Cinema
Othello (12, selected cinemas) Bed of Roses (PG, selected cinemas)
High school Shakespeare
Mark Steyn
Iwas thinking of that Irving Berlin song, 'I love a Piano' — the one where Berlin goes 'I know a fine way/To treat a Stein- way' and then gets stumped a few bars later and resorts to an impure rhyme: 'I'd like to stop right/Beside an upright.' For years, songwriters have sympathised with Berlin: what could he do? 'I'd feed my pup right/Beside an upright'? The answer came to me during the big sex scene in Othello: 'I'd like to tup right/Beside an upright.'
You don't remember the big sex scene from Othello when you did it at school? Well, that's Oliver Parker's principal inno- vation. From the off, he hacks away at the text with a cut-to-the-quote ruthlessness: here comes the 'green-eyed monster', there goes 'who steals my purse steals trash'. And you begin to wonder, with every soliloquy reduced to soundbites, how Parker's Othel- lo can possibly be half-an-hour longer than Orson Welles'. The answer is that Parker has decided to show us the old black ram tupping the white ewe in extended detail.
It's shot in that moody style which in most films is usually accompanied by some overwrought rock ballad from Whitney Houston or Phil Collins. Indeed, it's the sort of sex you can only have accompanied by rock ballads, especially when Parker edits it so like a pop video that at one point I could have sworn they were making the beast with four backs. But on and on it goes and no ballad emerges, no 'Embrace- able Ewe', no 'The Moor, I See You', just sex. As we know, Othello lov'd not wisely but too well. Most interpretations concen- trate on the former, but, as the unstop- pable lurve machine grinds on, you realise that, boy, was he right: sometimes a guy can love too well.
Parker believes that earlier versions have over-emphasised Iago and that, for him, the centre of the play is Othello and Des- demona. He has the first black actor ever to play the role in a major film, and, from the Moor's first passionate, probing kiss with his bride, Parker is keen to show us black flesh on white. Unfortunately, Othel- lo's problems are more than skin deep. Laurence Fishburne just can't manage the verse. he seems intimidated by it, and visi- bly flounders. The Swiss actress Irene Jacob has even more trouble as Desde- mona, and her accent unbalances the drama: she seems more foreign, more of an outsider than Othello.
I was trying to think where I'd seen per- formances like this before, when the cur- rent Broadway revival of William Inge's Bus Stop reminded me: it's high school Shakespeare. At one point in Inge's play, a teenage waitress volunteers the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and does it with tons of heavy indicating, pointing to her eyes and the skies in literal illustration of the text. That's the kind of school play performance Fishburne turns in here, cast- ing around on every line in the hope that there'll be some appropriate prop around. When he gets to the green-eyed monster, you're grateful he doesn't point to the Incredible Hulk. Thus, Parker's plan to give Othello back his play totally backfires. Instead, Kenneth Branagh's casually confi- dent Iago steals the show — for what that's worth: who steals this show steals trash.
If you want a fellow who loves not wisely but too well, try Christian Slater in Bed of Roses. He doesn't just want sex on the first date, he wants kids. This boy is a reminder that Othello's isn't the only kind of obses- sion: Slater is Mister Sensitive, he quit the trading floor at Goldman Sachs to become a florist, he likes to sit in on the storytelling sessions at the library, he sends his girl a card, after that first date, saying, 'Thank you for a day of too much perfection.' If you're already feeling suffocated, so's she. But that's because she's a whizz-kid worka- holic who's afraid to commit. This relation- ship is even more black and white than the Moor and Desdemona. Still, as an antidote to Othello, it's a short, sweet film, which could have been more effective with better players. Slater gets by, but Mary Stuart Masterson is a disappointment.
Incidentally, when did Hollywood actresses get so triple-barrelled? I can't keep track of 'em all: I get Sarah Jessica Parker mixed up with Mary Louise Parker, and Mary Louise Parker mixed up with Mary Stuart Masterson, and Mary Stuart Masterson mixed up with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Mary Elizabeth Mas- trantonio mixed up with Marc,eLlo Mas- troianni 'Have a temble day.'
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