"Shakespearean" Meltdown

The George Eastman Museum (GEM) has been hosting a series of Shakespearean films.  The latest offering I saw was the 1987 film King Lear, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.  The blurb promoting the work should have been the tip-off, when the word "plot" appeared in quotes.  I had to give it a shot, though.  I mean, how bad could it be?

One of the highlights of any GEM presentation is the introduction given by a member of the staff.  This one set the scene quite well.  We were told of the origination of the work, sponsored financially by Cannon Films, the cinematic powerhouse that was responsible for such "classics" (more air quotes) as Bloodsport and The Delta Force.  By the time the production on this work had concluded, even Menahem Goran, one of the producers (along with partner Yoram Globus), had distanced himself from it.  It was nice of him to give $2 million for this work.  Talk about a poor return on one's investment!

The film that followed had as much to do with Shakespeare as a fish has to do with a bicycle.  (At least the latter pair are both nouns.)  They shared perhaps one or two lines.  The "plot" centered on a post-Chernobyl descendant of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare Junior the Fifth, trying to reconstruct his ancestor's work.  (It was amusing that this film referenced a major disaster repeatedly.)  Beyond that, though, it was indecipherable.  I could classify Godard's Lear as nothing more than a cinematic train wreck, but even a train wreck has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  This was just an awful, ninety-minute mess.  It's no wonder that the producer was not happy with the finished product.

While the acting was dreadful, with Mr. Godard's accented diction almost entirely incomprehensible (and why was he wearing A/V cables in his hair?), there were a couple of positives.  This fan of the classic Batman TV series did enjoy seeing Burgess Meredith, even if a Batman episode is considerably more plausible.  Also, what child of the 1980's could possibly complain about seeing Molly Ringwald on screen?  Certainly not this one!

"Devastatingly beautiful sketches of life and art..."  That's how this film was described, and I have to question that.  Readers, beware when you read something like that, or when the words "artistic" or "visionary" rear their ugly heads.  Those may be synonyms for "incoherent tripe," as they are with this film.  Stay away.  Stay far, far away.