King Lear as Western Elegy

Abstract

Genre-based approaches to the cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's plays have resulted in the production of a multitude of generic films, ranging from those that openly embrace a genre framework to those less readily acknowledged as genre fare. And yet, there remains a critical resistance to genre readings of screen Shakespeare and an academic disregard for film adaptations that openly identify their genre roots. With the exception of the writings of film critic Neil Sinyard, who approaches Shakespeare from a decidedly cinematic standpoint, and Harry Keyishian's interesting but brief critique of three key productions of 'Hamlet' from a genre perspective, genre-based readings of Shakespearean adaptations remain minimal. Robert Wilson, Jr., offers some discussion of Hollywood cinematic off-shoots and Tony Howard opens up the debate within a more meaningful ideological framework, but there is very little critical engagement with what are primarily genre-based adaptations, especially in relation to 'King Lear'. In reading Roman Polanski's 'Macbeth' (1971) as "a fusion of horror film and film noir", Sinyard is one of few critics who openly explore the generic properties of "canonical" Shakespearean screen adaptations. Those adaptations of 'King Lear' that are deemed "canonical" - Grigori Kozintsev's 'Korol Lir' (1970), Peter Brook's 'King Lear' (1971), and Akira Kurosawa's 'Ran' (1985) - are the subject of extensive academic interrogation though there remains a conspicuous absence of any scholarly debate in relation to their generic status despite the fascinating ideological parallels that can be drawn between Shakespeare's play and the genre properties of the resultant screen adaptations. ... Adopting a genre approach, intrinsically linked to the genre traditions of cinema, places the emphasis upon production issues of pertinence to the medium, thus avoiding tedious critical debates as to the ways in which the film text measures up to - or fails to measure up to - the Shakespearean source text.