Love's Labour's Lost

Interesting reading the reviews herein. The reviewers either loved or hated it. Some witty shots taken at Branagh's effort to make one of The Bard's weakest comedies into something enjoyable. I mean, c'mon. The play is a story of young men swearing off of love and being made to eat their vows by clever women through little games and switched clues. Hardly a deep plot with potentially tragic twists like Much Ado About Nothing, or confusion reigning during a lover in love with love as in Twelfth Night, or a knee slapper like Midsummer's Night Dream. So, Branagh, ever the innovator and risk-taker, makes it into a gishy late 30s musical with all the trappings (make that 'tappings') from lead into song and dance routines to coordinated smiling shapely swimmers peeling off like a deck of cards into a swimming pool. Busby Berkeley would have loved it, as would those guys like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Vincent Youmans who wrote those songs back in the 30s. OK, so the ending sucks but how else can you wind up this comedy? It's not Branagh's fault this play is Much Ado About Nothing; blame it on the Bard. He wrote it.

So it is, right at the first frame next to the title, "a romantic musical comedy" is the tagline -- up front with no misconception whatsoever for everyone to see. The entrance is grand in Patrick Doyle's scoring style, along with the credit treatment on red satin and all. What an invitation! 'Like it already. Shakespeare would approve and applaud.

It's truly "there's no business like show business like no business I know." Here Shakespeare and his comedy of errors, a-mixing and a-matching love signals at play again. This common "love bug" (literally so) theme is ever present: in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", in "Much Ado About Nothing", it's all love wires a-blindly and mistaken assumptions a-crisscrossing. 'Tis all seeds of "Love's Labour's Lost."

The outstanding ensemble cast, the charming pairings of the lovers, the song and dance numbers (including a sizzling "Let's face the music and dance"), the costumes and sets, Branagh's script and the "Cinetone News" segments, his impeccable direction, and Patrick Doyle, a vital collaborator who provided the attractive score -- collectively made this romantic musical comedy most entertaining.

Branagh's passion in showing off Shakespeare in film media for all to enjoy is beyond evident. It all seem so facile, yet obviously there's plenty of love in nourishing this dream, lots of labour unrelenting from all involved in this production, and the lost would be Branagh's total steadfast lost in realizing this project -- love, labour, 'lost' shiningly shows. He's out done himself!

If you like musicals, romantic comedies, light-hearted Shakespeare -- go for it. The only special effect here is Branagh's magic.

Thanks heaven for Kenneth Branagh; without him, cinema would be far less interesting and rewarding. His adaptations of Shakespeare will undoubtedly be his lasting contribution to the history of film, and this is no exception.

Having never read the play, I was quite pleased that Love's Labour's Lost was as easy to follow as it was. This has a fair amount in common with Branagh's earlier Much Ado About Nothing; mainly the highs, lows and plain ridiculousness of love. That film also featured Hollywood star casting (Keanu Reeves among others), but like that film, does not suffer from it. Indeed, it only seems to boost the feel-good nature of this film, as the actors joyfully get their collective teeth stuck into some of Shakespeare's wonderful dialogue.

What really makes this a must-see though is how the text is broken up into easily digestible chunks, interspersed with classic musical numbers from the 1930s. I wasn't prepared for how much of a joy it was to see some wonderfully romantic songs (sung pretty well actually) being put to some great dance numbers - Adrian Lester in particular was good. If, like me, you're too young to feel particularly nostalgic towards a time and genre of film that has long since gone, then I urge you to watch this and learn. And if you are old enough to yearn for those days, then do yourself a favour and go see!

"Dancing With Shakespeare" is the direct translation of the title this film was given in Norway, and it is quite an apt description not only of the film's content, but the fundamental, gnawing weakness of the film: a play that above all plays with language seems ill at ease in a jacket marked "dancing". When you dance with Shakespeare you don't want to get out of step, and Love's Labour's Lost doesn't QUITE come together. And it's very sad because it's a film you so much WANT to work, because its heart is in the right place, and its intentions are good and creative and exciting and bold. Yes, it's enjoyable and frothy, silly and sincere in equal measures, beautifully shot with a camera that plays a part in the best Hollywood-golden-age manner, and sometimes it's very funny and works beautifully. But frequently the novelty of turning one of Shakespeare's most language-reliant comedies into a nostalgic romantic musical simply works against itself, and the result is then flat rather than uplifting. And this is not because people don't TRY –everyone involved in the film really gives it a good go, and clearly wants to try to make it come off. It very nearly does, but not quite –there is an unevenness about it that keeps us from getting fully engrossed in what we see, and this is the sort of film that needs that to work.

I was lucky enough to see this film originally at a special screening introduced by Kenneth Branagh and Alicia Silverstone, which boosted the preview audience into a higher gear of excitement and expectation than would be usual, so the experience was a little like the prospect of drinking lots of champagne –delightful, but somehow never as good as the idea of it!

Upon re-watching the film recently, I think the film in fact rather MORE resembles one of those very fancy, colourful cocktails you order when on holiday, with tiny umbrellas and exotic fruit and flowers sticking out and looking enormously tempting on the menu and when brought to you, but always somewhat impractical to drink and with ingredients that don't quite mix together satisfyingly enough. With Love's Labour's Lost the conceit of transforming Shakespeare's rich ideas into classic Hollywood musical numbers to bring across certain moods and emotional moments is a fun recipe, but it seems to me to clash too often with the actual text the film is based on. Now, admittedly much of Shakespeare's play is very obscure and difficult to understand compared to other plays he wrote, and severe editing was going to be inevitable; but putting in musical number after musical number as a replacement seems more a way of padding the film to arrive at a decent length rather than really moving the story along. In fact, many of the musical numbers –skillfully and cheekily staged though some of them are– just get in the way of things, and frequently I found myself wishing that Branagh had been even more faithful to Shakespeare and instead kept in more of the actual play itself. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of deleted scenes on the DVD of the film that sadly never made it to the final cut. I think these should have been kept in because they help make more sense of the story.

The diversity of performers that comprise the cast is quite interesting and there are some magnificent individual performances, though again the range of different styles doesn't always gel on screen. To a certain extent this was also true of Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. Everyone is doing their own little film, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Timothy Spall's Don Armado is perhaps one of the most outrageous performances ever seen on screen, but it is totally in keeping with the character as written. And both he and Nathan Lane (as Costard the clown) bring an essential element of sadness to their otherwise comic roles that is very moving. But the double quartet of lovers that form the central romantic story of the film is a very mixed bag indeed. Branagh understandably gives the plum role of Berowne to himself and sells his Shakespeare with that admirable deftness that is uniquely his, but he is really too old for the part and this works against him here. I also feel at times he should have directed himself more astutely or had better assistance at doing so, for it is largely the scenes in which he does not appear that work best –simply because at such times he, as director, is able to concentrate fully on the other performances. The film also seems unable to break itself totally free from its staginess to become the truly filmic musical it aspires to be.

So, I am quite ambivalent about this film. I DO like and enjoy it, and applaud Branagh for tackling a lesser-known Shakespeare comedy, and with such gusto, but I SO wish I were able to like it more and be fully satisfied by it –and by the greater film that is in its heart..

I'm ashamed to admit it. Critics steered me away from this movie, despite the fact that every Branagh film of Shakespeare I've seen had been wonderful. I waited for the video, but my local chain store never got it in. I finally found it in a little hole-in-the-wall store. What a charmer! It's true that there's only one real dancer in the film and only one real singer, but all of these folks know how to put over a number. Nathan Lane shines as the clown (he may be the funniest Shakespearean clown I've seen, mostly because he's more Borscht Belt than RADA), but the eight principals pull off the difficult feat of being fatuous and winning at the same time. Branagh did what he had to do: devise a new context for this decidedly second-run Shakespeare comedy and yet convince us of a kind of fairy tale. The context (that of Thirties movie musicals) suits the material down to the ground, and the music throughout is superb, drawing most effectively on the great songs, not all of them well known, of the Twenties and Thirties. Love's Labours Lost can go on and on, but Branagh gives it to us in easy bits, breaking things up with an hilarious parody of Thirties newsreels and imaginatively staged numbers. There is the sombre thread of imminent war in Europe throughout, and it provides the necessary casus for the final transformation of character in the play, which normally seems a little abrupt. All in all, terrific.