37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 28: Cymbeline

Cymbeline, first broadcast July 10th, 1983

• When was it written? Around 1611. Perhaps his 34th play
• What’s it about? Cymbeline is an ancient British king who is tired of paying tribute to the Romans. His daughter Imogen has a husband named Posthumus, who has been banished to Rome, where he makes a bet with Pisanio about Imogen’s faithfulness. She is faithful, but Pisanio convinces Posthumous she’s not, so Posthumus orders her killed. She flees into the forest dressed as a boy, where she meets the king’s exiled brother and two stolen sons, who have no idea they’re princes. One of the princes beheads Cloten, a would-be suitor of Imogen. She takes what she thinks is medicine and passes out. The princes bury her and the headless corpse together. Imogen wakes and assumes it’s Postumous’s headless body. There’s a war for a while, then everything ends up back in Cymbeline’s (remember him?) throne room where everything is happily sorted out.
• Most famous dialogue: None
• Sources: Holinshed’s Chronicles and the play Philaster by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
• Best insult: There are no really juicy insults here, but Cloten calls the prince a “mountaineer” and the prince, who is clearly a mountaineer, gets so insulted he chops Cloten’s head off immediately. So I guess that must have been a pretty harsh insult back then.
• Best word: ‘ods pittikins
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I saw a rather bugnuts production at The Stratford Festival last summer, with lots of gender-swapped roles (Lucy Peacock played Cymbeline)
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Claire Bloom returns as Queen, Helen Mirren returns as Imogen, Michael Gough is Belarius.

How’s the cast?

• They’re okay. Mirren plays a very similar role to the one she played in As You Like It, and once again she makes no attempt to feign maleness when in “disguise,” which makes it bizarre when people who knew he well don’t recognize her. Everybody else is okay, but they play this ridiculous play too seriously.

How’s the direction by Elijah Moshinsky?

• Entirely inferior to the production that I saw in Stratford. This one cuts out all the warfare, which was quite rousing on stage. The stage version had a very amusing Cloten that was allowed to steal the play, but this one had no standouts, and I blame Moshinsky for that. Worst of all the ruffs are back! I just don’t agree with the idea that plays set in ancient times (though there are many anachronisms) should have Elizabethan dress.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Just Retire Already

We are fairly certain that this play came very late in Shakespeare’s career, and to say that it recycles old material is an understatement.

• As with Othello and Much Ado About Nothing, the heroine is framed for adultery through a very complex plot, and her heretofore-doting lover now decides to kill her.
• As with As You Like It (which also starred Helen Mirren in the BBC adaptation) the heroine, whose relationship is not approved of by her royal father, goes into the forest dressed as a man to live in exile, where she meets other formerly royal exiles who have become earthy forest dwellers.
• As in Romeo and Juliet, the heroine takes a sleeping draft that makes her very convincingly dead for 24 hours, with disastrous results.

Is Shakespeare wittingly or unwittingly repeating himself? Harold Bloom conjectured that this play might be self-parody on Shakespeare’s part, hauling out his old plots so that he could poke fun at himself. Of course, that only works if you treat the play as a comedy, but this production plays it as a tragedy until the very end, when a happy ending arrives out of nowhere. We’re supposed to just take it seriously and not notice all the repetition.

Bizarrely, the play was quite popular during the 18th century, with John Keats himself saying it was one of his favorites. By the end of that century, it was going out of favor. George Bernard Shaw (not entirely incorrectly) said the play was:

• “stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order, in parts abominably written, throughout intellectually vulgar, and, judged in point of thought by modem intellectual standards, vulgar, foolish, offensive, indecent and exasperating beyond all tolerance.”  

But then he rewrote the ending and changed his mind, saying that, other than that fifth act, it was “one of Shakespeare’s finest later plays.”

I’ve now seen this twice in the last year. The Stratford production worked better than this one, but neither made the case that this was a great play. I haven’t finished making my way through these yet, but surely, Keats’s feelings aside, this is one of the worst. Just retire already, Will!

Best of 2024, #1: Will and Harper

Putting this here now feels like a protest against Emilia Perez, but I already had my list drawn up before I saw that one. Nonetheless, it is impossible not to compare and contrast the two. One of the many offensive things about Emilia Perez was that, as with The Crying Game, it was stuck in the mindset that trans people are trying to trick us all. Those movies focus on the question of whether they get away with it. This doesn’t jibe with my experience. Is it possible that I have post-transition trans people in my life that are passing? If so, that’s fine, but it seems to me that that’s just not what being trans is about.

This documentary is a much more touching story of a trans person who just wants to be accepted, so she goes on a road trip with her friend Will Ferrell. It’s at this place on the list because, more than any other movie this year, it made me laugh and it made me cry.

At this point, if you poll all Americans, you won’t find a majority who say they hate black people, or any other race, or gays or lesbians. And that’s been true for many years. The only minority group that a majority of Americans will flat out state that they hate is trans people. Trans hatred is a majority opinion. Trump hates black people, but he didn’t say “Vote for me because I hate blacks.” Instead, he said “Vote for me because I hate trans people, just like you do.” Previously good people like J.K. Rowling get infected with trans hate and it destroys them from the inside. Elon Musk was supposedly turned to the far right by his hatred of his trans daughter.

Why?? Why? Why all the hate? I don’t understand it. These are just the nicest people! They’ve done nothing wrong. As far as I can tell, the hatred is because the idea of trans-ness just seems so weird to cis people. Is that enough reason to hate?

Interestingly, Harper, despite expectations, does not encounter any face-to-face hatred in her roadtrip. But after she leaves each place, hateful trolls pop up on the internet to ridicule her. In person, she’s disarming and inoffensive. It’s the idea of her that inspires retroactive hatred.

I think most Americans have never met a trans person. What this movie does so well is give everyone who watches it a trans friend. Please watch it.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: They Don’t Have to Be On All the Time

I say that it made me laugh and cry, but I didn’t laugh as much as I thought I would: An interesting thing about the movie is that, despite starring a comedy giant and one of his head writers, it’s only mildly funny. These are comedy professionals who aren’t “on” all the time, and this movie shows us what they’re really like in their downtime. That turns out to be pretty fascinating. This is not a “Will Farrell” movie. Instead, it’s just a Will Farrell movie, and I loved it.

Best of 2024, #2: A Complete Unknown

Last time they tried to make a Dylan movie, it was called I’m Not There, and indeed he was not. This time they went with a similar title, “A Complete Unknown,” and indeed Dylan largely remains unknown at the end. There are no flashbacks to formative episodes in small-town Minnesota, no glimpse of parents or siblings, no flashforwards to times when he had more things figured out. The movie follows a very young man with delusions (?) of godhood from age 20 to 24 as he blazes his way into and out of the world of folk music. He goes electric and the movie’s over. He doesn’t even wreck that motorcycle at the end, because that happened two years later.

So what did I think of this film? I loved it. Timothée Chalamet and Ed Norton give astounding performances as Dylan and Pete Seegar, utterly transforming into their characters. The feel of Greenwich Village is just as good as the Coen Brothers’ movie about the same scene, Inside Llewyn Davis, which is a huge compliment. Limiting the scope of the movie so tightly was a brilliant move, saving us the annoyance of old age makeup or flashback kid actors who don’t look like the adult actors. The best thing about the movie is that it’s packed with music. The movie knows full well that the music, not his life, is his legacy, and it gives us a ton of it.

Is it a problem that Dylan remains a complete unknown at the end of the movie? No, because the movie makes the case that he’s unknowable. This is the same Bob we get in the documentary Don’t Look Back, a novaburst of talent, who is also a very private, antisocial guy that is determined to keep his secrets hid. Letting him do that was this movie’s most brilliant conceit.

Let me add, my favorite moment in the movie was Bob saying “It’s Bob, Bob Dylan” to his good friend Johnny Cash, who is on a bender. Johnny, like Woody, doesn’t recognize Bob. The two men he has the most respect forget who he is. That’s such a painful moment

Storyteller’s Rulebook: You Have to Choose How Much You Can Re-Arrange Events

The order of events of Dylan’s life are inconvenient for a screenwriter. The writers of the biopic Ed Wood (Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski) were in a similar position, and complained in the intro to that published screenplay about being constrained by the actual order of events of Ed Wood’s life:

• Finally, we had to figure out how to create a satisfying third-act climax and resolution. In a perfect world, Glen or Glenda would have been Ed Wood’s final film – the man cranks out numerous silly monster movies, before learning his lesson, turning to personal honest film-making, and creating his autobiographical valedictory masterpiece. But unfortunately, Glen or Glenda came first. So we had to turn Plan 9 from Outer Space into a climax.

Even though most people don’t know the life of Ed Wood, they felt they could not flip the order. They preferred to be honest.

More people know about the life of Bob Dylan, so Mangold could never have gotten away with it, but it must have been even more tempting to flip the order with a Dylan biopic. Surely it would be more satisfying to start with Dylan making electric records, then he meets a girl working in civil rights, realizes how much injustice is going on, switches from electric to acoustic (his fans call out “Judas” but he sticks with it) and then the triumphant ending of the film is when he performs at the March on Washington.

Indeed, the most bizarre element of this film is when Dylan performs at the March on Washington but it’s just a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, with terrible CGI, playing a little snippet of a song without even pausing a different song that’s playing on the soundtrack.

This is the story of a man breaking out of his box, and the March, though it remains the most heroic moment of Dylan’s life, was nevertheless part of that box, so that’s all it’s shown as here. It’s amazing that original screenwriter Jay Cocks and rewriter James Mangold made it work.

Best of 2024, #3: The Brutalist

First of all, let me just say that this movie had many wonderful aspects, but the best aspect of all was the intermission. Every long movie needs one, and this one was glorious. I stretched my legs, I used the bathroom, I thought about the first half, then I returned to the second half refreshed and ready.

Killers of the Flower Moon had gorgeous cinematography that I would have loved to see in the theater (and a great score I would have loved to hear on good speakers) but there was no way I was going to see it in the theater without an intermission, which it bizarrely lacked. Just add an intermission!

This movie isn’t at the top of my list because it’s a little too similar to The Fountainhead. The politics are much less loathsome, but there’s still an element of worshiping architects that I found problematic. It reminded me of two documentaries from 20 years ago about children struggling with the legacy of their architect fathers. My Architect was good, and was somewhat of a hit as documentaries go, but I thought the subject was too enamored of his asshole Brutalist dad. I preferred a movie that barely got distributed called My Father the Genius, where the director had a more jaundiced view of her dad’s hair-brained architectural visions.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Not Every Story Needs an Unpredictable Plot

One interesting thing about the movie is that it contains few surprises. By an hour in, you can see that Guy Pierce will be a bad boss and you can guess that the movie will end 2 ½ hours later with the project ending badly, and indeed that happens, very gradually. It is somewhat surprising just how bad things get at the end, and what happens as a result, but I still felt like I was well ahead of the movie. As my manager once said, it all runs downhill.

But this shows how to make such movies work. The movie is all about moments, not plot. With amazing cinematography, score, and especially performances, we just enjoy living in this world, feeling for these people. The greatest asset this movie has is just Adrian Brody’s face, which is enough to sustain this giant runtime. I don’t know why Brody never became a major actor, despite being the youngest Best Actor winner for The Pianist, but all I know is that you put this guy together with surviving the holocaust and you’ve got gold.

Rulebook Casefile: Leave Big Holes

After sprawling for 3 ½ hours, this movie just kind of ends. Mid-crisis, we suddenly jump 20 years ahead, and we find out a little about what happened to some of the characters, but not all. There are huge holes. But I didn’t mind. It gave me something to talk about with my wife as we left the theater. Audiences actually enjoy unexplained gaps, which just make a movie feel real and lived-in.

Best of 2024, #4: Inside Out 2

We saw this movie when my daughter was away at sleepaway camp, which was silly, because my daughter had just turned 13 a week before, as the heroine does in the movie. As soon as she was back from camp, my wife took her out to see it as a mother-daughter thing. I can only hope it helped my daughter deal with her own turbulent transitions, because that’s not the kind of thing I could talk to her about.  I’m not in her head and can’t fully understand what she’s going through, but this movie seemed uncanny in its understanding of teen girls and its ability to craft an entertaining story out of it.

(And of course, as with last year’s list, I think this movie proved that Maya Hawke, who plays Anxiety here, is an undervalued treasure.)

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Don’t Overextend Your Metaphor

Here, too, I thought the first Inside Out was overpraised and the sequel was underpraised. The first one was very well made, but I kept thinking “This metaphor is overextended and somewhat incoherent.” The metaphor is even more complicated here, as five new teenage emotions are introduced, but I thought this one tracked a lot better than the first. Whereas the first felt strained, this one felt effortlessly clever.

I also just found the previous movie’s “tweens need to accept their own sadness” moral to be way too much of a bummer. This movie, about learning to overcome anxiety, felt more uplifting. I understand what the first one was saying, and I guess it was worth saying, but I never enjoyed watching it in the many times I watched it. I look forward to rewatching this one more.

Another thing I didn’t like about the first movie was the glimpses of the father’s manly emotions and the mother’s feminine emotions, as if our fathers and mothers wouldn’t have gender-mixed emotions just like we do. There was less of that here.

Best of 2024, #5: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Mad Max: Fury Road is a great film, but perhaps overpraised. This sequel is not quite as good, and certainly much messier, but it was bizarrely under-praised, getting none of the previous film’s Oscar attention and not showing up on any Top 10 lists I’ve seen.

Like the previous film, this movie is insanely intense, and gave me my biggest thrills of the year. Unfortunately, like every other sequel in the past five years, this is overlong. Most Mad Max movies take place over a 24 hour period and have simple plots, but this one sprawls over 15 years or so, with a very complicated flashback/flashforward structure. It’s the most ambitious movie in the series and I applaud that ambition, but I did miss the simple stories of the previous four movies.

Just to add: This movie lost a ton of money at the box office, and I always have mixed feelings when that happens. On the one hand, if filmmakers make a good movie, I wish them all the best, and I know what a bummer it is for them to not have that rewarded. On the other hand, as much as I liked this movie, I would be just as glad to see them create new IP and not go back to the same well so often, and if movies bombing is what it takes, then okay. (I do want more James Bond movies though. I hope they don’t stop making those because the last one tanked.)

Rulebook Casefile: Exchange Objects

I don’t want to get into what all happens with the peaches in this movie, because that would involve spoilers, and I’m hoping more of you will see the movie with my recommendation, but suffice it to say that the use of peaches in this movie perfectly exemplifies my rule about putting objects in their hands and then having those objects multiply in meaning as they’re exchanged from hand to hand.

Best of 2024, #6: Gladiator II

The next two movies are both would-be blockbusters that didn’t end up on anybody else’s Top 10 List. I saw this movie with a big fan of the first movie. He hated this one. He was shocked to find out as we were leaving that I liked this one, but I pointed out that him that, unlike him, I disliked the original.

The first Gladiator seemed like an unintentionally comic movie to me that took itself way too seriously. I spent that movie cringing from the over-earnestness. This movie was the opposite: It was ten pounds of fun in a five pound bag. It knew precisely how silly it was, and was all the better for it. So many gladiator scenes! Every ten minutes, our hero was back in the arena, up against more and more outlandish threats (yes, including sharks!)

Ultimately, this was a good old ’50s style sword-and-sandal epic, and one of the best of the genre (Nowhere near as good as Spartacus, of course, but other than that, there weren’t a lot of great ones.) If I had to sum up this movie in one word, it would be spectacle. Like the patrons of the Coliseum, I was given my bread and circuses, and boy oh boy did I need them.

Rulebook Casefile: Capture Real Life National Pain

But I also felt like this movie had more going on.

What do you do when your country is dying? Like, what do you actually wake up and do every morning? Do you try to do something about it? Do you just lament that it’s too late? Do you try to turn the situation to your own advantage?

Most of the characters in this movie want to save their dying country, but all in different ways, resulting in tragic ends for most of them. Living in a dying-if-not-already-dead country myself, I felt for each of them.

My plan right now is to move to Canada. The people in this movie don’t have that option, and they all suffer greatly for it. In this movie, there are no good outcomes. It’s going to be a bloodbath.

Best of 2024, #7: Wicked

I walked into this movie feeling incredibly dubious, especially of Ariana Grande, and it didn’t grab me for the first ten minutes or so, but soon enough the movie and Grande won me over. She’s just delightful

One of the oddest things about the movie was how complete it seemed. It’s just the first half of the musical but everything seems to wrap up pretty well. Both times I saw the show on Broadway, I liked the first act much more than the second half, so I kind of like have it lopped off like this. I will go into Part 2 suspicious all over again, and if it fails to win me over, I will be content to treat this movie as the whole thing.

What’s the Matter With Hollywood: Why Are Movies So Long These Days?

There are only so many stories you can write about how long movies have gotten in the last five years, but this movie reignited the debate, because it takes one hour of the musical and adapts it into a two hour and forty minute movie, which seems particularly elephantine.

The movie does feel too long, and, as always, I did spot things that could come out. Fans would have gone apoplectic, but the entire long sequence with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth comes right out.

But even the changes I would suggest would only get the movie down to 2:20 or so, still leaning it more than twice the length of its source material. This is because many the additions are good. Many things that were never clear in the musical are much clearer here, such as why the animals can’t talk and the mechanics of their oppression. 

Ultimately, this movie was a hit and widely acclaimed, so they seemingly made the right choice to swell it up so much, though that violates everything I was ever taught about how to tell a good story.

Best of 2024, #8: The Wild Robot

The primary reason this movie is here is that it made me laugh and cry, which, as I get older, is more and more what I look for in a movie (though it’s not true of several of the movies I have coming up.)

Another thing I loved about this movie was its mastery of dialogue-less storytelling. Of course, that brings up the fact that the main problem with this movie was that it was superficially similar to WALL-E, but not as great, so I kept unfairly comparing them the whole time, but, judged on its own merits, this is a really well-made movie about parenthood and other existential dilemmas.

(My mother-in-law’s main problem with this movie was that she didn’t believe that the predators wouldn’t eat each other when cooped up for the winter. For some problem, that was more of a problem I had with Zootopia, where they had built a whole society where the predators seemingly had no ability to eat. In this movie they just had to get through a shorter amount of time.)

Rulebook Casefile: The Power of an Ironic Title

I talk in my first book about how the best way to convey that you have an ironic concept is to have an ironic title. When this book came out, I heard the title and immediately knew I had found one of the great ironic titles. How can a robot be wild? They’re the opposite of wild. Put a robot in the wild and a great story writes itself.

This is a high concept movie. As I say in my book, high concept can refer to wild sci-fi stories like this, or dead simple stories like Wedding Crashers. What they have in common is that the title writes the movie for you.