Monday, May 18, 2020

Kevin Klines Movie A Midsummer Nights Dream Essay

Kevin Klines Movie A Midsummer Nights Dream Theatre students are often told what not to prepare for an audition because some pieces have been done so many times they lose their meaning. Of Shakespeare’s entire canon, the two most often forbidden texts are Puck and Helena monologues from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Therefore, the two roles are often the most sought-after and coveted in the play when in production. However, in the 1999 film version, Kevin Kline as Bottom gets top billing. According to the rules of Elizabethan hierarchy, Bottom, being of the merchant class, is literally at the â€Å"bottom† of the social spectrum. The Athenians and fairies rank higher on the great chain of being. Kline’s billing is not merely a result†¦show more content†¦The production team also emphasizes Bottom’s singularity though several visual cues. When we first meet Bottom, he is wearing a white suit, unlike that of any of his fellow mechanicals and the color choice stands out against the brown-toned townscape. Furthermore, screen-time-wise, he gets a longer introduction than the other mechanicals, which audiences may or may not recognize from the townscape when they begin their dialogue later. At the end of the film, there is a short scene in-between lines of Puck’s epilogue that reveals Bottom staring into the night, thinking of his Titania tryst, when he sees the fairies. The fact that the scene occurs at the very end of the film, when Bottom has disappeared from the story according to the text, shows the film’s emphasis on his character as the center stone of the plot. Since the audience leaves the story with Bottom, the filmmakers lead us to believe that we were following his point of view all along. Kevin Kline’s performance equally adds to his singularity among the cast. In a movie full of actors who have each starred in their own films, television shows, or stage productions, he leads the pack. Partially, his standing-out can be attributed to that elusive quality sometimes denoted as, â€Å"charisma† or â€Å"charm.† Kline has a way of making audiences trust him that acting

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.