What makes Othello's Iago so utterly terrifying--and Shakespeare's most fascinating character, in my opinion-- is that we cannot trace his evil behaviour to a clear cause. Of course, the easy answer is Iago's stated one: jealousy, "the green-eyed monster, which doth mock | The meat it feeds on" (III.iii.165-167). But I don't think Shakespeare wanted to give us an easy answer, which is why I'm inclined to agree with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's assertion that any attempt to profile Iago would be merely "the motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity." I do not take this to mean that Iago is evil purely for evil's sake, but that he escapes any attempt to rationalise or even understand his behaviour--even his own.
For this reason, he is a highly enigmatic and dynamic character--and one that does not translate easily to film, where audiences demand conflict, climax, and denoument, in that order. I'm not ragging on audiences, but simply attempting to understand why director Tim Blake Nelson decided to add in background exposition for his Iago character, or "Hugo," as he is known in this modern adaptation of the play written in 1604. The film opens with Hugo (Josh Hartnett) intoning, "I've always wanted to fly," over top of Verdi's "Willow Song" aria from his Otello and some heavy bird imagery (I could just hear my high-school English teacher yelling "Symbolism!"). We learn that Hugo's father, "The Duke" (Martin Sheen), the coach of his high school's basketball team, considers the team's star player, Odin James (Mekhi Phifer)--the title's "O"--to be like a son. Hugo has an excessive need for adulation, and so he sets out to destroy O by convincing him that O's girlfriend, Desi (Julia Stiles) is cheating on him with another teammate, Michael (Andrew Keegan).
I wasn't surprised to find that the play translated surprisingly well to modern times, as Shakespeare's themes still resonate for me. Basketball as a metaphor for war worked far better than I thought it would, and a snooty prep school dominated by white students acted as a suitable stand-in for Venetian society. My only quibble is with the scarf that acts as damning evidence against Desdemona. My problem is not that so much importance is placed on a "mere trifle," as critics have said. That is, after all, the point: that a man of such intelligence and honour as Othello would be swayed by something so trivial. No, my qualm is that the scarf used in the film is just ugly and not particularly something a modern-day teenager would covet. I think Nelson could have found a more suitable trinket--perhaps a pair of panties? Okay, I'm being crass, but on the whole, the movie is a lot more crass, and the little pink scarf just doesn't get the job done.
There's a lot--and I mean a lot--of profanity in this film, and I'm not talking stuff like "Fie!", which was extreme in the Bard's time. Fine, that's no big deal. But I did find the rape scene to be particularly horrifying. I understand what the filmmakers were aiming for: if O can't have Desi pure, he'll soil her himself. In other words, the whole virgin-whore dichotomy. But I don't think that it did much to raise sympathy for O's character, and it did a lot to turn my stomach. The racial issues of the play go vastly ignored, except for Desi's obligatory, "Would you feel the same way if he were white?" line and a quick mention in O's dying soliloquy (hope I wasn't ruining anything for you there). Here, O never comes to hate himself as his white oppressors hate him, as he does in the play--the message of internalized racism never really comes into focus, and we are left believing that Hugo was a scourge of society, rather than a product of its ills.
Turning the literary geek inside of me off for a moment, let me offer a few light-hearted criticisms, which are what I do best. First, I have an irrational dislike of Julia Stiles. She does a good enough job in this movie, particularly in the scenes where she must stand up to O, but her voice really grates. It's like the voice of that redhaired girl on "That 70's Show," but even more unmodulated, giving new meaning to the line, "All that is spoke is marred" (V.ii.353). I've gotta give credit to Andrew Keegan, who's come a long...bit of a way from ABC's TGIF Fridays, but uhm, Michael Cassio is supposed to be a lot more attractive than he is. Not to mention taller. And finally, Hartnett: I can't take him seriously. Surely someone with hair that looks like it was cut by his mother couldn't be capable of widescale treachery. Then again, if Shakespeare has taught us anything, it's that looks can be deceiving. Which is something I should have remembered when I thought this movie looked good.
-reviewed by the ladybug, Apr.23, 2002
|
