Mason Tuttle
Ms. Peifer
10 IB English Hour 4
10 Apr 2011
Critical Review of As You Like It
Kenneth Branagh was able to show Shakespeare’s As You Like It well enough so that the story was given across but overall the play form is better and easier to follow. In this wonderful play the plot is all mixed up with different people in love with each other. Rosalind falls in love with Orlando and he falls for her as well, but Rosalind dresses as a man to hide from the duke and then tests Orlando to see if he truly loves Rosalind. Celia and Oliver, Orlando’s evil brother, fall in love along with Touchstone, the clown, and Audrey, a farm girl, even though Touchstone is more interested in the physical aspect of things. When Rosalind dresses as a man and calls herself Ganymede she meets Silvius and Phoebe, Silvius loves Phoebe, but Phoebe refuses to love him back and then falls in love with Ganymede despite Rosalind telling her not too. In the end Rosalind marries Orlando and Phoebe and Silviius are wed along with Oliver and Celia and Touchstone and Audrey making it a happy ending. This entangled plot is presented by the actors and made fairly easy to follow despite some bad acting.
The only hard part to follow is the character of Rosalind played by Bryce Dallas Howard, she dresses as a man to be in disguise but when she is dressed as a man and is acting as Ganymede she doesn’t get into the part and really show the audience that she is a man instead of a woman. Rosalind changes very little in appearance from her normal character to her disguised self, making it sometimes hard to tell which she is supposed to be portraying. If the lack of visual change weren’t enough, Howard does nothing to her voice to indicate she is acting like a man which can cause the viewer to wonder how Orlando is unable to see through her fairly weak attempts to hide her true identity. Overall, Howard could have done a better job at distinguishing between Rosalind and Ganymede.
Branagh’s version changes the setting of the play to 19th-century Japan instead of England, which works to some extent but seems unnecessary. This was one part of the movie that differs from the play and makes understanding it harder. Branagh opens with Duke Senior being attacked by ninjas in a Japanese theater which is fine and doesn’t change the story much but once Orlando is introduced to the story it becomes confusing why he, an African is present in 19th-century Japan. Throughout the movie there are people from the West, Japanese and African people playing different roles, which becomes confusing if it is put in the context.
Overall this was an effective representation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It but it is inferior to the text even if Branagh made parts of it come to life. The flaws in acting made me as a viewer a little confused and had I not known the story prior to watching, the acting job by Howard would have made it twice as confusing.
