Hurt becomes hate becomes hurt becomes hate...
Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serai.
Yesterday, I was watching O, the film I mentioned in my last post.
I really like this film a lot. Even during my decade of get the fuck outta my face, you that I had with Josh, I would enjoy his performance in this movie. As you all know, he's the modern prep school version of Iago, the Bard's enraged, homicidally jealous military man.
And he does such a great job. As I watched yesterday, I was as moved as I always am by him in this film. It's not just him, of course. A great deal of the effect has to do with how the script was adapted from Shakespeare. The plainness of the language gives the young actors a lot of room to move around in the lines, to find their own interpretation of a character's actions. (Elizabethan English seems to turn some actors into deer staring down headlights, especially young actors.)
Josh does a lot of really interesting things with Hugo, and the whole revealing of his relationship with his father - and the fact that he is his father - really changed my reaction to the character. It's one thing to see a grown man committing these crimes, for crimes they are. It's quite another to see an emotionally neglected kid doing it, at the same time that you're witnessing what's causing it. Iago is malevolent and racist, he can't stand that a "thick-lipped Moor" is placed above him; Hugo is just sad and too clever for his own good, with a sorrow that becomes poisonous to those around him.
(It's telling that the writer decided to jettison Iago's racism - Hugo doesn't seem to give a shit that Odin is black. This is all about status and lack of love for him, and it would have happened no matter what kid was in Odin's place. It really shifts the tone of the tragedy. A great example of the importance of motivation to the development of a story, isn't it?)
This time watching, though, I was much more struck by that sadness than I had been before. The scene between Hugo and Duke, when he comes to eat in his dad's office, was especially hard. I could practically feel the way his stomach plummeted when the first words out of his dad's mouth were to ask him about Odin. It was so unthinkingly cruel. He really doesn't seem to see his son at all. And when Duke left him to eat in the office alone was a gut-punch. Josh's gesture of zipping his jacket up over his mouth was heartbreaking - such a little-kid thing to do.
The director pointed out a moment in the commentary that I hadn't really gotten: late in the film, when Odin has been snorting coke and confronts Hugo just before the big game, he badgers him into telling him the truth. Hugo tells him Desi and Michael are doing it but won't divulge details, and Odin hardens up at that moment. The director pointed out Hugo's reaction after Odin leaves - he puts his hands over his face and rubs his eyes. He's crying for a moment there. I hadn't seen that before. Iago's aim was always to achieve as much ruin as possible; we know because he tells us that directly. But Hugo didn't foresee that things would get so bad. He just wanted to derail the team lineup and take his rightful place. He never wanted rage and revenge and murder. He just wanted to be a star. (Gods, that could be an epitaph for so many people.)
On the subject of Iago's asides, I think that's a huge reason why the shift in sympathy towards Hugo is possible. We know Iago's motivations through and through, because he delights in telling us. It's the main reason Othello is such a hideously frustrating play to watch, because we KNOW what's going to happen, and we can't do anything about it. (In The Friendly Shakespeare, the author recounts how one actor in a company doing a tour through the Old West actually got killed by an audience member while playing Iago. Such is the power of that particular theatrical device.) He's a snake, we know he's a snake, and we know why he's a snake - he's been passed over in favor of a man he consider beneath contempt. Not only that, but there's also the rumor that that man may have been fucking his wife (another motivation the film did away with**). So his jealousy is professional, racial, and personal all at once, and it's all centered on Othello.
But by taking away the asides, we're not privy to Hugo's motivations apart from what he tells others (damn little) and what we can see for ourselves. (He does do an adaptation of Iago's "I got screwed" speech near the beginning, but it just reinforces the shift towards making Hugo's jealousy about his standing in the team, and not a personal thing against Odin at all, since there is no aside about Odin's/Othello's race and a rumored affair to bely what he tells Roger/Roderigo.) That puts it on us to explain why he's what he's doing, and the evidence provided makes Hugo at least partly sympathetic instead of wholly and irredeemably evil. A jealous kid trying to get his dad to notice him is on rather a different motivational level than a grown man setting out to ruin as many lives as possible because he thinks his rival is sub-human. All of this is wonderfully facilitated by that puppy-dog thing Josh is so good at. (Or was. He seems to have outgrown it.) All the snakiness and machinations get exposed for what they are the minute Hugo is in his dad's presence and away from others', and it's really hard to see him as Shakespeare's monster. He actually made me cry a little this time.
There's wit in this film, too, the way the script dances with the original. I'm especially thinking of Josh's last spoken line, "From now on, I say nothing." If you're not familiar with Othello, you won't get the twist in the meaning of that line. The original line - "From this time forth I never will speak word" - was an indicator of Iago's malevolence in the face of Othello's despair: "Fuck you, you'll never know why I did this." But in Hugo's mouth, today, it's a shield and an indicator of the kid's smarts - he knows his Miranda rights, and he ain't saying shit. Very different emphasis, but achieving the same result. That's some nimble writing, there.
Damn, I love movies. You can tell, can't you?
**Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if that side thread might have been there originally and got excised somewhere either in the rewrite stage or in the editing. There is that one line when Emily brings Hugo the scarf, when he answer her "I've got something for you" with "You've got things for lots of guys." I always thought that a rather uncalled-for thing to say. After all, we see no evidence that Emily plays around. On the contrary, she seems to be pretty loyal to Hugo on the whole. But if there had been something like that original rumor in the film, it would explain the presence of this odd accusation.
Yesterday, I was watching O, the film I mentioned in my last post.
I really like this film a lot. Even during my decade of get the fuck outta my face, you that I had with Josh, I would enjoy his performance in this movie. As you all know, he's the modern prep school version of Iago, the Bard's enraged, homicidally jealous military man.
And he does such a great job. As I watched yesterday, I was as moved as I always am by him in this film. It's not just him, of course. A great deal of the effect has to do with how the script was adapted from Shakespeare. The plainness of the language gives the young actors a lot of room to move around in the lines, to find their own interpretation of a character's actions. (Elizabethan English seems to turn some actors into deer staring down headlights, especially young actors.)
Josh does a lot of really interesting things with Hugo, and the whole revealing of his relationship with his father - and the fact that he is his father - really changed my reaction to the character. It's one thing to see a grown man committing these crimes, for crimes they are. It's quite another to see an emotionally neglected kid doing it, at the same time that you're witnessing what's causing it. Iago is malevolent and racist, he can't stand that a "thick-lipped Moor" is placed above him; Hugo is just sad and too clever for his own good, with a sorrow that becomes poisonous to those around him.
(It's telling that the writer decided to jettison Iago's racism - Hugo doesn't seem to give a shit that Odin is black. This is all about status and lack of love for him, and it would have happened no matter what kid was in Odin's place. It really shifts the tone of the tragedy. A great example of the importance of motivation to the development of a story, isn't it?)
This time watching, though, I was much more struck by that sadness than I had been before. The scene between Hugo and Duke, when he comes to eat in his dad's office, was especially hard. I could practically feel the way his stomach plummeted when the first words out of his dad's mouth were to ask him about Odin. It was so unthinkingly cruel. He really doesn't seem to see his son at all. And when Duke left him to eat in the office alone was a gut-punch. Josh's gesture of zipping his jacket up over his mouth was heartbreaking - such a little-kid thing to do.
The director pointed out a moment in the commentary that I hadn't really gotten: late in the film, when Odin has been snorting coke and confronts Hugo just before the big game, he badgers him into telling him the truth. Hugo tells him Desi and Michael are doing it but won't divulge details, and Odin hardens up at that moment. The director pointed out Hugo's reaction after Odin leaves - he puts his hands over his face and rubs his eyes. He's crying for a moment there. I hadn't seen that before. Iago's aim was always to achieve as much ruin as possible; we know because he tells us that directly. But Hugo didn't foresee that things would get so bad. He just wanted to derail the team lineup and take his rightful place. He never wanted rage and revenge and murder. He just wanted to be a star. (Gods, that could be an epitaph for so many people.)
On the subject of Iago's asides, I think that's a huge reason why the shift in sympathy towards Hugo is possible. We know Iago's motivations through and through, because he delights in telling us. It's the main reason Othello is such a hideously frustrating play to watch, because we KNOW what's going to happen, and we can't do anything about it. (In The Friendly Shakespeare, the author recounts how one actor in a company doing a tour through the Old West actually got killed by an audience member while playing Iago. Such is the power of that particular theatrical device.) He's a snake, we know he's a snake, and we know why he's a snake - he's been passed over in favor of a man he consider beneath contempt. Not only that, but there's also the rumor that that man may have been fucking his wife (another motivation the film did away with**). So his jealousy is professional, racial, and personal all at once, and it's all centered on Othello.
But by taking away the asides, we're not privy to Hugo's motivations apart from what he tells others (damn little) and what we can see for ourselves. (He does do an adaptation of Iago's "I got screwed" speech near the beginning, but it just reinforces the shift towards making Hugo's jealousy about his standing in the team, and not a personal thing against Odin at all, since there is no aside about Odin's/Othello's race and a rumored affair to bely what he tells Roger/Roderigo.) That puts it on us to explain why he's what he's doing, and the evidence provided makes Hugo at least partly sympathetic instead of wholly and irredeemably evil. A jealous kid trying to get his dad to notice him is on rather a different motivational level than a grown man setting out to ruin as many lives as possible because he thinks his rival is sub-human. All of this is wonderfully facilitated by that puppy-dog thing Josh is so good at. (Or was. He seems to have outgrown it.) All the snakiness and machinations get exposed for what they are the minute Hugo is in his dad's presence and away from others', and it's really hard to see him as Shakespeare's monster. He actually made me cry a little this time.
There's wit in this film, too, the way the script dances with the original. I'm especially thinking of Josh's last spoken line, "From now on, I say nothing." If you're not familiar with Othello, you won't get the twist in the meaning of that line. The original line - "From this time forth I never will speak word" - was an indicator of Iago's malevolence in the face of Othello's despair: "Fuck you, you'll never know why I did this." But in Hugo's mouth, today, it's a shield and an indicator of the kid's smarts - he knows his Miranda rights, and he ain't saying shit. Very different emphasis, but achieving the same result. That's some nimble writing, there.
Damn, I love movies. You can tell, can't you?
**Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if that side thread might have been there originally and got excised somewhere either in the rewrite stage or in the editing. There is that one line when Emily brings Hugo the scarf, when he answer her "I've got something for you" with "You've got things for lots of guys." I always thought that a rather uncalled-for thing to say. After all, we see no evidence that Emily plays around. On the contrary, she seems to be pretty loyal to Hugo on the whole. But if there had been something like that original rumor in the film, it would explain the presence of this odd accusation.
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Date: Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 09:36 pm (UTC)Plus, you know, Larry Fishburne. Holy shit, what perfect casting.
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Date: Wednesday, October 7th, 2015 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, October 11th, 2015 01:12 am (UTC)