Summary
We see the scene between Richard and Lady Anne. In voiceover, Pacino explains the significance of the scene: Richard needs Anne to be his queen, and Anne needs protection since she was on the losing side in the War of the Roses. If Anne, a Lancaster, joins Richard's side, it will signal to the public that he is exonerated for the death of Anne's husband, and improve his reputation.
We see the scene between Anne and Richard. She spits in his face, rejecting him, but he gradually seduces her. He hands her a dagger and reveals his bare chest, inviting her to kill him if she wishes. He admits to killing her father-in-law, but insists, "...twas thy beauty that provoked me." Anne replies, "Though I wish thy death I will not be thy executioner."
Richard pulls out a ring and offers it to Anne, slipping it onto her finger. She embraces him, and the scene shifts quickly to show Pacino at the Cloisters, laughing in glee at Richard's victory. Richard kisses Anne passionately and she leaves, smitten. Richard laughs, satisfied with himself, saying, "I will have her, but I will not keep her long!"
We see Kimball, Pacino, and Michael Hadge, another producer, walking down the street, arguing about what the film is. "It's a movie about a play!" Hadge complains, suggesting that an average person is never going to understand the play, since it's too complicated. "Why is it Shakespeare's most popular play?" Kimball asks, to which Hadge replies, "So what?"
Back in the play, Richard speaks directly to the camera, confiding that he is dissatisfied, since Clarence and Edward are still alive.
A titlecard: The Murderers. Richard meets with the men he has hired to murder Clarence and Edward, urging them to be discreet about it. We see Kimball and Pacino in alleyway in New York looking at a corner of the alley where there are pigeon feathers and a textured wall. Pacino is skeptical about the location, and they go to investigate a tower where they will shoot Clarence's death.
The assassins look at Clarence as he sleeps and plot how to kill him, determining not to kill him while he sleeps. It cuts to the read-through scene, in which the actors are discussing the play. Kimball explains that the royals are at an atonement meeting and discusses the fact that the king is trying to staying alive to ensure that chaos does not break out when he dies. Pacino explains in voiceover that the king wants to ensure that his two children will continue to reign after he has died.
Back in the play, the assassins awaken Clarence in his cell. Clarence asks for wine from the prison guard, before noticing the two assassins. In the atonement meeting, various court members swear their love for one another. In the read through, an actress asks if the characters believe in the peace they are advocating. "In this time that was a very solemn thing," Kimball says, insisting that the peace proclamations in the play are sincere.
In his cell, Clarence realizes that it is Richard who has sent the assassins, and he can hardly believe it, having thought that Richard had his best interests in mind. "Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord," says one of the assassins. Clarence tries to appeal to the assassins' sense of ethics and religiosity, saying, "O sirs, consider: they that set you on/To do this deed will hate you for the deed." One of the murderers is doubtful of what to do, but the other abruptly stabs Clarence in the neck, before stabbing him more times, as dramatic choral music plays.
We see Richard going to the king and reporting that Clarence has been killed. The king is upset about Clarence's death and asks his courtiers which one of them betrayed him.
In a New York City apartment, musicians play medieval music on lutes and other old instruments.
In the play, the king dies, and we see Queen Elizabeth throwing herself on his body and putting coins on his eyes.
Analysis
Pacino playfully examines the relationship between Shakespearean scholars and people who work in the theater. A central question in the film is, do historians the authorities on Shakespeare, or is it the interpreters of the text itself, the actors, who understand him best? Are Shakespeare's intentions self-evident in the text or must they be mined from history? In a particularly humorous moment in the film, Frederic Kimball and Al Pacino get into a passionate dialogue about this very tension, with Kimball insisting that scholars do not have a monopoly on Shakespearean interpretation. "A person has an opinion, it's only an opinion. It's never someone being right or wrong...and a scholar has a right to an opinion as any of us," Pacino says, calming Kimball down. In this, we see that the project of piecing together and making sense of Richard III is a complex interweaving of various opinions.
The docu-drama style of the film brings into relief Pacino's views about authority, information, and truth. Shakespeare might be the author, but there is no single authority on his work or his intention, and the various thinkers and artists who are tasked with breaking down the play testify to the fact that there is no single correct interpretation. Pacino brings the process of theater-making, all of the false starts and revelations that take place in a rehearsal process, and using the docudrama form, makes it palpable in the structure of the film.
What adds to the satisfaction of this structure is that Pacino lets us in on the collaborators' discussions about the project itself. We see Pacino, Kimball, and another collaborator arguing about the project. One of them insists that they are "making a movie about a play," which in his mind is not what they set out to do. Seeing these behind-the-scenes quarrels and doubts only lends greater gravity to the finished product, to the performances we see the actors do, and to our understanding of Pacino and his collaborators' passion for the material.
At the center of the film is Al Pacino, a charming, ferocious, and passionate actor on a mission to transmit his interest in Richard III to an imagined audience of Shakespeare dissenters. He is mercurial and changeable throughout the film, and in the behind-the-scenes moments, he seems always to be searching for the better angle. A true actor, he is obsessed with finding the best way to communicate, whether that is communicating the text of the play or his message as a filmmaker.
As the film progresses, Pacino's mission as a filmmaker and the content of the play itself become more and more blended. We begin to see more of the play itself, peppered with scenes in contemporary New York. As Richard III gains momentum, the text takes hold, the actors become their characters, and we as viewers get pulled into the story in new ways. In peeling back the curtain and giving the viewer a window into the process, Al Pacino achieves his goal of involving us more with the stakes of the play.
