As a special event to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, here for one night only (28 April) is Richard Loncraine’s terrifically exciting and lucid movie version of Richard III from 1995, starring Ian McKellen.
The action takes place in a dystopian-Mosleyite version of abdication Britain, with some great locations and an eerily ruined Battersea power station for the battle scene – something to compare with Kubrick’s use of Beckton gasworks for Full Metal Jacket. The “fascist” staging could have been hackneyed, but Loncraine carries it off superbly as the showcase for action-thriller noir.
As the sinister usurper Richard of Gloucester, McKellen is a grizzled old soldier: a brutal survivor, like a sergeant major who has somehow breezed into the officers’ mess. Annette Bening is Queen Elizabeth, Kristin Scott Thomas is Lady Anne and Robert Downey Jr is Rivers, and they all look a bit baby-faced, though McKellen somehow doesn’t look any different. Maggie Smith plays a Downtonesque Duchess of York – although her performance may have been modelled on Queen Mary of Teck.
McKellen does some outrageous takes directly into camera – like Olivier, in fact – and he may even have borrowed from Ian Richardson in TV’s House of Cards, although the effect is terrifically personal and distinctive. His “winter of discontent” soliloquy is cleverly split into public speechifying for the first half, suddenly descending into mutinous secret muttering in the gents. And the final, Cagneyish catastrophe, accompanied by Al Jolson’s I’m Sitting on Top of the World is nightmarishly good. After the screening, an on-stage discussion with Loncraine and McKellen will be broadcast live into cinemas from London’s BFI Southbank.
