Movie Reviews from
By John Ruch
© 1996 CM Media, Inc.
Looking for Richard (1996)
The scene
from “Looking for Richard” I will always remember best is one in which
Thing is, this docudrama is supposed to be about Shakespeare, not how Pacino stands up to cops. I did come away with some Shakespearian memories though, like when a party girl is showing off an illustrated Shakespeare collection and Pacino says, “That’s what I like about Shakespeare—the pictures.” Oh darn, I guess that’s another Pacino memory.
Producer/director Pacino conceived this film as a production of “Richard III” made accessible to modern audiences, and also as a documentary of all the work and dramatic theory that went into it. It cost him three years of work (you can see him go from his “Carlito’s Way” beard to his clean-shaven “Heat” look), a bunch of his own money and the aggravation of Ian McKellen’s film version beating him to the screen.
The movie-about-making-a-movie result is compared in the press materials to Truffaut’s “Day for Night” and Fellini’s “8 ½,” but it reminded me more of Madonna’s “Truth or Dare”: a star-studded, frequently entertaining vanity project that is about nothing but its own star. “Looking for Richard” spends most of its time looking at Al.
That’s OK; Pacino’s a likable guy, and his fiery performance as Richard will give you a whole new appreciation for his talents (especially if you’ve seen his recent dull movies). But the three years of side-project tinkering amount inevitably to an aimless mish-mash centered only by Pacino’s ego.
The scholarship part consists mostly of old English-class chestnuts about the Bard issued by unidentified professors who seem selected mostly because they look so archetypically nerdy. Some brief interviews with the likes of Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh and John Gielgud (all also unidentified) aren’t much more insightful.
Pacino and his cast (including Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Winona Ryder) offer better discussions as they debate that question of accessibility. Strangely, there’s nothing particularly accessible about their final production, which is a straight, if minimalist, staging.
Stranger still is that all the accessibility talk never addresses the play’s main stumbling block—the dramatic problem of having a lead character who’s an unrepentant monster. McKellen handled this by playing Richard as deliciously, enjoyably evil. Pacino’s just straight-up malicious.
Pacino uses the film format to intercut play scenes with behind-the-scenes discussions—live-action Cliffs Notes. Unfortunately, he uses some camera tricks (slow motion, blurry images) that, basic as they are, distract from the acting and staging we’re learning about.
The
documentary part ranges from some great behind-the-scenes arguments to a
gimmicky trip to
Inevitably,
that makes this discussion about a performance a performance itself. While Pacino’s good at playing Richard, he’s even better at
playing himself. Hope you like ham.