A Rose By Any Other Name: Shakespeare For The People When one is asked to define what constitutes a Shakespeare savant, scholars and historians and Shakespearian English professors come to mind. One thinks of the Globe Theater and quills, ye old English and a form of story telling that seems incomprehensible to everyone without annotations or a college level education. Shakespeare is, by and large, more than a man, more than a common sixteenth century playwright from England. He has become an institution, the basis for all modern storytelling, and the penultimate author with a fame all other authors can only hope to achieve. Shakespeare has transcended the boundary of mortal man and has become an adjective that describes haute literature - the elitist few whose novels or plays that have impacted culture to the degree that Shakespeare has. Shakespeare, in a sense, truly is everywhere. Al Pacino, of the Godfather fame, seemed to recognize this fact when he began his three and a half year epic, pseudo-documentary Looking For Richard. “This is my entrance!” he proclaims at the beginning of the film as he fumbles for the opening in the red curtain, yet his delivery and quest are everything but bumbled. In one film, Pacino manages to take one of the most challenging authors with some of the most complex material known to literature and universalizes it for the everyday man. Through his direction, acting and passion for Shakespeare, Al Pacino truly is an auteur of Shakespeare. First and foremost, one must answer the question of what exactly constitutes an auteur. According to Andrew Sarris, the auteur is, “the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value” (662). He goes on to say that everything from lighting to costumes to makeup to music to editing weighs just as heavily as the acting and scriptwriting and actual directing of a certain film (Sarris 662). Essentially, an auteur is someone that can take a film and give it its own unique personality (Sarris 662). With this in mind, Pacino takes Shakespeare’s King Richard III and begins a mission to recreate the story for all those who have either forgotten or never seen the play before. In Looking for Richard, Pacino that his wishes to, “communicate our passion for [the play King Richard III]… and in doing that, communicate a Shakespeare that is about how we feel and how we think”. Frederic Kimball, Pacino’s co-star, states early on in the documentary, that Shakespeare has “already been done before” by both himself and Pacino, yet Pacino reminds him that although they have “done it” the “audience hasn’t”. Neil Sinyard claims, “the barrier to understanding Shakespeare… is the spiritual malaise of modern society where people have no feelings or lack of words to express themselves” and Pacino embarks to prove this concept wrong (61). He takes to the streets, rounding up passersby and begins asking them what they remember about King Richard III. Pacino is shocked to discover they know relatively little or nothing at all on the play. It is only when he quotes famous lines from King Richard III, that he receives a superficial flare of recognition. As Annalisa Castaldo claims, “Shakespeare is available but anonymous” and Pacino recognizes this and his approach to the film from that point onward is to keep Shakespeare’s work intact, yet portray it as being as widely accessible as it is. Pacino then begins to implement a tapestry effect with his film, splicing scenes of his actual production next to scholars who scrutinize Shakespeare’s written work and juxtapose that with rehearsal scenes and interviews with students and strangers (Sinyard 58). The way in which the movie is weaved, is a brilliant way of emphasizing the flip sides to Shakespeare on every level that it is in modern day culture. The popular meets the intellectual, which meets the theatrical, which meets the common, everyday people. Pacino himself runs through the variety of ways in which one can deliver the lines, ranging from the deeply profound and serious to the exaggerated and almost comically absurd. Furthermore, to be considered an auteur, the director must then apply his distinct spin to a variety of his movies, exhibiting a “certain recurring characteristics of style, which serve as his signature” (Sarris 662). Pacino does not go on to direct another film, yet he does continue to act in Shakespearian productions. Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice has Pacino playing Shylock, a Jewish moneylender that demands for a pound of flesh from Antonio if his debt is not repaid in an allotted time. Pacino brings his enthusiasm for Shakespeare as well as his droopy-eyed, heart wrenching and empathizing performance to the rolls. Richard and Shylock are in no ways the heroes of their respective plays, yet Pacino humanizes their deviousness and creates the air of sympathy for both characters. Richard is undeniably underhanded and deceitful, yet when he is left staggering on the battlefield, his screams falling upon deaf ears, the audience is overwhelmed with pity. It becomes almost painful to watch the proud Richard beg for a horse when it is clear that Richmond has won the war. Moreover, the way in which Pacino carries Shylock denotes an air of understanding that would most probably not be present had it been any other actor. The audience can feel Shylock’s grief, anger and frustration palpitate from the screen, and when it becomes obvious that he will not get his pound of flesh, one can only feel compassion for a character that has done nothing to deserve the fact he has lost everything that gives his life meaning. When describing Shakespeare, Castaldo compares him to a Hallmark card, saying that he is “a culturally approved way of expressing feelings”. Pacino’s manages to communicate his feelings for Shakespeare through his performances, imbuing his characters with a humanity that Shakespeare himself could not have predicted. It is in Pacino’s performances that he reinterprets Shakespeare and makes it more than simply words on a page. He breathes such life and perspicacity into his characters, denoting a true bond with the material that is practically unheard of today. To finish, Sarris concludes that an auteur is someone who merges technique, personal style and interior meaning (663). Pacino embodies all these characteristics and then some. He artfully takes a play that has been reenacted for several centuries and, as Douglas Lanier notes, “Looking for Richard is not merely the record of a performance of Richard III but also a document of cultural theory, an inquiry into the problem of Shakespearian performance in contemporary America” (41). In short Pacino, “seeks to make Shakespeare accessible and exciting for the ‘aver-age’ modern American audience…a Shakespeare that is about how we feel and how we think today” (Lanier 40). By bringing King Richard III to the streets, Pacino gets a feel for the modern audience and “the barriers that afflict American audiences when confronting Shakespeare” (Sinyard 63). By bringing in scholars to discuss Shakespeare along with the actors, Pacino rather cleverly alludes to the divide between academia and the common man. As Castaldo outlines, “compared with Pacino’s manly stubble, stylish baseball cap, and constant action… the scholar appears to be a different species”. Pacino furthers this point by showing the audience a thick tomb on King Richard III that he cannot carry, and then after mocking the overwhelming size, demands for something more accessible. He is given an annotated, pocket version of the play and remarks that now, everything is better. True, when asked to define a Shakespearian savant, Al Pacino might not be the first, the tenth, or even the hundredth person named. Yet, through his fierce loyalty to the text, his love of the material and brilliant acting skills, Pacino manages to take Shakespeare to another level of understanding. His documentary is a quirky and sometimes off beat, yet always entertaining example of how Shakespeare can be brought and understood to the everyday man, how it does not take a room full of scholars and professors to appreciate the beauty that is Shakespeare. Pacino proves with his untidy but realistic documentary that the only requirement for the appreciation of Shakespeare is a love and a desire for the material.