Sunday Review: My Old Lady

Adultery, viager, and their discontents

By Jonathan Price

The French are reputed to say, perhaps thinking of Madame Bovary, that “without adultery there is no novel.” And of course adultery, both practical and literary, is not limited to the French. But there is a French setting for this film My Old Lady (2014) about, among other things, adultery. Israel Horowitz, after 18 years, has made a filmed version of his play, and taken it from its apartment confines and entrances and exits out onto the streets of Paris. And his work’s take on adultery is neither romantic nor particularly sympathetic and, in that way, is refreshing without quite being puritanical.

Shakespeare a vegetarian?

From the striking opening with its, I guess, Ninji-style attack on Duke Senior's court, set in 19th century Japan, to the witty epilogue delivered by Bryce Dallas Howard on her way back to her trailer from the set, Kenneth Branagh's production of Shakespeare's As You Like It is quite as you might like it.
    It was how my wife and I liked it, and how New York Times movie critic Virginia Heffernan liked it five years ago. She concluded her August 21, 2007 review ("Enough Already, Rosalind, Let the Kools Talk") with the statement: "This is As You Like It as we like it." Let her speak for all of us.

As You Like It (2006: Kenneth Branagh) [Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard), the daughter of Duke Senior (Brian Blessed, the banished duke), is raised at the court of Duke Frederick (Brian Blessed, who is younger brother to Duke Senior and took over his dukedom), with her cousin Celia (Romola Garai, daughter to Duke Frederick). She falls in love with a young man named Orlando (David Oyelowo), but before she can even think twice about it, she is banished by Duke Frederick, who threatens death if she comes near the court again. Celia, being Rosalind's best friend, goes with Rosalind (who is disguised as a boy, Ganymede) and Touchstone (Alfred Molina), the court's fool, to the forest of Arden. Upon their arrival in the forest, they happen upon Orlando and his manservant, who are fleeing the wrath of Orlando's eldest brother (Adrian Lester). What follows is an elaborate scheme devised by the cross-dressing Rosalind to find out the verity of Orlando's supposed passion for her, and to further capture his heart, through the witty and mischievous façade of Ganymede.] [E] 6-22-2012

    We were delighted to see Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of American director Ron Howard) in the role of Rosalind. She played Hilly Holbrook in The Help, of which I have made much metaphorical use in telling the story of my retirement from the University of North Carolina General Administration (see Features page "To the three white ladies, I was a colored maid").

Preferring as I do, for ethical reasons, not to eat animal flesh, I was touched by the way Kenneth Branagh handled Act II, Scene I of Shakespeare's play. The scene features the character Jacques (Kevin Kline's) aversion to killing (for eating?) the animals in the Forest of Arden. In Shakespeare (as you can see at the bottom of this post, where I've included the text of the scene in its entirety), Jacques is not present, and his words and actions are reported to Duke Senior by others.
    But in Branagh's movie, when Duke Senior says, "Come, shall we go and kill us venison?," Jacques is present and Brian Blessed beautifully plays some embarrassment at speaking in Jacques's presence. And Kevin Kline delicately acts sadness at the thought.
    I don't remember having noticed before Shakespeare's sensitive portrayal here of an aversion to eating animals. Could Shakespeare have been a vegetarian?
    According to the Natural Healing Center, he was, but it would be in their interest to say so, true or not.
    YourDailyShakespeare.com quotes Act I, Scene 3 of Twelfth Night:

...but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm my wit.

    Wiki.answers.com doubts it:

It was uncommon then to be a vegetarian. Most of the food that he will have eaten would be meat, so no, I don't think William Shakespeare was a vegetarian.

    I've emailed my college classmate Stephen Greenblatt at Harvard and asked him whether his Shakespeare studies have led him to any conclusion whether Shakespeare was a vegetarian.
_______________
Note: As You Like It is currently being performed in New York; see "Central Park, a Forest of Ardor" in the June 21 New York Times.

From the complete text of Shakespeare's As You Like It

ACT II
SCENE I
The Forest of Arden.

Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three Lords, like forester

DUKE SENIOR
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.

AMIENS
Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE SENIOR
Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.

First Lord
Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR
But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?

First Lord
O, yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping into the needless stream;
'Poor deer,' quoth he, 'thou makest a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much:' then, being there alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends,
''Tis right:' quoth he; 'thus misery doth part
The flux of company:' anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him
And never stays to greet him; 'Ay' quoth Jaques,
'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?'
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.

DUKE SENIOR
And did you leave him in this contemplation?

Second Lord
We did, my lord, weeping and commenting
Upon the sobbing deer.

What actors have played!

One of my wife's favorite films is "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1950, directed by Michael Gordon and starring José Ferrer in the title role). After watching it again last week, she expressed an interest in seeing the production with Kevin Kline, staged in New York and specially directed for TV by Matthew Diamond (PBS's "Great Performances," 2008). I borrowed the DVD from our local library and we watched it.

Kline's performances is masterful, understated, cinematically effective, but quite incompatible with Jennifer Garner's highly theatrical performance as Roxane, the object of Cyrano's tragic love. We'd have preferred for hers to match his, rather than the reverse.
    But what I want to report is an item about Chris Sarandon, who very effectively plays the Comte de Guiche. Who was he, I wondered? Not the actor who played opposite Jane Fonda in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" No, that was Michael Sarrazin, with a fairly long list of films I'd likely mostly find UBOO.
    No, listed among Chris Sarandon's many films is "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), in which he played Sonny [the Al Pacino character]'s "wife" Leon Schermer (Pacino was robbing the bank to pay for Leon's sex-change operation)! We watched that film again a couple of years ago, and the character's pathos is graven on my memory. Sarandon was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.
    Chris Sarandon is about six months older than I. And no, he isn't Susan Sarandon's brother; rather, she acquired his last name when she married him (in 1967).

Footnote on movie incompatibility. I am fortunate that my wife and I share a love of film (and TV series). A friend reports that

I used to just check off all the movies on the Netflix website I could think of that I wanted to see so I always had something in the mail. Netflix is really easy to manage. I used to make sure I watched four or five movies a week. Nowadays we barely manage one a week mainly due to the fact that [my spouse] just isn't into films as much as I am.

    I'm sure it's tough not being compatible in terms of movies. My old college roommate who visited us last week told me that he, too, doesn't watch many movies (even though he'd like to), simply because his wife doesn't like to watch them. But, rather than watch them anyway, alone, he reads a book.
    I can relate, actually. I don't "feel right" watching a movie when my wife doesn't want to watch it too. I'm fortunate that she almost always (but not quite always) is willing to at least start watching with me. If she decides to not continue watching, I don't feel so bad continuing myself, but starting to watch one she doesn't want to watch is another thing. I'm not sure why.