Shakespeare drew on various texts as the springboard for his plays, and I may go so far as to argue that no artistic creation is ever purely original. It ought to be a compliment, and no surprise, then, that the playwright himself is a springboard for others' creativity.
So it is that Philip French picks The 10 best modern takes on Shakespeare - in pictures, for which I bring in their film trailers. Let's begin with three of them, shall we:
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| Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, in "My Own Private Idaho" (Henry IV) |
Reworking Henry IV, Gus Van Sant’s road movie My Own Private Idaho stars River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as gay drifters on a mythic quest in the American northwest. The modern relationship between Prince Hal, Henry IV and Falstaff merges Shakespeare’s text with scabrous demotic American.
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| Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, in "10 Things I Hate About You" (Taming of the Shrew) |
None has been funnier, cleverer than this recreation of Shakespeare’s sex war comedy in Padua high school, Seattle, where the Stratford sisters are respectively a beautiful conformist and a football-playing feminist. A perfect fit.
Most effective perhaps is O, set in an exclusive boarding school in the deep south where the only African-American is basketball star Odin (Mekhi Phifer), who courts the dean’s daughter, Desi (Julia Stiles), and is targeted for destruction by rival Hugo (Josh Hartnett). Shelved for two years because of the Columbine high school massacre, it became a US box-office success.
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