O
Over the last couple of weeks, I've found myself watching a couple of Shakespeare re-tellings, including Baz Luhrmann's rather excellent 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet. O doesn't quite measure up to Luhrmann's visionary re-telling of star-crossed lovers, but in many respects it's rather unfair to compare the two as they deal with their source material in very different ways: Luhrmann and Craig Pearce update the surroundings, dress and props for the late twentieth century, but leave the dialogue in Shakespearean English; in O, Brad Kaaya provides a fresh environment for the tale of Othello in his screenplay.
Set in an American high school and based around the school's basketball team, Kaaya and director Tim Blake Nelson work with the somewhat clichéd metaphor of sport as war. Mekhi Phifer plays Odin (Othello), the school's basketball star. Odin is almost single-handedly taking his school's team to the major leagues, and professional representatives are showing an interest. The team's coach, Duke Goulding (Martin Sheen), loves Odin like a son, which makes his own son Hugo (Iago, played by Josh Hartnett) jealous.
From the very outset we get a sense of Hugo's jealous nature, and after the opening soliloquy, we find Roger (Roderigo) complaining to Hugo about how Odin is dating the beautiful Desi Brable (Desdemona, played by Julia Stiles), daughter of the Dean (Brabantio). Hugo is upset because Odin has publicly recognised the support of his team-mate Cassio (Andrew Keegan) at a recent awards ceremony, and so they hatch a plot to break Odin and Desi apart. It is not long, however, before things take a more sinister edge, with Odin being accused of forcing himself upon Desi and Hugo nearly being caught in the frame.
Odin gives Desi a scarf that belonged to his grandmother as a token of his affection. After the close call in his first plot, Hugo realises he has to "up his game", and drives a wedge between Odin and Cassio, eventually leading to doubt in Odin's mind about Desi's faithfulness to him. He calls on his friend Emily (Emilia), Desi's room-mate, to steal the scarf for him, and passes it to Cassio to give to the real object of his affection, Brandy (Bianca). Eventually, Odin is so consumed with rage and jealousy that, fuelled further by drugs, he kills Desi and later commits suicide. Hugo is arrested, claiming in a closing soliloquy that he will have his day in the spotlight.
The opening and closing soliloquies, narrated over internal shots of the school's bird loft, neatly but obviously reflect the film's tagline that "Everything comes full circle". The re-telling of Othello with contemporary themes and surroundings works, but I was unconvinced by the setting of the film in a school; I can't help but wonder if the remarkably faithful adaptation of the plot from the source material is a contributing factor. Also, American teenage films and TV shows often leave me quite cold; the American high-school experience is completely alien to me, and from what I see through the lens, it seems as if no-one has ever had a good experience of high-school. This is one of the reasons I gave up on Heroes and never got into Smallville, for example.
Many of the themes and scenes from the play are well-handled, and the closing sequence is really weighed down by the gravity of what Hugo has done to his team and people who might once have considered him a friend. While I liked the idea of taking the story out of its original setting, I found Kaaya's use of a sports team in place of the original army a little lazy; given how little actual basketball made it into the film, almost any other scenario could have been presented, potentially even something non-competitive. The key to the plot is conveying the themes of jealousy and racism, and only really the first of these actually came through.
In short, this is an interesting update to Shakespeare's play that makes the plot accessible to an audience that might otherwise be disinterested in Shakespeare. By setting it in a high-school environment, however, it really becomes "Othello for teenagers" which will inevitably put off older audiences.
