King Lear (1987 film)
| King Lear | |
|---|---|
French theatrical poster for King Lear
|
|
| Directed by | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Produced by |
Yoram Globus Menahem Golan Jean-Luc Godard Tom Luddy |
| Written by | William Shakespeare (play) |
| Starring |
|
| Music by | |
| Cinematography | Sophie Maintigneux |
| Edited by | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Distributed by | Cannon Films |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,000,000 |
| Box office | $61,821 |
King Lear is a 1987 film; a sardonic parody and adaptation of Shakespeare's play directed by Jean-Luc Godard in the style of experimental French New Wave cinema. The script was primarily by Peter Sellars and Tom Luddy, and was originally assigned to Norman Mailer. It is not a typical cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, although some lines from the play are used in the film. Only three characters - Lear, Cordelia and Edgar - are common to both, and only Act I, scene 1 is given a conventional cinematic treatment in that two or three people actually engage in relatively meaningful dialogue.
King Lear is set in and around Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland, where Godard went to primary school. While many of Godard's films are concerned with the invisible aspects of cinematography, the outward action of the film is centred on William Shakespeare Junior the Fifth, who is attempting to restore his ancestor's plays in a world where most of human civilization—and more specifically culture—has been lost after the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Rather than reproducing a performance of Shakespeare's play, the film is more concerned with the issues raised by the text, and symbolically explores the relationships between power and virtue, between fathers and daughters, words and images. The film deliberately does not use conventional Hollywood film-making techniques which make a film 'watchable', but instead seeks to alienate and baffle its audience in the manner of Berthold Brecht.
The film itself contains no credits or credit sequence at all, although there is a cast list on the packaging insert.
Godard's script includes only a few of Shakespeare's lines from King Lear, and these are often fragmentary and generally not heard in the order as they appear in the play. Many of the lines are not actually spoken by the characters on-screen (i.e. diegetically), but are often heard in voice-over, spoken perhaps almost incomprehensibly or barely whispered, repeated, echoed. The lines or phrases are taken from:
...
Wikipedia