Caesar Must Die!

About ten years ago, inmates at a maximum security prison in Rome staged a full-dress version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  The production was elaborately mounted, with barbaric-looking costumes, togas, and impressive lighting effects.  A large audience attended the production and responded enthusiastically with a standing ovation --  in a haunting sequence, shown twice in the film, the actors shed their costumes and are shown, one by one, being locked in their small cells.  Caesar must die! (2011) is a record of auditions, rehearsals, and some moments from the actual stage production -- the film, directed by the Taviani brothers, seems to be partly documentary with some sequences obviously, although effectively, staged.  The Taviani brothers have shown an inclination toward silent movies:  their film about Italian craftsmen working on Griffith's Intolerance, Good Morning Babylon (1987) -- is a noteworthy example.  Their grave and ennobling approach to the prisoners performing Julius Caesar may seem primitive to some audiences:  they eschew any sort of rapid cutting and their use of montage is schematic:  they tend to repeat the same scene over and over again, simply showing different actors going through their paces.  (In the thematically central sequence in which the prisoners are locked back in their cells, we see each man ushered into his cell by a guard, the shots all identically staged with the same camera position, lighting, duration, and action -- the repetition heightens the effect of imprisonment.)  Characters are introduced by medium shots with the figure facing the camera and speaking to it.  Titles are copiously used to provide information, creating a kind of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt, and the staging tends toward carefully lit tableaux.  The direction strives for maximum clarity within the shot and there is little analytical cutting or fragmentation of scenes into close-shots for effect.  Scenes involving rehearsals, staged at various locations throughout the prison, are shot in black and white.  The conceit is that the actual theater can not be used for rehearsals and the cast must make due with what is available to them -- in fact, the Taviani's stage most of the play in sequence at various locations in the prison that most effectively promote (and amplify) the meaning of the scenes that we see.  The two famous orations by Brutus and Antony are delivered in a small prison courtyard with the inmates reacting to these speeches gathered behind cage-like windows in the barren walls of the prison yard.  (Some of these sequences look a bit like Peter Brooks' famous imagery in Marat/Sade,  a film clearly influential on the Taviani's approach to this movie.)  Conspiracy scenes take place in narrow corridors and periodically the directors cut to a long shot of the grim-looking prison to remind us where the action is taking place.  Many of the more intimate scenes are filmed as rehearsals, in the cells, with the actors ostensibly trying to memorize their lines and cell-mates periodically commenting or interrupting them.  The film is remarkably ingenious in conveying the essence of the Shakespearian play with limited resources and, under the guise, that we are watching rehearsals -- indeed, in some of the most effective scenes the actors read their lines from the script.  From time to time, the players get into fights and there are some chilling sequences in which the convicts try to intimidate one another or react so intensely to the material that they are performing that actual violence seems imminent.  Shakespeare's majestic language smooths out the rough edges in Plutarch's stories.  in his biographies, Plutarch's noble Romans always behave like Mafia capos and, of course, here many of the actors are, in fact, serving long terms for organized crime activities -- these guys aren't playing Mafiosi, they are real mobsters.  The film is short -- only 77 minutes long and, of course, aspects of the play that involve Portia and Calpurnia can't be staged:  there are no women in the jail and the Taviani's don't go so far as to require the convicts to perform in drag.  (We see one actor lovingly stroking a seat in the auditorium and musing "Maybe a woman will sit here.")  The acting is uniformly excellent, on the level with the very finest acting at the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Guthrie Theater.  Shakespeare in translation and subtitled always seems muted -- the music of the language is lost.  However, there is a certain frisson to seeing actual Romans (or Sicilians) performing Shakespeare -- the men often profess that they have a more profound understanding of the play because of their backgrounds.  One man cries out:  "This Shakespeare, he must have known the street where I grew up."  Another man, an impressive fellow who plays Caesar, is shown reading De bello Gallica and marveling at Caesar's genius.  The film's high concept is utterly true to Shakespeare's play -- the conspirators plot and kill in the name of freedom, but history reminds us that their actions only inspire the rise of the cold and authoritarian Octavian -- they have killed one aspirant to the throne only to assure that another more ruthless emperor will seize power.  This theme creates enormous resonance in the images of the actors being locked up in their cells after the success of the play.  Nothing, ultimately, was accomplished -- liberty was lost any way.  And, indeed, the film suggests a level of tragedy that exceeds Shakespeare's play -- one of the actors ruefully says (it's the films last line): "Now that I have experienced art, I truly know that this room is a cell" -- in other words, art doesn't liberate anyone:  it just makes us more keenly aware of our imprisonment.