Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare and Joss Whedon seem, on the surface, to make for strange, cinematic bedfellows. However, one look at the darker aspects of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” and it’s no wonder Whedon has become an academically-studied pop culture treasure for a generation of geeks and scholars. In those two shows, in particular, Whedon channels the Bard’s quick wit and gift for romantic tragedy in a way that became a writing style all it’s own, allowing for both optimism and pessimism in far-reaching studies of life and death, even if they were done in the trappings of genre escapism.
It was during his time as the overseer of “Buffy” and “Angel” where the seeds were laid for his latest film. During the shows’s runs from 1997-2004, Joss hosted Shakespearean readings at his house on Sundays with several of his actors. They would workshop the material, play around with it, and just have fun all around, which also led to sessions of singing that became the catalyst for the famous “Buffy” musical episode, “Once More, With Feeling.” These reading would provide the bug that gravitated Whedon towards the idea of adapting Shakespeare’s popular comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, into a screenplay. Almost a decade later, after filming his 2012 blockbuster, “The Avengers,” he used the down time between filming and post-production and, at his own house, filmed the story in 12 days for his newly-formed, micro-budget studio, Bellweather Pictures. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year, and now, has been unleashed to the public.
The resulting film starts off disappointingly muted for Whedon, but as we are drawn further into the story surrounding Benedick (Alexis Denisoff) and Beatrice (Amy Acker) during one weekend at the house of Count Leonato (Clark Gregg), and get into the rhythms Whedon finds in Shakespeare’s story, we are won over completely. It’s interesting that a few week’s ago, I rewatched Baz Luhrmann’s stylized “Romeo + Juliet,” another film that found intriguing ways to bring Shakespeare into the modern age. (Also interesting: Whedon is the second Marvel Universe veteran to bring “Much Ado About Nothing” to the big screen, after “Thor” director Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 version.)
The one thing Whedon fans will notice off the bat is the appearance of several Whedonverse actors, a family of performers that has become a theatrical company in and of itself. Beyond Acker (“Angel,” “Dollhouse,” and “Cabin in the Woods”) and Denisof (“Buffy,” “Angel,” and “The Avengers”), we get: Sean Mahar (“Firefly,” “Serenity”) as the villainous Don John; Nathan Fillion (“Firefly,” “Buffy,” “Serenity,” “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”) as the dim-witted constable, Dogberry; Fran Kranz (“Dollhouse,” “The Cabin in the Woods”) as Claudio, who will come to be engaged to Leonato’s daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese, a newcomer who was a waitress saved by Captain America in “The Avengers”); Tom Lenk (“Buffy”) as Dogberry’s rather clueless second-in-command, Verges; as well as Gregg as Leonato, who will surely be a new addition to the company after his work in “The Avengers” and this film. If you’ve seen any of these actors in their previous work for Joss, you know what they bring to the table; what might surprise you is what they, and Whedon, bring to Shakespeare.
I mentioned how muted the film starts, which is true, and the film remains low-key from start to finish, even when physical comedy comes into play during the scenes when Benedick and Beatrice’s friends and kin plant the seeds of love in the reluctant lovers’s minds. The choice by Whedon to shoot the film in black-and-white is a crucial one; at first, it may seem a pretentious, arty choice, but Jay Hunter’s cinematography brings a different feel to the story than color would have; it feels less like a stuffy, theatrical production, and more like a moody film noir version of Shakespeare, where choices the characters make carry greater weight, and the prospect of love is less assured, especially when Don John sets his plan to ruin Claudio and Hero’s nuptials in motion. This tone also makes the big, dramatic beats (Claudio’s humiliation of Hero in front of the wedding guests; Beatrice’s stinging truth-telling about a disguised Benedick at the masquerade, as well as the pair’s individual, revelatory moments of their feelings for one another) land with far-greater impact than they do in a more traditional approach such as Branagh’s. The subtlety of the score, by Whedon himself, also aides the film tremendously, keeping the story grounded in more of an emotional reality than we’re used to in Shakespearean films. This is one of the benefits of bringing the Bard into the modern day, where his words aren’t constricted by tradition, and his intentions are made more accessible to modern audiences.
Of course, in the end, it is the performances that make Shakespeare live and breathe, and there isn’t a false note hit by this cast. Mahar shows a level of deviousness in Don John that was never evident in his Simon Tam, and makes me hope we see him in an original Whedon villain role in the future. Fillion fits into the role of the underestimated, and barely understood, Dogberry like a glove, and the way he plays the constable’s determination to have it in the record that he is an ass is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a movie this year. And Kranz shines once again for Whedon as the youthful romantic, Claudio. But the film wouldn’t work without a strong Benedick and Beatrice, and Denisof and Acker make sweet, sarcastic romantic hay with the roles. Admittedly, I think Acker shines a little brighter, in a juicier role, but Denisof is hardly a slouch, and the two rekindle memories of their sweet, unrequited love on “Angel,” enough so that, when they do give in to love, it feels like Wesley and Fred, their “Angel” characters, finally get the happy ending us long-time Whedon fans always wanted for them. Now, if someone other than Whedon would give them a chance to shine, we wouldn’t have to wait for Joss, as generous a writer and director as there is in the business, to do it.
