Othello (2001)

Excellent but underrated film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's been a long while since I've seen this, but bristling at the poor reviews I am moved to make a couple of remarks. One is that upon seeing it on public TV, I immediately purchased it and showed it to all my friends and family, who were similarly impressed. Both Othello and Iago are wonderfully inhabited by their actors. Two is that Davies elevates his diction and provides rhythm in his "modernizing" to the extent that I remember being moved to write embittered love poetry after watching it. (I know that the world doesn't need more embittered love poetry, but it is pretty cool that his language put me in that place.)I like my Shakespeare adaptations to be coherent and this setting is pertinent and coherent. All in all, an excellent experience.

Othello is set to burn the eyes of the viewers of this film. The bad depiction of Shakespeare's characters, and the terrible rendition of the love that Desi & John had, made this movie the horrendous filth that it is. By far, Othello, directed by Jeffery Saks, is beyond mediocre and atrocious. The movie Othello is a pitiful drama about the love between John and Desi. Their faithfulness to one another will be tested by the man's friend. In the opening scene of the film, it is clearly shown that the love between John and Desdemona is inseparable beyond belief. Moments later, Ben Jago, John's friend pops out into the screen scaring the viewers and showing them right away how much of a liar and power hungry person he is. By far, this movie was much more horrid than the Shakespeare novel itself. With that being said, it does have a miniscule amount of good parts. For example, the love that was shown between John and Desi, was depicted very well and it looked that the couple was so inseparable; just as it was explained in the book. Although the love between them was shown exceptionally well, it still did not show the jealously that Othello had between Cass and Desi as well as it should. Love, jealously, deceitfulness, this movie is based on all three of the main topics that were in the Shakespeare novel. The novel however, really explains how all of this came together much better than the movie could. For example, the conclusion of this story ends much more differently in the book than in the film. Much more detail is also put into the novel. This is why this film is such a disappointment, trust me, those who have read it will find it disappointing as well. In conclusion, this film was by far, the most horrendous depiction of a novel that has ever been put out by mankind. By avoiding to see this film, not only will viewers save themselves an hour two of their lives, but also save themselves an eye or two from the distasteful face of Ben Jago popping out at them.

I am a great Shakespeare aficionado, and I am usually very skeptical about versions that don't use the original text. Yes, adaptation is a valid genre in itself, but a modern-language adaptation is usually only meaningful because it refers back to the original work that we acknowledge the immense value of. People (film-makers and audience alike) must understand that, if you leave behind Shakespeare's language, you invariably leave behind 90% of the art and subtext. You leave behind almost everything that makes the audience think, retaining only the part that is easily digestible as immediate entertainment. In most cases, this is acceptable only to those who do not distinguish significantly between high art and immediate entertainment.Then there are the exceptions, like this absolutely excellent modern version of Othello. It is very professionally produced in every way; the language, though mostly modern, is just that little bit prettier than everyday language, containing some nice similes and alliterations here and there, as if inclining ever so slightly towards Shakespearean language. Very nice! The plot has been significantly altered, and with it is also altered a good deal of the original statements of the play, but it is done respectfully, as if understanding that it is impossible to retain all the philosophical substance of the original. And the alterations supply their own new patterns to make the internal logic of this production a wholesome and consistent thing. Beautiful! The actors don't miss a beat. Their performances are flawless.As an ardent Shakespeare reader, I must confess that Othello is one of the plays that can sometimes become a bit boring to me. As a person, I am not really that interested in stories that use jealousy as the central plot point, because, frankly, I find it rather unexciting and, for me at least, irrelevant. The original Othello is of course a play pregnant with a myriad thoughts and ideas, justifying repeated rereadings, whereas a modern version will tend to strip away all the circumstantial pondering and leave us with a bare-bones jealousy plot. This can get simplistic and is why adapters as a general rule should be wary of over-simplification, as it tends to get *so* simple that the Shakespeareness of it is entirely lost. And then what was the point of the exercise? However, this particular production has enough connections to the Bardic original, and enough topical connections to the current-day world, that it is more than a jealousy story. It is also a character study, a challenging exercise in plot structure, and a study in near-Shakespearean method acting, and it manages to effectively hold the attention and maintain a level of meaningful entertainment throughout. This is a DVD well worth its price.9 out of 10. An impressive production.

It seems like an exciting prospect, a modern-dress "Othello" with Christopher Eccleston, who was so frighteningly good in "Shallow Grave" and (especially) "Jude," and Eamonn Walker, who brought such intensity and introspection to his pivotal role on "Oz." One would think them both natural Shakespeareans, but both performers misfire: Walker's Othello is a fairly cookie-cutter take on the part, with a whispery delivery that doesn't make much of an impact; and Eccleston hams it up appallingly as Iago, winking at the camera in almost an outrageous parody of the role. It's likely he was egged on by his director, whose florid approach might have worked better with Elizabethan language, but who seems a jarring, pretentious choice for this modernized screenplay. And the screenplay itself is less disappointing in being modern than it is in being obvious – it's as if Andrew Davies sketched out the famous plot and then just wrote whatever dialogue first popped into his head. All in all, a failure. 4 out of 10.