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Timon of Athens
Timon of Athens has been heralded as William Shakespeare’s most cynical play, and it is also considered one of the most underwhelming. There are a number of reasons for this, most due to the fact that the play was probably tossed aside by Shakespeare, who must have realized its rather droll nature, before it was completed. It was only discovered later and published in a popular edition, having never been performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Wikipedia Online writes, “Scholars find much unfinished about this play, including unexplained plot developments, characters who appear unexplained and say little, and prose sections that would have been put into verse in a polished version. The author appears to have abandoned his play, perhaps tired of antique subjects drawn from Plutarch [the Greek historian].” As someone who has spent a great deal of time reading and studying the works of Shakespeare (hey, I’ve got to do something to pass the time when I’m not watching movies), I find Timon of Athens vastly inferior to his other, greater tragedies. At best, its dialogue reaches the level of MacBeth or Titus Andronicus, but it never comes close to realizing the beautiful imagery or powerful characterizations of Hamlet or King Lear. The problem might also lie in the plot. This is not the poignant story of revenge motivated by a ghostly presence or a complicated romance featuring “my only love sprung from my only hate,” but rather is about a man who finds himself so miserably poor that he is forced to live as a hermit. He spends a lot of money to impress his friends, he goes in debt, his “friends” turn their back on him, and he ends up living (and dying) in the mud eating roots. Ho hum. It is quite a feat, then, that BBC television is able to make Timon of Athens into the gripping drama that it is. The company boldly adapted all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays in the early 1980s, complete and unabridged, and this was but one of their series. Such a goal is complicated, and that they pull it off deserves praise, even if the TV-movies are little more than filmed play productions, complete with the use of just one or two sets (shot from different angles to give them the appearance of different locations), recycled costumes, and stodgy atmosphere. For the casts, they used members of the Shakespeare Company, many of which were unknowns in the 1980s but are household names now. It is possible therefore to view Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Quarshie, Tony Jay, and others as your favorite Shakespearians characters, and watching them today make the films play like “Before They Were Stars” tributes. Their Timon is directed by Jonathan Miller, a BBC regular, and it stars Jonathan Pryce in the title role, who interprets the character as a naïve, insecure young man so desperate to please his peers that he never thinks to balance his checkbook until the debtors come knocking at his door. That debt can reduce Timon to such agony that he becomes a hermit and dies of despair makes the man seem superficial and a little too fragile, but Pryce is able to give him the right note of wide-eyed sincerity so that we don’t notice the inconsistency until the film is over (personally, I just think that the Bard go so wrapped up in the fact that this was a tragedy, he simply got a little carried away with Timon, reducing him to a cliché of his own past characters). The stage, of course, is a different medium than film. The stage emphasizes acting first and foremost, an important element of cinema but only one of several crucial factors to make an effective film. Timon of Athens simply comes across as a filmed stage production, and it is therefore a bit droll in some places. On one hand, that whole scenes can be filmed in one take is remarkable. On the other hand, a still camera doesn’t make for engrossing cinema. That said, there are a few interesting cinematic touches that Miller puts in. In the opening scene, Timon holds a grand feast for all of his “friends,” and as they fill their plates, we see that Timon never has the opportunity to eat himself. This makes for a nice foreshadow of events, and it also effectively sets up the other characters’ motivation to love Timon based on his generosity—an act of kindness that they refuse to replicate when he is later in need. This is the only really “cinematic” moment in the film—Miller is more interested in allowing the camera to simply point at the actors and let Shakespeare’s rich language speak for itself. While I have noted that this occasionally makes for lackluster cinema, it also creates some very powerful moments: Once Timon realizes his friends’ treason, there is a second dinner scene in the fourth act in which he tells them how he really feels, and it is just as effective and poetic as anything Shakespeare has ever written. It was nice to simply let the actors and the words speak for themselves without any distracting gimmicks or devices, and the “filmed stage production” atmosphere works towards Miller’s advantage here. The cast is also as good as you’d expect. All are professional Shakespearian actors, which means that they have the uncanny ability of speaking the lines so that they are accessible to the modern viewer but still retain their poetic poignancy. Besides Pryce, I particularly enjoyed James Cossins, another delightful BBC regular, as the slippery Lucullus, one of Timon’s “friends,” who averts his eyes, mumbles his praises to Timon, and tries to slip away before the opportunity can arrive for him to be asked to pay his bill. The best compliment that I can pay BBC’s Timon of Athens is that it treats a lesser-known Shakespeare play with the same respect and reverence that BBC also treats Hamlet and the other greater plays. As a result, we are able to see it for its strengths instead of comparing it to Shakespeare’s more important works. After all, it’s better to have second-rate Bard than no Bard at all, and Timon is for the most part an effective tragedy. Cast: A film by the British Broadcasting
Corporation. Directed by Jonathan Miller. No M.P.A..A rating,
but fine for kids (though they’ll probably find it boring).
Running time: 120 minutes. Original broadcasting date: April 16,
1981. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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