Summary
In a staged scene from the play, Pacino, as Richard, greets Alec Baldwin, playing Clarence. They discuss the king's sickness in whispered tones, as Richard warns Clarence that they are in danger. In voiceover, Pacino explains that Clarence is the next brother in line for the throne, after the king's sons. Pacino explains that Richard is plotting to get rid of Clarence first, and then set to work figuring out how to kill the young sons. Pacino explains that Richard poisons the king's opinion of Clarence in order to get Clarence locked up.
Richard greets Lord Hastings. The scene shifts to Al Pacino talking to Rosemary Harris, then to him speaking to a group of actors about the complexity of Shakespearean language. Pacino talks about the fact that audiences of Shakespeare shouldn't feel pressured to understand every word in his plays.
We learn that the character of Queen Elizabeth is a hysteric, and the film cuts to a read-through with some actors, as they argue about how to go about performing a scene. Penelope Allen, who is playing Queen Elizabeth, passionately defends her character's point of view in a read-through. They read the scene.
Pacino and a collaborator walk down the street and ask different people what they think about Shakespeare. One Italian man admits that he has never seen a Shakespeare play, but does recite Hamlet's famous line, "To be or not to be, that is the question."
Pacino and a collaborator discuss the fact that this is a play in which family quarrels are contentious and high stakes. Pacino explains that Richard is thriving within the chaos of figuring out who will take over the throne, because he can use the internal squabbling in the court to manipulate people, so that he may take the throne for himself.
Queen Margaret, played by Estelle Parsons, enters the scene, complicating the plot even more. She is an older queen, the widow of Henry VI, a Lancaster, and enters the play to curse the Yorks in this time of chaos. Margaret predicts that Richard will manipulate the court, and we see a scholar telling Pacino that everything Margaret predicts comes true. Margaret whispers to Buckingham, played by Kevin Spacey, a word of warning about Richard. Margaret warns everyone about Richard's machinations and flees the room.
In an interview, Vanessa Redgrave, an acclaimed British actress, talks about the ways that language and emotion are inextricable in Shakespeare. A random person being interviewed on the street echoes this statement, saying that if everyone said what they meant more, they would be more effective communicators.
Pacino and Kimball visit the home in which Shakespeare was born, in Stratford-upon-Avon. They look at the bed he was born in and Kimball laments the fact that seeing the bed has not given him the epiphany that he wanted. As a fire truck passes by outside, the men bicker playfully. Firemen come into the room to examine something that has been causing a problem, and Kimball and Pacino leave.
They shoot a conversation at an outdoor cafe, but the police arrive and tell them they can only shoot with a permit. Pacino signals for the photographer to turn off the camera.
The scene shifts to Pacino walking down the street, discussing who they will cast as Lady Anne. He wants someone "young enough to believe in Richard's rap." Kimball is worried they will not be able to find someone who can speak the words.
The scene shifts and we see Winona Ryder, who will play Lady Anne. A Shakespearean scholar speaks in an interviewer about the difficulty of speaking loudly while also remaining truthful.
Lady Anne mourns the death of Prince Edward of Lancaster, whom Richard played a part in killing during the War of the Roses. He also killed her father-in-law. "Was ever woman in this humor won?" Richard says, a famous line from the play. Pacino, in the back of a cab, tries to figure out what Richard means when he says, "I will have her, but I won't keep her."
We see Winona Ryder, Al Pacino, and Frederic Kimball discussing the scene, an iconically complex scene in the Shakespeare canon. Kimball has an outburst and scolds Al Pacino for wanting to call in a scholar or a historian to explain the scene. He is playfully belligerent as he insists that Pacino knows more than any scholar ever could. Playfully, Pacino "knights" Kimball and assures him that he is only interested in opinions, and does not assume that anything a scholar thinks is fact.
Analysis
After the premise has been set, the film becomes more of a dramatization of the play itself. We see Pacino, Alec Baldwin, and others in period costumes performing the play on location in a large castle. The fantasy of the play that the real-life Pacino is trying to piece together begins to take form in action. While investigating the true meaning and significance of Shakespeare's words, Pacino additionally begins to bring the story to life through an actual enactment of the story.
The film investigates modern audiences' impediments to understanding Shakespearean language. We see various people discussing the fact that Shakespeare's language is difficult and dense, hard to understand, and often prevents audiences from connecting with the actions of the plays. Pacino, ever the Shakespeare fanatic, insists that it is not difficult if people are patient and just give in to the density of the language. "As long as you just get the gist of what's going on, just trust it!" he says in one interview.
The film gives the viewer a front-row seat on the passionate process that can go into interpreting and performing a play. We see not only the research and background work that goes into understanding the history of a drama, but the impassioned discussions that happen at a table read, and the realization of that rehearsal on its feet in a staged performance. Al Pacino shoots the rehearsals and interviews in tight closeups, pulling the viewer into the emotions and focus of the actors as they set about breaking open and embodying the text.
The film is almost like an annotated version of the text. We see the action of the play, all performed in full costume, and then complimented by interpretive asides and explanations in the documentary portions. The viewer does not get to watch the play performed straight through, but they are provided with explanations that enrich the drama taking place. What's more, we see the actors who are portraying the characters out of costume, rehearsing the scene and engaging with the process of working on the text.
A major theme of the film is the way that language can contain emotion and feeling. In one interview, Vanessa Redgrave tells Al Pacino, "The music—literally I mean the music—and the thoughts and the concepts and the feelings have not been divorced from the words. And in England, you have had centuries in which word has been totally divorced from truth. And that's a problem for us actors." In her estimation, Shakespeare writes language that contains, within its sounds, rhythm, and music, an intrinsic emotionality and conceptual framework that is already there. Pacino seems to share this suspicion, and his main aim in interpreting the work is to unleash the music that is already contained within.
