I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month. Basically write 50,000 words in November) so expect very few reviews and updates (although I have a schedule for my writing which should allow for some movie viewing. I will at least have reviews for Suffragette, the new Bond, and Mockingjay Pt 2. We'll see if I get to anything else.....). But I'm doing NaNoWriMo so right now I'm gonna write about the 1963 Cleopatra instead of my novel.
Cleopatra. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison. Mostly I enjoyed it. Somehow, this is only the second movie I've seen with either Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton (the other being Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966), but I am well acquainted with Mr. Burton's VOICE because he played Arthur in Camelot (onstage with Julie Andrews. The 1967 movie starred Richard Harris as Arthur and Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere) so I've heard him singing at least all my life. Rex Harrison, of course, also starred on stage with Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady and then reprised that role with Audrey Hepburn in the movie (I could've sworn I'd seen him in many other movies, but apparently I've only seen him in MFL. Maybe I've just seen it enough times...).
Let's talk plot: it's pretty standard. I don't know THAT much about Cleopatra's life, but this fits with what I do know: Egyptian politics get funky, she needs Caesar's help and delivers herself to him in a carpet. They begin a love affair. Eventually he is stabbed and she begins an affair with Marc Antony. Throughout this second affair, Caesar's heir, Octavian (calling himself Augustus) makes life very difficult for them and is constantly warring with them.
It's pretty much what you would expect, particularly if you've seen or read Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra (both by the Bard himself) or All For Love (by John Dryden, a retelling, and frankly kind of watered down, version of A&C). Or any book about Cleopatra (there's a good young adult fictionalized book about her-part of the Royal Diaries series). Basically, it's her life story.
And it is really good. The point of it is absolutely the visuals. Rich and glamorous costuming, opulent sets, phenomenal make up. The acting holds up pretty well and Elizabeth Taylor can throw a fit while maintaining her glamor like nobody's business.
Of course, it has some downsides. It was originally planned as two movies, each three hours long, one of Caesar and Cleopatra, on of Antony and Cleopatra. Between the budget (which over the course of the shoot and many many delays ballooned from $2 million to over $130 million. It took 10 years to break even) and the fear that the public (which was excited for Burton and indifferent to Harrison) would only turn out for the second half, the studio insisted it be cut together into a single 4 hour movie. 4 hours is, frankly, an awful lot of movie, especially when each half has a pretty clear story arc. The two halves fit together very well, but in the middle it feels like you've gotten to the end of a movie and then the second half takes a little while to really get going. Plus, honestly, eventually (if you are me) you start yelling at the movie to stab Caesar already because Rex Harrison has started to get on your nerves (I started channeling Gretchen Weiners in my tweets about the movie. It wasn't pretty. Unless you're a Mean Girls fan, in which case, yeah it was pretty great).
Aside from the drawing out of the plot, it was actually pretty good and definitely did hold up after the hype I had heard.
Fun thing to note about this movie: although there are no explicit references to the famous Shakespeare plays which cover the same material, I, ever a theater dork, could not help but notice that when the senators started meeting to conspire, the words "honor" and "honorable" got thrown around an awful lot (as in Antony's famous refrain in his famous speech in Julius Caesar-"Brutus is an honorable man" etc).
So, would I recommend? Absolutely. It clearly is a good movie, it has stood the test of time, and, quite frankly, it's a good thing to watch the great epic films of time gone by. They don't make movies like they used to. Green screen is cool, but this has these giant, crowded, *epic* scenes without CGI and we should savor that. Unfortunately, the reason I made a point of watching this movie this week is that as of today, November 1st, Cleopatra is gone from Netflix (sad) so I can't say "hey super easy it's streaming on Netflix." I'm sure it's available in a thousand other ways though so no excuses. Go watch movies, people! It's good for you.
And now I'm off to write. Stay tuned though, I should be seeing Suffragette soon and I'm sure I'll have things to say.
*obligatory special shout out to my personal Antony-my Watson with just a coat-thanks for asking me if you were getting laid yet every 5 minutes, that was funny. Also asking if you were dead yet. <3*
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