O
***
Cinema Releases - September 13, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
94 minutes. Directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Written by Brad Kaaya; based on
the play "Othello" by William Shakespeare. Starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett,
Julia Stiles, Elden Henson, Andrew Keegan, Rain Phoenix, Anthony Johnson,
John Heard, Martin Sheen.
Tim Blake Nelson's "O" has taken
its time getting to UK screens, after various delays due to the movie's depiction
of high school violence, and the sensitive implications of such in the aftermath
of disasters like the massacre at Columbine. Is the movie worth the wait?
Hard to say. Build up this amount of anticipation around a project for reasons
beyond its control, and you're bound to have some unsatisfied punters. This
is not a bad film, it's just not a grand enough one to survive unreasonable
expectations.
"O" takes Shakespeare's great tragedy "Othello"
and places it in the setting of a modern North Carolina boarding school.
In place of Othello is 'Odin', a ghetto kid on scholarship whose leadership
is demonstrated on the basketball court. Instead of Desdemona we have 'Desi',
the daughter of the school principal, who's having an after-hours affair
with Odin in halls of residence. Iago has been turned into 'Hugo', whose
jealous plotting is motivated by the fact that his father is the basketball
coach, and yet Odin has been named Most Valuable Player.
I'm not sure it's enough for a movie like this
to simply take all of Shakespeare's scenes and update their details. A movie
like Larry Clark's "Bully", which takes Shakespearean imagery and uses the
grandeur as a way of showing the pettiness of its own characters, is an inventive
way of getting the Bard into modern cinema, whereas "O" is simply a case
of substituting modern equivalents. It doesn't quite fit, and audiences
unfamiliar with the source material may find the trajectory
bizarre.
Having said that, the movie does have a sort of
scruffy power about it. I feared that "O" would not have the courage to portray
a black character in a negative light, and we'd get a perfect, politically
correct Odin who ends up going crazy for no real reason. Instead, director
Nelson and screenwriter Brad Kaaya do a good job of giving their hero tragic
flaws; we learn that Odin has in the past had problems with drug use and
temper control, and the way Hugo manipulates Odin to bring out his animal
side is seen in a convincing manner.
Nelson's camera is subtle but insistent in how
it views characters with darkness, pity and suspicion. Josh Hartnett doesn't
need to overreach to evoke the heartlessness of Hugo, because the way Nelson
makes note of him while he stays in the background of scenes creates enough
of an atmosphere of dread. Mekhi Phifer, who did strong work as a similarly
selfish character in Spike Lee's "Clockers", has the necessary fragile strength
for a tragic hero: he can look noble enough to play a leader and savage enough
to play a broken mess. Julia Stiles is also well cast in the blandly perfect
role of Desi; all she has to do is retain an aura of innocence, but that's
an aura her rosy cheeks and honest tone of voice convey perfectly
well.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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