KING LEAR (Grigori Kozintsev, Iosif Shapiro, 1971)

By grunes

Solemn, slow, intelligent though in no way inspired version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Grigori Kozintsev’s Soviet Korol Lir, based (like his Gamlet) on a Boris Pasternak translation, is a terrible disappointment. Jüri Järvet, the Estonian actor who plays Lear, does a so-so job.
     Lots of lovely black-and-white shots, but scarcely a single interesting one.
     A better film than Peter Brook’s inhuman King Lear the same year, and better, too, than Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985); but essentially this one is solely for the culture-vultures.

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