User Reviews

Heavy on dialogue and lacking in humour, "Julius Caesar" nevertheless has a great deal going for it - the powerful characters and some memorable speeches (I needn't list which ones), along with political intrigue combined with a supernatural undertone make this the best of Shakespeare's Roman dramas.

Julius Caesar (Charles Gray) arrives back in Rome after a glorious victory in Pompey. However, his inclinations towards political moves that would see him assume absolute control over the country see a rebellion among his inner circle that kick-starts a civil war that threatens to destroy the Roman Empire.

Unlike "Coriolanus" and "Antony and Cleopatra", this production actually makes an effort for accuracy in it's period detail and the Roman costumes and sets (within the confines of a BBC budget) actually look pretty good. The production employs an interesting technique of having the actors seem to 'think' their monologues (reacting wordlessly in camera as the monologue is spoken as a voice-over). This is a great idea that I'd like to see used more often in Shakespeare screen adaptations.

Charles Gray restrains the camp with which he imbues many performances and gives a very dignified and honest portrayal of Caesar. Richard Pasco and David Collings are very good as the scheming Brutus and Cassius, and Virginia McKenna gives a very spirited and sensual performance as Portia. Also of note is Keith Michell, who is excellent as Marc Antony.

It's a sit-through with little humour to counter the drama but it's worth it.

We have here one of the major plays by Shakespeare but it is not the one that is most often played or really and extensively quoted. This is a political play with practically nothing else around. The political bones are the very flesh of this animal. Julius Caesar is a very short lived hero in this play. He dies so fast that we can't even remember his face. He is the hero of the play absent most of the time by failure of living long enough. A small group of people come together to assassinate Julius Caesar because they are jealous of his fame and his power and his popularity. They manage to get Brutus, the closest friend of Julius Caesar on their side and he will deliver the third but killing blow. Then from that moment on the play is hijacked and becomes the retribution to the killers. Mark Antony is the first and essential craftsman of that reversal of fate. He manages to bring the popular crowd of Rome against the self-declared liberators. And then the whole thing will have to be solved on the battlefield. Brutus' brother will be lured into asking his ex-prisoner and freed soldier to kill him, which this one does with willingness because he can flee and be free after so many years of dependence. Then all the members of the conspiration die one after another till the last one Brutus who manages to force a simple soldier to hold the sword on which he runs himself. This is a typical cycle and construction for Shakespeare: someone disturbs the fragile equilibrium of society and society re-establishes its balance by eliminating every single member of the group that disturbed the peace of this society, Rome in this case. The victors are those who were close to the first victim but not so close that they could have been eliminated at the same time as him. If you listen careful to the play there are some tricky phrases that reveal more about Shakespeare's style. "What trash is Rome? What rubbish? What offal?" Three questions, three negative words, three is the dooming number, the number of disquiet and disorder. "Brutus is noble, wise, valiant and honest. Caesar was mighty, bold, loyal and loving." That could be the perfect equilibrium of four plus four equal eight except that this balance is unbalanced by the antagonistic pair "is/was", and the order is important and means a rejection of the great man who has just been assassinated. It is a second assassination. And Brutus will give the logic of this construction by adding a fifth qualifying adjective, the fifth one of the diabolical pentacle, "ambitious", in a declaration that is the reversal of the tense line I have just pointed out: "As he was ambitious I slew him." It is obvious that this political assassination has no legal nor ethical foundation: it is the decision and the deed of a solitary man who decides all by himself that someone else has to die. This is tyranny if tyranny does exist somewhere. This play is probably less considered than Hamlet because there is no sentimental, emotional or simply personal element in it. It is pure politics and as such it is austere and even cold, but Anthony and Cleopatra, or Macbeth, or King Lear have that "personal dimension that makes them "better". The production of this play by the BBC is maybe slightly too slow. They did a good effort for the setting to look grand enough not to be reduced to a sound stage, and for the crowds to be numerous enough to look like crowds, well at least large groups of people. But they could and should have tightened up the rhythm of the play. It is true too that the very difficult part of Brutus is maybe slightly too inward oriented, reserved or pacified. Brutus is a fool who lets himself be fooled by jealous mediocre people who brandish the name of his ancestor who stood in front of Tarquin when his wife Lucretia was raped (and Shakespeare knew all the details since he wrote a narrative poem entitled The Rape of Lucrece) and by some other more or less superficial and light arguments. Any sane general and any wise politician should have said no. We know he did not. But that's the shortcoming of the character and to render such an easily influenced person is extremely difficult and in this production they decided not to make him cynical but that might have been more credible or believable. How could a fool like him become a general who was instated by the greatest general of the time, Julius Caesar himself? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID