Much Ado About Nothing

At last, a Joss Whedon project that I can fully embrace. While I have immense respect for Whedon (talented creator of TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, screenwriter of films like Toy Story and Alien Resurrection, composer of musicals like his internet sensation Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and now writer/director of major Hollywood franchise pictures like The Avengers and The Avengers II), pretty much all of his work leaves me cold.  I’m never able to connect with his productions, or enjoy them on the visceral level that most of my contemporaries seem to. However, this film of William Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, is by far my favorite thing in his prolific career.

Made almost as a lark (at his home during the 12 day break between production and post-production on The Avengers), Whedon takes a simple, bare bones, modern-dress approach to the play, shooting it in black and white video in available light, with a cast of American actors from his various TV projects. This “home-movie” take on the play is a big part of what makes it work. Often the best staging of Shakespeare (both on stage and on film) is the simplest. When directors free their productions of elaborate sets, costumes and other theatrical or cinematic trappings, they allow their audience to focus on what matters the most in Shakespeare--the dialogue and its delivery by the actors. I have suffered through quite a few pretentious and tedious stage-productions and films by “visionary” directors who seem far more interested in their unique interpretations of the Bard’s text, or their inventive staging, or their ironic setting of these plays, than they are in the plays themselves.

But, of course, the play’s the thing. The best production of Hamlet I’ve ever seen was staged in a backyard by seven adolescent girls--they got to the essence of Shakespeare’s most quoted character better than Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli or Kenneth Branagh did in their films. Whedon’s Much Ado has a similar feeling of amateurs effortlessly arriving at Shakespeare’s themes by playing with his text in a seemingly carefree manor.  Much Ado About Nothing is a light and spry comedy, but it has its dark and serious side as well. Whedon and his cast don’t ignore the political, societal and feminist aspects of the play--they accentuate them.

The film is not only devoid of color and attention-seeking camera moves but also of sound design. There are almost no effects or ambient sounds in this film, making what is often staged as a boisterous comedy feel all the more intimate. We get only the actor’s voices and Whedon’s original music to listen to, just as we get only the actor’s faces, costume designer Shawna Trpcic’s off-the-rack clothing, and Whedon’s expansive but uncluttered house and grounds to look at.

Watching the cast of American TV actors naturally speaking Shakespeare’s Elizabethan language is one of the main charms of this picture, but sadly not everyone in the ensemble is equally is up to the task. Some of the actors, like Amy Acker as Beatrice and Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, outshine their fellow players. Also the sparseness of the approach, which works so well for most of the film, actually hinders the most broadly comic scenes. This can be a laugh-out-loud play, but the film only induces smiles. I don’t want to knock a film that made me smile for most of its 108 minute running time, but these issues did get in my way and prevented me from giving it a higher rating. While Much Ado About Nothing is at the top of my list of favorite Joss Whedon projects, it falls much further down on my list of favorite film adaptations of Shakespeare. Much as I want to praise this film, I would recommend Kenneth Branagh's wonderful 1993 film version over this one--it’s less novel but more satisfying.