Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra (1974) follows the relationship of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra.It dates from the time of the Parthian war to Cleopatra's suicide with a snake.William Shakespeare is the author of the play this movie is based on.He is believed to have written that around 1606-1607.I read the play a little while before I borrowed the VHS from the library.It's not the finest works by the Bard but good anyway.This TV movie is something very average.It works mainly because of the fine performances the actors give.There's some strength in the performance by Richard Johnson who plays Marc Antony.Janet Suzman is wonderful as the Queen of Eqypt.Patrick Stewart is really good as Enobarbus.The way he turns and talks straight to camera is just magnificent.It's also a real treat to see the young Ben Kingsley as Thidias.The drama works from time to time.There's a lot of that in the end.So this was worth seeing.

This movie altogether made me lose faith in humanity. Most movies are set to stun you with good acting,or at least some acting. This movie, however, was set to painfully vaporize the viewer! It wasn't fast, like a good phaser, but slowly tortures anyone hit by it into nonexistence. This movie would be best described as a steaming pile of horse excrement laced with ebola-zaire. Cleopatra terrified me in this film. Not only was Octavia, the one who was supposed to be plain, more attractive than her, but is also a better actor for the simple reason that I didn't have to listen to her for very long. I have just seriously fallen from my chair thinking about having to watch more of this movie! If I was able to give a negative star rating to this movie, all the stars in the cosmos would not express my hatred for this movie.

Good acting in this version; however, as befits a lower-budget television version, the sets are awful. This makes it harder for the actors to convince the viewers that they are indeed watching a story taking place in Rome or Egypt. Thankfully the actors are able to overcome this obstacle in most scenes. Patrick Stewart shines as Enobarbus. He really communicates the strong friendship between him and Antony, and how troubling it is to leave foolish Antony for Caesar's army. I had to blink twice after seeing the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air butler Geoffrey (Joseph Marcell) in a small role. Janet Suzman plays the role of Cleopatra well. Suzman isn't as beautiful as one might expect for an actress portraying Cleopatra, but she exhibits the powerful sensuality that surrounds the character.

First the good: this production is traditional: set in Ancient Rome, with appropriate costumes. Otherwise, it stank. Almost none of the actors could deliver a Shakespeare line. In Anthony and Cleopatra, some lines are rhymes, some are in blank pentameter, and some are in prose. Here it hardly mattered, since the director and actors had no respect for words. The two leads were the worst offenders. Cleopatra (Janet Suzman) was light-weight, shrill, cheap -- far from regal. She would howl out a word or two from a line, letting all the other words fall by the wayside. Always she was mugging for the camera, with limited facial expressions to mug with. She seemed spiteful, silly, and quite frankly unattractive. Anthony was almost as bad, in different ways. He tried to invest almost every line with gut-wrenching emotion -- bawling out line after line, that should simply have been spoken. With lines blurted out, it was hard to understand what was happening, except that the actors were terribly emotional about something or other. Whenever someone told a joke, and there is a lot of humor in A&P, the actors would laugh and laugh. Not funny. It's we, the audience, who ought to do the laughing. None of the poetry came through. The famous description of Cleopatra by Enobarbus ("Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety....") got lost in the noise. There are no subtitles -- which might have helped. Than again, it might have been distracting to see the lines the actors were supposed to be speaking, in contract to what they were actually yelling out or whispering.

In ¨Anthony and Cleopatra¨ the two eponymous heroes and lovers often argue each other in a battle of words, whims and wills. From such conflicts, the viewer apprehends the true nature of each of the two. From the beginning, Mark Anthony is portrayed as a ruler who lost his desire for domination, who lost his rigid loyalty to his empire, but found his beloved lover - Cleopatra. From the beginning, we have reasons to dislike this pusillanimous hero. But there would be no way that a masterpiece of the Bard , full of conflicts, loyalties and wars, would not captivate us - including its protagonist.