Best Keanu: “I cannot hide what I am.”

From what I can gather 30 years after the fact, Much Ado About Nothing was critically acclaimed because it made Shakespeare “lively,” and (somewhat) accessible to a broad audience.

I didn’t find it lively, nor particularly accessible, and to some extent it left me with the same distaste I had after watching Dangerous Liaisons — although not nearly as acutely.

Let’s dial back a bit to 1992, when Keanu and Winona Ryder made Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In recent years Winona revealed the director on that film, Francis Ford Coppola, tried to get Keanu and the other male stars of the film to verbally insult her to get her to show a particular kind of emotion (a claim Coppola denies, but whatever). Keanu and Anthony Hopkins refused to take part, according to Winona.

In Much Ado, we’re happily trodding along, Shakespeare going on for-ever and whatever this movie is supposed to be is cheerfully playing out. Then we’re at the wedding scene when Claudio, played by Robert Sean Leonard, waits until he’s at the altar before shaming and refusing to marry Hero, played by a very young Kate Beckinsale, for allegedly cheating on him.

In the scene, he’s violent with her. He pushes her to the ground. She cries, is consoled by others. He screams at her as Keanu’s Don John, who’d orchestrated the whole scheme, and Denzel Washington’s Don Pedro, stand behind him.

Eventually Claudio and his people storm out. Hero’s father proceeds to grab her by the hair and drag her a few metres. He then yells at her and hits her on the arm.

Even in 1993, none of this was necessary. Although in 1993, as audiences, we would have thought nothing of it.

It’s clear Robert Sean Leonard did not really throw Kate Beckinsale to the ground. It’s a very weak movement, because, after, it is a movie and they are actors.

But the most striking feature of the scene, if you’re not distracted by the sheer unpleasantness of watching a woman get beat up in front of a crowd by her father and the man she’s supposed to marry (and does marry, at the end of the film), is the look on Keanu’s face — and to some extent, Denzel’s — as they watch Claudio yell and berate a sobbing Hero who’s collapsed on the ground.

(Since Hero isn’t believed, I’m tempted to write something here about testimonial injustice, because that’s the crux of a paper I’m currently writing that is due in a couple of days that I should be working on instead of watching Much Ado and writing this, but I have to save those thoughts for the moment.)

Keanu looks at first glance like he’s forgotten he’s on camera or not sure he’s in the shot. Because there’s none of the hard visage of Don John, the evil half-brother of Pedro. Denzel too kind of shifts his gaze downward, like whatever they were watching was hard to look at. To be “in character,” one would presume they would keep those hard gazes and support their wronged brother.

But, one can hope, they were just actors, just two decent men who didn’t really see the need — in the script, or in real life — to yell at a young woman, in this case Kate Beckinsale in her first role, who turned 20 in 1993.

At any rate. There’s also the classic pairing of Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, and 30 years on you’re so glad Emma Thompson has moved on from Branagh. Michael Keaton’s here too, but I was so bored by this movie, and so preoccupied with work I should be doing — like, right now — that I pretty much zoned out during his scenes.

One note on Keanu’s performance. It is fine. Even Branagh makes Keanu parade around with his shirt off, because let’s be honest — that’s probably why he was cast here, in 1993 — but overall there’s no question Don John is evil. Keanu has a unique sort of brilliance when it comes to acting with his eyes and his face — so much so that when he’s looking away as a woman gets yelled at, it’s clear the evil countenance was a ruse all along.

April 2023