Ok, this might sound dumb. But am I the only one who had trouble following the plot of this film? I have no familiarity whatsoever with the source material, found the Shakespearean dialogue hard to follow and it just seemed kinda all over the place. I wondered what was going on a lot of the time, lol.
shareShakespearan English takes a while to get used to and is an acquired taste.
If you're interested in Shakespeare's stories, there are lots of films that are based on Shakespeare that don't use his original dialogue. For example, 10 Things I Hate About You is a fairly faithful adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew.
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What I say to people who are new to Shakespeare is: just go into knowing that you wont pick up everything, and just let the language wash over you.
If it is performed well then you should pick up the main points, or at least enough to string together parts of the story.
"Just tea, thank you"
I haven't seen Joss' Much Ado yet, so can't comment on that, but seriously, GET familiar with Shakespeare. If you're going to live in the Western world, I'm pretty sure you have to, by law. Try the New Swan Shakespeare editions: they contain very helpful notes for beginners. You can have your obligatory Shakespeare down in, oh, about two weeks. The language sinks in with use, too.
shareAlso look into No Fear Shakespeare. It has the verse on the left and the "layman's" translation on the right. That way, you can start to see similarities and be able to start seeing how Shakespeare uses language to describe different things.
shareI'm French and I have a hard time following Shakespearean dialogue, but like someone said above, I don't try to get the sense of EVERY sentence and just appreciate the "sound" of it. And I still get the story (plus i'm familiar with Shakespeare... in French :) )
shareRead the play first as I did. That'll give you a better understanding.
Straightedge means I'm better than you.
Yes, without period costumes it was really hard to keep track of characters. In period, clothes would tell you instantly each character's station and affiliation.. Too many Suits and ties made it really hard to catch up.
It would have helped to toss us some "plot cheat cards" for us common folk not up-to-date on the play... So you'd know what was supposed to be happening and keep up.
For me, it's not the dialogue, or black & white, or contemporary setting. It's the combination of all three that make this difficult for me to watch.
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I think I actually had an easier time telling the characters apart with this one, because I know all of the actors so well from the Whedonverse.
Same here, lost all interest after 10 minutes.
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