Looking for Answers in Looking for Richard Essay examples

Looking for Answers in Looking for Richard Essay examples

Looking for Answers in Looking for Richard



Al Pacino's "Looking for Richard" is an unusual film. It is a documentary about the complexities of Shakespeare, the performing of the play Richard III, and the ignorance of the average American regarding Shakespeare. The unusual nature of the film – it's similar to a filmed Cliff–notes version of the text – provokes wildly different reactions from film buffs, critics, and Shakespeare purists. A perusal of five different reviews of the film show such variant descriptors that range from Mary Brennan's comment that the documentary is "decidedly narcissistic" to Edwin Jahiel's comment that the film is an "original, mesmerizing exploration." The rather wide incongruity between the reviews ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...Part of the issue when perusing these reviews is to determine what the critic perceived the purpose of Pacino's film to be. Brennan's hypothesis is that Pacino's primary objective is to find meaning in Richard III, and the secondary objectives include creating an accessible version of the play the Mr. Joe Average can understand, while portraying the acting process when faced with such a formidable text. How a critic views the goals of the film directly relates to how well he or she believes Pacino achieved these goals, so it is important to discuss them.



Dre, a Girls on Film critic, offers another similar conjecture as to what Pacino's goals for the film were. According to the first–name only Dre, the purpose of the film was to present a tribute to Shakespeare, to explore the acting process, and to explain and portray a version of Richard III. Giving the film the page's highest rating, it is obvious that Dre feels the film delivers on its goals.



In fact, much of Dre's words match quite closely with the reasons Pacino stated onscreen for making the film – to present Shakespeare in a more contemporary form for the average American. The popular Girls on Film web page lives up to its name – it presents twenty–something young women (not necessarily with film history degrees) discussing movies. The bright pink colors and Clearasil ads on the page reveal immediately that the average

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