King Lear (1982)

Based on the play by Shakespeare, in turn based on earlier works detailed in this Wikipedia page.

King Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, but his daughter Cordelia falls short in her statement of devotion to him, and thus gets struck out of the inheritance. His other two daughters subsequently prove themselves very ungrateful and begin mistreating him. A subplot which intersects with that concerns the bastard son of a nobleman who plots against the latter's legitimate son.

This is a TV production with little cinematic value, yet with great actors and overall competently done. Based on its length I suppose it is one of the more complete movie adaptations of this play, though to be sure they did eliminate a few dialogue lines (and even an entire scene, if I remember correctly). The play itself is interesting, but frankly not among the best Shakespeare I know so far. And it has some problems. There is no doubt about whom we are supposed to think to be the good guys and the bad guys here, but the plot just seems to contradict that clear moral attribution. Because the supposedly good guys are in fact territorial aggressors, and the bad guys are the ones who are just defending their country. So, it's like we are manipulated into rooting for Hitler invading Poland, or something of the sort. Very weird. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't have a clue what it might be. Of course, rescuing old Lear and giving him shelter is a good thing, but it does not take a military invasion to do that. It's not like Goneril and Regan want to keep him. Even the terrible actions by the villains are a little more nuanced than one is led to believe. The original "fault" by the daughters is to cut down Lear's private entourage of one hundred men to a more modest size. This is perceived by Lear as the ultimate offense, but to be honest I think the daughters may have their reasons for not keeping a potential source of a coup within their premises. There is a book that raises other problems with the plot, named Macbeth, King Lear & Contemporary History, by Lilian Winstanley. I have read some excerpts where the author points out some apparent implausibilities, but I haven't read the whole book, which attempts to explain Shakespeare's choices historically. All that being said, the text of the play has enough entertaining bits, and it is surely admirable as a display of verbal creativity.

Rating: 50