A Midsummer Night's Dream (2017) REVISIT

Modern retellings of Shakespeare are fun for me. As the stories are often timeless in their sensibilities I enjoy when theatrical productions and film makers find ways to tell the stories in our current context. This one is pretty bold and takes some daring turns, stumbles a bit a few times, but mostly ends up taking this story and making it into something that feels very today.

This Dream is set in Hollywood, the star crossed lovers being players in a movie studio, the mechanicals are film students, and the fairies are hippie surfers. The film borrows a bit from Baz Luhrmann's school of Shakespeare but not quite as stylish or outlandish. They use some establishing title cards to make sure our audience knows who is who and why they are doing what they are doing. But they find a way to make it all come together and make sense. Honestly this is the sort of adaptation that even those intimidated by the language could follow and enjoy.

The film works in famous lines from other Shakespeare work at funny junctures making it especially fun for Bard fans. Generally this is a bit of a film maker's love letter to Shakespeare, working in the ways film making discipline can be used to bring this fantastic story to life.

It doesn't all quite work. One idea which I think perhaps doesn't work as well as it should, is that when Bottom is turned into an "ass" he isn't made donkey-like as is usually the expectation, he is literally made into an ass. His head becomes a backside, a bum. And while there is a great deal of poetic justice in that interpretation and so much potential, the film sort of fumbles it. It becomes almost too absurd and takes us out of the film. The fact that his name is Bottom and his head is a literal bottom (as well as the play on words of the sexual position) is just ripe for meaningful interpretation, but the film doesn't do it justice.

In fact the film's biggest downfall is not taking it's conceit seriously enough. It feels half assed at times (pun intended). I think if they had truly embraced all the absurdity and beauty of the idea it could have been even better. 

Still, the film does succeed at being truly accessible and very entertaining. I think it is a very enjoyable adaptation and one that brings the story to pretty much anyone who will watch it. It's ideas are truly modern and its context is effectively and cleverly born out mostly. Besides a few times it winks at us a bit too much.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Starring: Avan Joria, Fran Kranz, Saul Williams, Mia Doi Todd, Lily Rabe, Finn Witrock, Hamish Linklater, Rachel Lee Cook, Ted Levine, Charity Wakefield
Writer/Director: Casey Wilder Mott