This play was such a solid play and the movie did it such a great injustice. It should have been passionate and emotional about people having to decide what is right between terrible evils, about the betrayal of friends, about protecting people and their rights, about fighting and dying for your principles.
At least, I was able to tell from the movie that it should have been all of that. The delivery just did not match.
“Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar” was delivered in all lower case, maybe in 8 pt font.
Brutus did drop this banger:
“Say not that I loved Caesar less,
But that I loved Rome more.”
Man was idealistic to a fault. He really walked off after that to let Marc Antony say whatever he wanted.
The best part was Marlon Brando’s first few sentences of Marc Antony’s, “for Brutus is an honorable man” speech. That was scathing and his voice was dripping with it.
It’s worth putting that speech here:
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
Oof!
I don’t know when this will be but I’m waiting for a moment in my real life that I can say in a voice trembling with scorn:
And Brutus is an honorable man!
Anyway, at this point Marlon pauses, poses fetchingly in a classical thinking pose:
and then absolutely ruins the rest of the speech by seeming to turn crafty and use the moment to rile up the population so that he and Octavius can rule.
Funny part that wasn’t meant to be funny. Cassius has someone stab him with a sword that looked about the size of a kitchen knife (Missy tells me its close to accurate and far more dangerous than I imagine) and then aaaa…*dead*.
Funny part that was in the play but not in the movie: the mob that Antony has stirred up is running amuck and grabs some random guy and demands to know what he’s doing, why he’s there, is he married or single?
He’s attending Caesar’s funeral and he’s single. The mob looks at each other and then back at him and demand to know if he’s making fun of them because they're married.
No, random guy assures, he just meant that he’s single, like actually.
Well anyway, what’s his name?
“Cinna”.
“Cinna like one of the guys who stabbed Caesar?”
“No! Cinna the poet!”
“You mean Cinna the bad poet? Cinna, the bad poet that writes bad poetry?”
*Drags him off to lynch him or whatever.*
It was funny but also terribly real and violently sad.
I had a moment where I thought the women, especially Portia was interesting. They had much more of a say than women have had in any of Shakespeare's plays so far and Portia even said something somewhat modern sounding:
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.
But she had just that one scene and disappeared.
This play made me think about what I would do if a friend I was totally loyal to did something so horrendous that I had to choose whether I should break the loyalty. Anyway, the answer is I hope I don't have to find out.
I said to Missy I'd like the people who did Gladiator to redo Julius Caesar. She has suggested Branagh for a remake. So if any of you are reading this blog, please do consider it.
Henry IV Part I next. We are figuring out which version to watch.
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