I've always felt they could have gone much heavier, darker - he could manage that.
Yes, certainly. I don't think there's a "too heavy" for him; he's always had a tremendous emotional centre of gravity, even when he was quite young. That said, he's much better at comedy than people give him credit for, he's just a bit too real for farce. There's too much sincerity and/or emotional vulnerability to just let it fly off. He's got the verbal agility, though.
I love the whole pitch-black comedy aspect of RT ("There's no advantage in the killing of a younger brother!"), and that you never quite know what you're going to get. One of my favourite aspects is that there are so many places the story could have gone — Vindici could have just stayed Lussurioso's henchman-who-was-really-the-boss, if L hadn't gone after Castiza; Castiza and Vindici also have this sweetness that seems to add to the incestuous undertone rather than undercut it - you can see them escaping to someplace à la Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead (probably with the same tragic ending, but perhaps not). Perhaps Vindici would always have died at Antonio's hands, but if Carlo and Castiza had survived, they would have then carried on the revenge... I really find it a much more interesting play than Hamlet, which has never been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays.
Death and the Compass is a bit of a mess (the editing just fails somewhere along the line), but I love those theatrical "encounters" between Lonrott and Zunz, with the scrims; and the last 10-15 minutes is one of the most beautiful sequences in any film. It reminds me a little of the end of The Keep — the last 15 minutes make no sense whatsoever, but who cares, because it's gorgeous!
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Date: 2008-07-28 03:21 am (UTC)Yes, certainly. I don't think there's a "too heavy" for him; he's always had a tremendous emotional centre of gravity, even when he was quite young. That said, he's much better at comedy than people give him credit for, he's just a bit too real for farce. There's too much sincerity and/or emotional vulnerability to just let it fly off. He's got the verbal agility, though.
I love the whole pitch-black comedy aspect of RT ("There's no advantage in the killing of a younger brother!"), and that you never quite know what you're going to get. One of my favourite aspects is that there are so many places the story could have gone — Vindici could have just stayed Lussurioso's henchman-who-was-really-the-boss, if L hadn't gone after Castiza; Castiza and Vindici also have this sweetness that seems to add to the incestuous undertone rather than undercut it - you can see them escaping to someplace à la Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead (probably with the same tragic ending, but perhaps not). Perhaps Vindici would always have died at Antonio's hands, but if Carlo and Castiza had survived, they would have then carried on the revenge... I really find it a much more interesting play than Hamlet, which has never been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays.
Death and the Compass is a bit of a mess (the editing just fails somewhere along the line), but I love those theatrical "encounters" between Lonrott and Zunz, with the scrims; and the last 10-15 minutes is one of the most beautiful sequences in any film. It reminds me a little of the end of The Keep — the last 15 minutes make no sense whatsoever, but who cares, because it's gorgeous!