The news that Al Pacino is gearing up for a big-screen version of King Lear brings one main reaction to mind: finally! It's a role Pacino has come close to tackling many times, a role for which he has even semi-auditioned in the guise of other characters.
I'm thinking particularly of Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, with its Cordelia-like part for Sofia Coppola, and Pacino's babbling collapse in the kitchen while the heavens open outside. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" is a rant Lear might almost have delivered about Regan and Goneril.
Until now, Pacino had always turned down Lear offers on the basis that he wasn't "ready". It's taken Merchant of Venice director Michael Radford to convince him that the time has come. Anyone who saw 88 Minutes or Righteous Kill, the double bill of god-awful, Jon Avnet-directed cop thrillers (for which Pacino rightly received Razzie nominations this year), will see his point. This star's vitality on screen is at such an exhausted, low ebb that it feels like now or never. Any actor grappling with Lear must feed off this exhaustion, exploit the dwindling tail end of his stage or screen career, and rediscover himself beneath it. I'd go so far as to say that the paltriness of Pacino's films lately makes this the perfect moment. If he finds his rage again, it'll be a thing to see.
But what of his director? Radford's Merchant of Venice was underpowered and indifferently shot. Still, you had to give it up for Pacino, who was all over Shylock's trial scene in Act IV – after his thunderous "Fie upon your law!", the law basically stayed fied. Have Pacino do a bit of this, take a bit of his voltage in the excellent Looking for Richard, and a lot of his stumbling despair in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia, and we have the ingredients for a great Lear (provided Radford raises his game and the rest of the cast clicks).
The real worry has got to be the rival Lear looming into production. The face-off on the heath will be a tantalising prospect: this one casts Anthony Hopkins as Lear, opposite Naomi Watts as Goneril, Gwyneth Paltrow as Regan, and Keira Knightley – who has the capacity either to surprise or annoy immensely – as Cordelia. The director is the relative newcomer Joshua Michael Stern. Hopkins has already done his Titus, and that was fierce, gripping stuff – his Lear isn't any less long-awaited than Pacino's. But who will howl better?
