Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Claire Dunne One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

eyesour The small number of reviewers here to date seem to be struggling to summarise the effect that this production has had on them. That is the only consensus: it does not appear to be possible to judge how "good" or "bad" Brook's interpretation of this extraordinary piece of work really is. I don't think I've ever sat through an equivalent film as heavily and relentlessly bleak and demanding as this, without turning away through boredom or switching off in irritation. My constant preoccupation was how this would have been received by the original audience. Could this have been called entertainment? What was Shakespeare thinking of? This is a merciless vision of life's meaningless cruelty, and the animal savagery that underlies humanity's drives and ambitions. Other productions may compete with it. I was greatly impressed by Olivier's version. But anyone with more than a passing interest in the wheel of fire owes it to himself, or herself, not to miss this exceptional picture.

littik To understand this version you really have to understand King Lear in great depth. The technicalities that DC1977 writes on, are there for a reason, which would not be immediately obvious if you were seeing this play without reading the work. (Remember too, to read the Conflated text, as you will miss parts if reading only the Quarto or Folio).King Lear follows Lear, as he comes to recognise his madness and the freedom that this knowledge gives. Through the text, Lear has moments of great confusion which are represented by the camera work: slightly out of frame and jarring at certain moments.His greatest realisation occurs during the tempest, where Lear is able to be alone for the first time in his life, standing, bawling at the storm. The camera work here does quite frequently black out completely, with only a lightning strike to show anything on screen. This is actually more realistic that any other method that could be used. DC1977, it is the middle of the tempest where there is no electricity. There would be a great deal of cloud cover any way, so this blackness actually works when you think about it. Another aspect is letting the audience not see. Throughout the text there is great mention of eyes. It is the truth that Lear comes to see towards the end, that he has been living a lie in believing in the lies his subjects feed him constantly. Lear has been blind for the entirety of his life up until this point. The tempest occurs just as Lear comes out of this fake reality. It eventually emerges into startling white, as we see Lear carrying Cordelia across the sand. It is then that he sees the truth.The camera work is truly astounding if you have read the work and grasp the greater underlying concepts at work in the play. If you haven't read it, or haven't thought about it, well... you will form an opinion like DC1977's about this film version.Please, please see this version. It may take you a few minutes to be absorbed, but once you are it will tear your heart out and leave you exhausted. This movie proves that Shakespeare's works are translatable to the screen.

winner55 in a moment of irony that could occur only in cinema, the definitive version of Shakespeare's 'king Lear' is Kurosawa akira's 1985 'ran'. only Kurosawa - at the end of his own career and looking back at at a century of blindness socially and politically, that dragged his culture through the horrors of the Tojo regime and the second world war - could grasp the essential insight of Shakespeare's vision of political perversion arising from simple but fundamental personal mistakes in judgment.brook, of course, doesn't go after that. in fact, the issues just noted have been missed just about entirely by every American and British version of the play i've seen, even Laurence Olivier's farewell performance on television just before he died.so when we come to brook's film, we have to let go of the hope that this will be the 'ur-Lear' that we seem to have misplaced in the west ever since the Elizabethan era.in fact, let's let go of Shakespeare completely, here - this is a peter brook film, and brook is actually after something fundamentally cinematic - but not necessarily Shakespearean.brook's film is a relentless portrayal of the world turned upside down. the most memorable quality of the film - and it stuck to me for many years - is the camera work, that gets unsteadier and more rapidly cut as the film goes on, until the audience feels trapped inside a house in a hurricane - and one that's quickly falling apart.to find some ground in this visual catastrophe, the audience will desperately grab onto Shakespeare's words or the fine performances by the wonderful cast - but be warned - that's not really going to help much, and it's not supposed to.brook, who made his name by approaching theatrical stage performances in a rather daring visual style, clearly wanted to see how far he could push the medium - the audience will have to decide whether he's successful - but the effort itself is worthy of respect.

lorenellroy Paul Scofield is a magnificent actor and for me the definitive Lear,but his powerful performance is grievously handicapped by some savage editing of the text which renders much of the story confusing to those coming new to the play This is bad enough but the neurotic direction of Peter Brooks makes it worse It is a bleak play and the frozen watelands of the external scenes are apt and well rendered by the camera crew.I maintain however that if we are to grasp the full horror of Lears's predicament we need to see how far he has fallen and the interiors look scarcely more inviting than the moorland =In Lear text is paramount and nothing should take our attention away from the words and the actor uttering them .Brook evidently does not agree and the camera is constantly fidgeting and at times not even focussing on the actor but zooming around like an over active fly It is not an uplifting play being rather about the fragility of sanity and reason,the key line for me being" as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/they kill us for their sport" It should be an unsettling experience because of the story and the implications for us as humans,and not because some showoff with a movie camera wants to prove he is a "Director" and in the process sabotaging a uniformly fine cast