A wonderful play

A wonderful film in my experience. An American team of players and directors trying to dig into the material of an unpopular play by Shakespeare, telling the story of one of the least popular kings in the chain of kings. Richard III. To follow the search for the soul in this play, and to try to understand the story, is the object of these persons´ hunt. Al Pacino is Pacino, walking around in baggy clothes being Pacino Himself. Still, he manage to always be intensely interested in digging into the bones of the story. Maybe he don´t success truly in this, still he manage to show the sentral scenes of this play in a dramatic new and powerful way. The scenes of this film switch between artists reading in modern environments, interwievs with British Shakespearian educated players, and scenes with full dramatic costumes. From Richard III in this film, one of the scenes that made me shiver was the one where Richard pretends to be "hexed" by some people close to him, and get people in his own ranks to be arrested and executed, in pure paranoia, or just to get rid of them. From that scene and on he went to his own undergang. Al Pacino is turning into this pathetic, mean man, a hunchback in this play aswell (according to history). In the end, Richard stand alone, and cry for "A horse!!!!" ....."My kingdom for a horse ...". And in this scene Pacino manage to show the downfall of Richard. Even if the play failes to tell why the Tudors killed him. This film is about the play by the Bard. Not a history lesson.

I should explain much better why I love this film so much. It´s hard for me to explain the feeling this film gave me, and to my old parents. We knew the play, we have The Complete Works. But would never be snobbish about Shakespeare. I can´t give a better explanation than this film showed me clever, extremely gifted people doing a very decent and heartfelt, even not brilliant, peace of work. I love it.