Much

I had a great trip to the Bradford International Film Festival last weekend & saw this movie - Joss Whedon's take on Much Ado.

I love Brannagh's 1990s version; but this revision has a vitality & rhythm of its own. It matches the comedy & the pathos, the sadness and the joy with a visual wit and style. Much Ado has one of the best lines in all Shakespeare; the top notch ensemble cast delivers everything required of them of them brilliantly. Even Dogberry, surely up there with the unfunniest comedy characters ever written, really hits the mark.

Prejudice alert: normally US accents in Shakespeare plays are enough to make me pay to stay at home; but I was won over. This cast (and this director) just get it right. Oh that every movie this summer might sound so good, flow so well, tell such a story and move my heart so deeply.

It hits general release in June. I'll be seeking it out again. So should you.

And that 'best line' I love so much? Act 2, scene 1; Claudio's beautiful comment on having no words to match his feelings on learning that Hero accepts his love.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much. 

We'd all give our right arms to be able to write that stuff.