Following Al Pacino ‘Looking For Richard’

It’s a big world of movies out there, folks.

And while we need to be thankful that we have a theater - the Magic Lantern - that specializes in bringing us films that don’t usually play at your average neighborhood multiplex, it’s still a fact that many of the more interesting art-house and foreign movies tend to pass us by.

“Looking for Richard” is a perfect example. Now out on video, it never played Spokane, Post Falls or Coeur d’Alene. And that’s too bad.

This is basically a vanity production by Al Pacino, which will be enough to turn off a number of viewers who don’t like Pacino under the best of circumstances. Add Shakespeare to the mix and the anti-Pacino types might rather watch a hip-replacement operation on The Surgery Channel.

But here’s the surprising news: “Looking for Richard” is pretty good. It should be especially entertaining for anyone who has ever sat through a Shakespearean production wondering not only what was being said but what was meant by what was being said.

Filmed over a number of years, “Looking for Richard” is a documentary - directed by Pacino - about his attempts to stage a production of the play for the screen. In the process, we see Pacino, his collaborator Frederic Kimball, a number of Shakespearean scholars and several name actors wrangle over the play’s intent both in terms of characterizations and overall themes.

The movie gives us Pacino, talking to street types - in New York and in England - about Shakespeare. It features him working on line readings with such actors as Kevin Kline, Estelle Parsons and Winona Ryder and performing with the likes of Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Kevin Conway.

Throughout, Pacino haunts his subject the way the witches haunt Macbeth. Moving from location to location (and even getting bounced from one New York eatery), sporting his “Scent of a Woman” baseball cap turned backward, cracking wise at everyone’s expense - especially his own - Pacino is unrelenting. He is determined to figure this Richard guy out.

Some of the discussions are sophomoric, making the performers - Pacino among them - more like capable impersonators than beings with enough intelligence to actually understand what points Shakespeare wanted to make.

And in the end, Pacino seems a little too street-wise, a little too “Godfather”-ish to play a convincing king of England - even one with a hunchback and a soul dark enough to make Iago look like Santa Claus.

But he’s better than you might expect. And the others - Conway and Baldwin principally among them - are superb.

Besides, any discussion of Shakespeare’s intent is bound to border on absurdity. After these four centuries, there’s still no consensus, despite the efforts of Kenneth Branagh, on who Shakespeare was much less what he stood for.

Pacino’s search for Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is as noble as any and more inspired than most.

***-1/2 Rated PG-13

For home use only

If your house is like mine, the shelf holding your taped-from-television video collection resembles a cassette tape clearing-house. The “Friends” tape sits atop the “Riverdance” tape, which rests next to the “ER” tape that lies over to the… well, you get the picture.

But that’s only the beginning of the problem. Half the time you can’t find the tape you want, so you end up grabbing whatever’s available - thereby mixing up the “Friends” with the “ER” with the etc.

Then there are the taping speeds. Some people like to fit as much programming as possible on a tape, with the result being that the picture quality matches something seen on a 1953 Zenith.

Others of us prefer the highest quality available, which means that we’re able to fit only two one-hour programs on a single tape.

And so the collection grows.

There is a solution to all this. It won’t please the cheapskates among you, but it helps with the organizationally challenged and the picture quality is unmatched.

The solution? Buy copies of the tapes as they come onto the market. A good example are those tapes now being sold by Anchor Bay Entertainment, which recently purchased the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre library.

Two of the first shows that Anchor Bay is offering for sale are “Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgment” (4 hours, $29.98), the critically acclaimed mystery series starring Helen Mirren, and “Breaking the Code” (90 minutes, $29.98), the filmed version of the stage play starring Derek Jacobi.

If those prices cause you to whistle, well, you can always borrow the “Prime Suspect 5” tape I made.

Oh, wait. Sorry. I accidentally threw it out when I dumped “Riverdance.”

Secrets & Lies

****

A master at telling the human story, British filmmaker Mike Leigh has constructed a simple tale about a young adopted woman who, following the death of her parents, seeks out her birth mother. But simplicity in this case is relative. The woman is black, her mother white and no one else in the family is even aware that she exists. The result is a masterful study of the kinds of subterfuge that, even when created as a means of survival, ultimately block us from not only from others but ultimately from ourselves. Winner of the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and featuring a number of striking performances - especially by Cannes Best Actress Brenda Blethyn - “Secrets & Lies” is both a reflection of life as it is, and as it can be. Rated R

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo