Here is Olivier in his 70s, a guy who simply could not stop working. In his last years, visibly old, his face fallen, disabled by disease, he still kept calling his agent and asking, "Can't I work"? I'm going to cut the guy some slack. I mean -- the very fact that he was able to PICK UP Cordelia and carry her at his age was no mean feat!
And I didn't catch any gross weaknesses in his performance. Or in anyone else's for that matter. Diana Rigg could turn anybody into an ice cube just by looking at him or her. I loved John Hurt's Fool, especially, and the relationship between him and Lear, the latter amused by the former's insults, even while warning him that he may go too far. John Hurt was my supporting player in a courtroom movie in which I was the sketch artist, "From the Hip," a story far superior to anything Shakespeare ever wrote.
All seriousness aside, as for "Lear" the play, I just don't know. The plot of full of holes and unpleasantnesses. Basically the engine behind the story is that Goneril and Regan brown nose the King, while Cordelia says with blunt honesty that she loves him as much as her bond to him demands, no more and no less. "Nothing will come of nothing," and so forth, says Lear, understandably confused because she's not following the usual interactional grammar. Well, all Cordelia has to do is say something like, "Wait a minute. I really do love you. It's just that I'm not going to throw myself at your feet to get a piece of your property. My love means more than that." But no. Tragedy builds upon tragedy. And it's LEAR who is ordinarily blamed for this misunderstanding! Well, that's a patriarchal society for you.
And, pardon, but what happened to The Fool? He disappears without explanation halfway through the play! What happened? Did WS lose a few pages of the play and then forget about them? And that eye-gouging business -- discomfiting. And at the end, with Lear moaning over the dead Cordelia, he comes up with something like, "And my poor fool is hanged". What's that all about? Was Cordelia a fool? Was he referring to "The" Fool, who was hanged somewhere in the missing pages of the ms.?
Lear winds up in a gale on the moor, running around naked, and afterward decorating his hair with posies like some berserk Mellors. Does he deserve this because he didn't catch Cordelia's covert meaning? Why should misfortune after misfortune be heaped upon Lear? Isn't being very old enough of a tragedy, all by itself, for Lear? Or for Olivier? For anybody?
And I didn't catch any gross weaknesses in his performance. Or in anyone else's for that matter. Diana Rigg could turn anybody into an ice cube just by looking at him or her. I loved John Hurt's Fool, especially, and the relationship between him and Lear, the latter amused by the former's insults, even while warning him that he may go too far. John Hurt was my supporting player in a courtroom movie in which I was the sketch artist, "From the Hip," a story far superior to anything Shakespeare ever wrote.
All seriousness aside, as for "Lear" the play, I just don't know. The plot of full of holes and unpleasantnesses. Basically the engine behind the story is that Goneril and Regan brown nose the King, while Cordelia says with blunt honesty that she loves him as much as her bond to him demands, no more and no less. "Nothing will come of nothing," and so forth, says Lear, understandably confused because she's not following the usual interactional grammar. Well, all Cordelia has to do is say something like, "Wait a minute. I really do love you. It's just that I'm not going to throw myself at your feet to get a piece of your property. My love means more than that." But no. Tragedy builds upon tragedy. And it's LEAR who is ordinarily blamed for this misunderstanding! Well, that's a patriarchal society for you.
And, pardon, but what happened to The Fool? He disappears without explanation halfway through the play! What happened? Did WS lose a few pages of the play and then forget about them? And that eye-gouging business -- discomfiting. And at the end, with Lear moaning over the dead Cordelia, he comes up with something like, "And my poor fool is hanged". What's that all about? Was Cordelia a fool? Was he referring to "The" Fool, who was hanged somewhere in the missing pages of the ms.?
Lear winds up in a gale on the moor, running around naked, and afterward decorating his hair with posies like some berserk Mellors. Does he deserve this because he didn't catch Cordelia's covert meaning? Why should misfortune after misfortune be heaped upon Lear? Isn't being very old enough of a tragedy, all by itself, for Lear? Or for Olivier? For anybody?