What's it going to look like in 700 years when people are adapting our modern-day plays, movies and stories about events that happened to several hundred years ago.
For surely they will have similar experiences to what we have today. As we adapt William Shakespeare plays about the events of Roman emperors that took place some Thousand Years prior to him.
It should be a fascinating thing.
Will they write a Superman in the caveman age or Rocky and Bullwinkle getting involved in The Fourth Crusade?
I feel so let down. In high school I had to lean William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
And like so many other teenagers I found it kind of melodramatic and annoying to watch these annoying quixotic kids get involved in a romance that ultimately didn't work out.
And it kind of turned me off Shakespeare.
I looked at his work as overly melodramatic and just kind of annoying.
But after watching a film based on 'Julius Caesar' I can say; That his work is still melodramatic but it's not annoying.
There truly is a lot to like here and if I had witnessed this story in high school I might have been more keen to give William Shakespeare a chance.
The Shakespearean story of Julius Caesar has to take place around the end of his life.
When he's killed by Brutus and a few other men in a bid for power to ensure their own security but they also make sure that Roma doesn't fall to some sort of dictatorship.
Obviously the entire story is heavily based in myth and is in a lot of ways completely inaccurate to what actually happened. But ultimately it doesn't matter because the whole thing is so well put together and enjoyable to watch that you become incredibly forgiving of the films historical shortcomings and more obsessed with the wondrous dialogue and over-the-top melodrama of all these Roman characters who in real life or probably just as dramatic as they're overly romanticised counterparts.
And I have to admit right here that this film did not catch me when it first started.
I found everybody's acting to be kind of dry and lackluster but Charlton Heston and Jason Robards over the course of the film are able to build up their own characters and become more entertaining as you watch them achieve their dreams of overflowing Julius Caesar, but then ultimately have themselves killed in the face of military disunity and personal paranoia at the fact they are responsible for the death of what might be history's most prominent person.
Anyways I don't really have that much to say about the film itself. It's really just a Shakespearean play put into the big screen.
It has some surprisingly decent acting (although the guy who plays Brutus flip-flops between being melodramatic and kind of flat and oddly enough it works for his character.) But otherwise a fairly standard film with okay camera movement and good prop design.
I'd recommend it to anybody who like Shakespearean plays and wants to witness Julius Caesar but may not want to read the book. It'll give you a solid enough foundation for what the original story was.
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