setup for the political conflict for this play, and it seems really unnecessary. They also trimmed a bit off the start of scene 1, including the opening monologue of Rumor. Which is a nice speech that’s fun to read aloud, but its loss doesn’t bother me so much, particularly since we only see Rumor once. (It did give me a moment of concern about Chorus in Henry V, but considering John Hurt is on the cast list in that role, I think we’re safe.)

Anyway, little tweaks (and they did exist here and there, probably many more than I realized since I don’t know this play nearly as well as Henry V) like this are normally necessary. I just mentioned the first one because it struck me rather wrongly.

And while I sound like I’m complaining, the only other potential complaint I’ve got is that for some reason the score felt very intrusive in this one, far more than in the previous two plays. I already felt incredibly moved by  Hal’s final scene with his father; I didn’t need all the strings to tell me I ought to be. The music for the coronation scene also made me cringe slightly; I half expected the classic record scratch news when Falstaff breaks through the crowd and stops Hal. Oof.

But other than those minor quibbles? Perfect, perfect, perfect.

While I already gushed about Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston in Part 1, this performance requires even more glee and sparkles. Jeremy Irons was incredible. There is so much pain and marrow in that performance: all the guilt that Henry feels about his acquisition of the crown, all his conflicts with his son, the weight of the crown bearing down on him, his palpable worries that his death might hand the throne to someone who will never be ready for it. The last moment when he reconciles with his son was beyond beautiful.

And of course, his entire monologue:

…Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The delivery was wonderful. Though there was part of me that found it disturbingly cute to see Henry wandering around in his pajamas.

I feel as if Tom Hiddleston’s performance in Part 1 was really just the teaser for this. Hal lets go of his wild days and finally grows up, when it’s almost too late. It comes back to act iv scene 4, when Henry IV is on his death bed. Hiddleston does an amazing job of taking us through Hal’s grief. It’s that realization that’s unfortunately common to so many of us, that we spurned and insufficiently loved those closest and dearest to us because we thought they would always be there tomorrow.

…And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this crown as having sense,
And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending
Hath fed upon the body of my father;
Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold:
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in medicine potable;
But thou, most fine, most honour’d: most renown’d,
Hast eat thy bearer up.’

The words are powerful enough on their own. The delivery killed. I cried. Not ashamed to admit it in the slightest.

Though if I thought that was the best, then there was the final scene, where the newly crowned King Henry V officially turns his back on Falstaff and the life he once knew. I always thought, “I know thee not, old man,” would be the most powerful line. But in this rendition, I found:

I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The more subtle expressions from Hiddleston (showing this isn’t all that easy for Henry) and the stunned disbelief from Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff just sells this. Of course, a lot of the play focuses on Falstaff being old and his impending death – paralleling the mortality of Henry IV, the father that Hal ultimately chooses. Falstaff and Hal are only in two scenes together; I think even in the first one, there’s a sense of Hal already distancing himself from Falstaff, continuing the process that started in the previous play.

Beale makes Falstaff complex through the end. I was never quite certain if the majority of Falstaff’s upset at the end was because he lost someone he actually cared about, or if he saw his long-cultivated meal ticket walk away without so much as a backward glance. That I’m still not sure reflects incredibly well on the performance, I think.

Also, a shout-out to Alun Armstrong as Northumberland. While the political setting of the play is very much overshadowed by the family drama aspect of it, he turned in a good performance at the grieving father of Henry Percy.

This was excellent, and I recommend it heartily, though you should watch Part 1 of the play first so you can get the full arc of Hal’s character development. It’s definitely worth the time investment.

I watched this and Part 1 on the BBC2 iPlayer with the use of a little program called Expat Shield. If you don’t want to go that route, there’s the whole episode on youtube as of this writing. There’s also an upload of Part 1 on  youtube, but it’s cut into 15 minute sections. You can watch it via playlist here.

Henry V tomorrow. My favorite Shakespeare play ever. I can’t even. I can’t begin to say how excited I am.

…yeah, something like that.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
tom hiddleston writing

Donation made!

As I said before, I wrote Comes the Huntsman as a gift, and as such didn’t feel quite comfortable keeping the payment for it. I e-mailed Mr. Hiddleston’s publicist and asked if there was a charity I ought to send it to. He told me that Mr. Hiddleston supports UNICEF, which helps children all across the world.

So:

=

I had a horrible day today. This makes it just a bit better.

Categories
movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 2: Henry IV Part 1

Henry IV part 1 today. Hilariously enough it was delayed by an hour because of Wimbledon. A tennis delay seems like something that would be so much more appropriate to Henry V

…not that I’m in any way asking for a tennis delay by the time we get to that play. I might implode.

I don’t need to start here with a litany of complaints about the play like I did with Richard II. I loved both parts of Henry IV when I read them – and as with Shakespeare, I expected to like them even better with a proper performance. (Because let’s face it… these works were meant to be viewed, not just read like normal books. Quit torturing those kids in high school.)

Casting was perfect, just as it was for Richard II. Jeremy Irons as Henry IV! Incredible. (Does Jeremy Irons ever get to be king when he hasn’t deposed the rightful monarch first? Just asking.) The man can brood like a champion, and Henry does that a lot in this and the next play – because let’s be honest, he has a lot to brood over! His son is a smarmy, shameful party boy, he’s still torturing himself with guilt over what happened to Richard (as necessary as it was) and he’s dealing with open rebellion that’s only going to cost more lives. Jeremy Irons does a fantastic job of depicting the utter weight that constantly sits on Henry without making him morose.

The best of Irons (and it was all good, so the best was incredible) was when he was playing more as the father rather than the king. He radiates disappointment and despair that he’s ended up with a  poor excuse for a son like Hal instead of Hotspur, who really is depicted as the paragon of all noble qualities – it’s hard not to like him. (And Joe Armstrong does indeed make him both likable and still hotheaded.)

Of course, Irons wouldn’t be in such a good position to be a despairing father if Tom Hiddleston didn’t do such an incredible job playing Hal as an awful little prick. I utterly adore Tom Hiddleston, but by the time Henry actually slaps Hal across the face, I was about ready to cheer for it. Never has a slap been so richly deserved, and it was preceded by a wonderfully insolent look to boot. The beginning of Hal’s evolution from a waste of space to a great king gets a good start, and I can’t wait to see it continue in the next part.

Which then brings us to Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff, because what would Hal without an utterly awful (yet jolly and hilarious) human being to egg him on? Best Falstaff ever, in my opinion. His self-serving interest in Hal is made so clear, though I think there’s genuine affection there as well. The scene between Hal and Falstaff where they take turns pretending to be Henry IV was simultaneously hilarious and uncomfortable; incredibly well done.

Also, Tom Hiddleston’s Jeremy Irons impression made me snort beer through my nose. Damn you, Hiddleston.

A special shout out to the gentleman who played the Sheriff. I wish I knew his name, but it’s not currently listed on IMDB. When he comes to collect Hal from his den of iniquity, the Sheriff says:

Good night, my noble lord.

And never has the word noble been delivered with such pointed and censorious air quotes. It was lovely.

So the cast? Excellent. I expect to keep repeating this sentiment for the next two plays as well. (If nothing else, one more play with Jeremy Irons and two with Tom Hiddleston? I am a happy girl.)

This had the same quality on costuming and sets as Richard II to my untrained eye, and I have no complaints there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about scene 1 and 2 of Act 1 being intercut originally, but it grew on me. It did make sense to get people clued in to just who Hal was and why he was proving such a thorn in his father’s side.

Some of the other editing/filming decisions, I liked a little less. There were two major monologues that were delivered as voice overs. One was Hal’s Act 1 scene 2 closing speech:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world…

And the other was Falstaff’s Act 5 scene 1 closing speech:

‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no…

Both of these are incredibly important and I’m puzzled why they were delivered that way, particularly since it was basically just a voice over while the character in question just sort of… walked around and took in the scenery. There might have been a little showing in their expressions, but not nearly as much as we would have seen if they’d actually spoken the lines and played them out. It’s not as if there aren’t other times where someone talks to themselves for the benefit of the camera – Falstaff’s dastardly scheme to pretend that he killed Hotspur was spoken aloud. So I’m not sure why that was done, and I felt like it really detracted from the play.

I have very mixed feelings about the battle and the way it was filmed. There was shaky cam in it, which I am beyond tired of but I guess it’ll never go away so I’ll just be a useless curmudgeon about it. But I think during the main part of the battle there was some kind of change on the camera filter… so during the action all of the colors were incredibly muted. This made it harder to tell who might be who – maybe that was the point – but as soon as Hal and Hotspur split off to have their confrontation the colors came back to normal and it just seemed very jarring. I was not a fan of that. There were also people complaining on Twitter that they didn’t feel there were enough people involved in the battle – I didn’t feel like it was too sparse, myself. I just wish I could have seen better what was going on!

These are really the only two complaints I can come up with for the production. I enjoyed it greatly, more than I did Richard II. I’m looking forward to them coming to the US so I can get DVDs. (Though I fear Tom Hiddleston will likely still have to take turns with Kenneth Branagh for Henry V duty. Sorry, Tom. A girl doesn’t forget her first love.)

I’m just incredibly sad I won’t get to watch part 2 on streaming next weekend. I’ll be in Pennsylvania for a field trip, so I expect I’ll be in a quarry, getting eaten alive by bugs when I’d much rather be watching Irons and Hiddleston rule the internet. Hopefully I can sneak a peak at it later.

[I’ve now seen Part 2, and it was good. So very good.]

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V