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Essay: How ‘Richard III’ and ‘Looking for Richard’ Exemplify Power and Love: Al Pacino’s Take

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  • Subject area(s): Essay examples
  • Reading time: 3 minutes
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  • Published: 23 March 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 758 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 4 (approx)
  • Tags: Shakespeare's Richard III

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This page of the essay has 758 words.

Richard III: Love and power

Have you ever been told to read the book before you watch the movie, but then realise the movie portrays the exact same values and messages of the book? This exact idea can be seen in Shakespeare’s play Richard III and Al Pacino’s film Looking for Richard. While using different mediums, the same values and messages are clearly represented.

In Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Richard III, Richard’s desire for power is the catalyst for the collapse of society and is responsible for the downfall of the Yorks. The importance of power is a central element in both texts, using it as both an essential theme throughout the plots of the narratives and describing it as an assumed part of the human condition.

Richard’s thirst for regal office and authority is impossible to satisfy. It is his inability to love and his desire for revenge, which has lead him down the pathway to becoming the arch villain. This can be seen in the quote “Since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain”
He is so driven to maintain his dominance, there seems no room for the tragic hero, and from the start his downfall is governed by his fear of divine retribution. The fact that Richard must surrender his power and position to the workings of divine justice is a reminder of the different understanding of the very nature of power that underpins this play.

The theocentric world view and focus showcased in the play resulted in the social order being sanctioned by God, or having its origins based in Christianity, with authority coming from above, and thus could be removed if the holder of that power transgresses.

Looking for Richard

Audience

To a modern audience, Shakespeare is hard, using complex language and ideas, this has led to the modern audience being estranged from Shakespeare and his works. Shakespeare had a political agenda he was trying to address, however, Pacino was more focused on reconnecting modern audiences with Shakespeare than promoting his political ideas. By highlighting his own process of understanding Shakespeare and Richard III, Pacino is able to assist the audience in finding their own understanding of Shakespeare in a way that they can appreciate.

Reframe and reimagine

In Pacino’s Looking for Richard “Pacino credits Shakespeare with the capability of inspiring higher moral values and truthfulness in language.” This is represented through the African-American panhandler who tells Pacino: ‘When we speak without feeling, we get nothing from our society. We should speak like Shakespeare.”

The idea of “Demystification through deconstruction” is evident through the deliberate juxtaposition of the “sterile academic environment and the vibrant interactions of the actors as they perform, argue about characterisation and revel in the sound of the language itself.”
The actors in Looking for Richard are fascinated by the battle for power and the hatred that is palpable which is shown in the quote “They are clawing at each other for the throne”

3rd Point: Combining text around form

Through the use of a Docu-drama format, Pacino is able to destabilize Shakespeare’s original meaning by using non-linear fragmentation and the constant cutting between actors and academics discussing the scenes and the dramatic performance of Richard. This is making it a sense that Pacino is giving to the audience that the meaning is never always fixed.

Play

Together these texts display that society has moved away from the traditional stories that Shakespeare constructed in his time. Al Pacino purpose was to communicate what he feels about Shakespeare to others, and in a way that a modern audience can understand. By taking Richard III, and analysing it from different angles, we can gain a greater understanding of Shakespeare and the messages he was trying to communicate to the audience.

The interviews between Pacino and the pedestrians help to showcase some of the misconceptions of the original play, and through this Pacino was able to create a film with which he was able to addressed those issues and recreate Shakespeare’s work in a way in which a modern audience could identify with and appreciate.

The problem about Richard III is that it is a difficult play to interpret. It lies outside of our context of the contemporary world in which we live, making it difficult to comprehend. Having a docudrama format assists in educating and informing the audience of the integral themes of the play, while presenting it in an modern way that fits the modern context of the audience.

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