Looking for Richard Essay Questions

What is the argument that Kimball and Pacino get in about?

At one point, about midway through the film, Kimball gets angry at Pacino about the fact that he is interviewing so many scholars about Shakespeare. The anger is somewhat playful, the kind of anger that is comfortably expressed between two close friends and collaborators, as he insists that theater people and actors know just as much about Shakespeare as a scholar does. Pacino fires back that he wants as many opinions as possible, clarifying to Kimball that he is not suggesting that scholars have all the authority on Shakespeare. Rather, he sees artistic and scholarly interpretations alike as opinions, subjective understandings of plays and people that can never be objectively determined.

Why does Richard command the two assassins to kill Clarence without speaking to him?

Richard knows that his brother, Clarence, is a man who uses words with great skill and power, and if the assassins speak with him, there is a chance that Clarence will be able to convince them not to kill him. Indeed, when the men try to kill Clarence, he awakens and uses his facility with language to reason with them about their sins, but his words are not enough to stop them and he is stabbed brutally.

Why did Al Pacino make this film?

Pacino has a deep love and passion for William Shakespeare's work, particularly for Richard III, a character he has played many times. As he tells us in the beginning of the film, he wanted to be able to bring his passion for Shakespeare to the world, and show a public who might be skeptical about Shakespeare that the Bard's work is as accessible as a contemporary drama.

What does Pacino suggest about the power of language in the film?

A recurring theme that comes up, in interviews with everyone from scholars to strangers on the street, is the fact that language, particularly in Shakespeare, is a vessel for strong human emotions. Pacino believes that connecting with Shakespeare has the power to transform people's relationships to their own emotions, to understand and empathize with people in new ways, and to feel more connected with human experience, across history and identity.

What are some examples of ways that Pacino merges the external world of the documentary with the play itself?

In one notable moment, Pacino complains to Kimball that he is impatient with how the documentary is going. It is not quite working in the way that he wants it to and he is frustrated with the progress. Then he tells Kimball "I want to be king already," and the viewer has to rethink what it is that Pacino is actually frustrated about. His desire as a filmmaker, to finish the documentary, merges with his character's desire, to finish his plot and become king, and we see the ways that Pacino's method acting starts to bleed into his role as a director/filmmaker. The process of making a documentary becomes synonymous with the process of acting, in that Pacino becomes so obsessed with his subject matter that he becomes it.