Trevor Nun’s Twelfth Night was a much better film than I had expected. For the majority of film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, the film doesn’t do the text justice. In my experience, the film adaptations don’t really take the plays seriously. However, in this case, I think Nun chose to stick fairly close to Shakespeare’s work in terms of plot.
The film starts off pretty quickly, right in the middle action. The shipwreck is intense, and so convincing that it doesn’t seem too far off to believe that one of the twins was killed during the chaos. In the play, that particular amount of action isn’t conveyed strongly enough through the text. The acting, on the other hand, does convey the characters of the play quite well.
Imogen Stubbs plays Viola, and she does a wonderful job. Her facial expressions are hilarious and she is convincing as an actress. Helena Bonham Carter is always convincing. As Olivia, she steals every scene she’s in. When paired together, Carter and Stubbs play off each other flawlessly, sometimes even finishing each other’s sentences. This adds to the whole mirror image theme between the two characters. One character I wasn’t sure about was Feste. In the play, Feste seems more jovial and funny. In the film, Feste comes across almost as a threatening character rather than the clown. It’s possible that Nun was trying to say something about the danger a witty person can pose.
Despite staying loyal to the play for the most part, Nun expertly leaves out some scenes that are deemed to be unimportant or just unnecessary to the story. There are a few comical drunk scenes, but they don’t take up too much of the film. They’re funny, but fairly quick.
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