Film Review
Don't go 'Looking For Richard' with Pacino and friends
By Scott FoundasFilm Editor
Al Pacino's
"Looking for Richard" is obnoxious self-indulgence of the highest order--a
powerful reminder of the danger of letting egomaniacal method actors helm
their own full-length features. It is a movie to make the collected works
of Henry Jaglom seem like paramounts of modesty and filmmaking competence
by comparison. This is a shameful,
narcissistic pseudo-documentary detailing the actor's pedantic efforts to
"explain" Shakespeare's "King Richard III" to a contemporary movie-going
audience. Given the impression of the finished project, one can only assume
that in the many years it took Pacino to complete his opus, Richard would
have fared better if he was never sought for and completely abandoned. In fact, by the end of two
of the longest hours this critic can remember wasting away inside a movie
theater, the only thing Pacino has proven is how utterly disastrous his
directorial debut is, taken either as documentary or feature. That's
because, if anything, we're more confused--but certainly no more
knowledgeable--about the intricate relationships and layered meanings of
Shakespeare's text than we were to begin with. We have merely been
subjected to a flatulent home movie of Pacino and friends romping about
between jobs in tacky period garb, pontificating on the relevance of the
Bard and leaving you to wonder who in this company possesses the knowledge
of Shakespeare even to attempt this allegedly educational undertaking.
Plus, the whole thing is really a lot of undue fuss when you consider how
successfully the great Ian McKellen satisfied a very similar purpose with
his lean, mean, pared-down and contemporized film version of "Richard III"
just last year.Still, that doesn't stop
Pacino from approaching people on the streets of Manhattan and quizzing
their knowledge of Shakespeare and Richard. Never mind that this display of
ignorant people caught off guard borders on the condescending. Never mind,
too, that these randomly interspersed interviews are never as funny or
succinct as any question posed by Jay Leno or David Letterman to similarly
unassuming men-on-the-street. None of that really seems
important in light of the fact that Pacino never satisfactorily explains to
us why out of all of Shakespeare's great work, "Richard III" deserves this
special treatment in the first place. Why "Richard," why now? A number of
actors who have played the role have spoken more eloquently on that subject
in a bevy of interviews than Pacino and his cohorts do in the entirety of
their screen folly.It is not as
conceptualizer, however, but as director that Pacino fully embarrasses
himself. Pacino, who is one of the best actors in America today, has indeed
overdosed on his own celebrity if he believes anyone would be interested in
hearing his pretentious and largely unintelligible ramblings on classical
theater, shot as he rides around in the back of his limousine. The
stylistics of most of the electronic press kits sent out to film reviewers
in the broadcast media outclass those of "Looking for Richard," and in an
age when many of the most exciting films being made in America are
documentaries, that genre designation alone can no longer excuse the
absence of lighting and the visible presence of a camera and boom in every
other shot. That would not necessarily serve as a fatal flaw if the action
on screen was even remotely compelling, but in assembling an expansive cast
of Shakespearean non-actors (no doubt in a further attempt to bring the
play down to his audience's "level"), Pacino causes both the dramatic
reenactments of scenes from "Richard III" and the filmed rehearsals of
those scenes to collapse upon arrival.In general, "Looking for
Richard" is at its strongest when it sticks to these Shakespearean
highlights, as a couple of the actors (though not Pacino) show a true
penchant for the Bard, and for a moment or two there appears to be some
sort of storytelling engine propelling the film ahead. As a whole, though,
"Looking for Richard" is a shambles of disparate ideas that steadfastly
refuse to connect under Pacino's supervision. It is less a quest than a
sermon--a sermon with little tangible point or conclusion. In the film's belated final
scene, Pacino's producer Michael Hodge jokes that he's not going to tell
his director-star about the 10 rolls of film that remain unused, and that's
a good thing given that "Looking for Richard" was allegedly edited from
some 80 hours of exposed footage. At the same time, it's tough to forget
that Pacino already exposed well more than those 10 rolls on yet another
pet directorial project, "The Local Stigmatic," which he is also attempting
to expand to feature length. So, if God will save the King, who will rescue
us--the film-going faithful--from Al Pacino? D"Looking For Richard" is playing exclusively at the Beverly Center Cineplex, Landmark's Samuel Goldwyn Pavilion and Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica.