IslandGuru Who payed the critics

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

clark789 All minor reservations aside, this is a powerful and utterly compelling screen version of Lear. Olivier is near flawless, and at 75 years of age. His involvement in the role is -- as usual -- total. He plays up the fatuousness and foolishness of the old king, who has learned nothing throughout his long reign. His errors in judgement, which even a professional fool can see, and the resulting agony, bring him to madness rather than wisdom. All this Olivier portrays with awe-inspiring finesse, bravado and insight, that musical voice ranging all over the scale, and still possessing a vast dynamic range. Brilliant acting of a piece that haunts and harrows from beginning to end.

Dan1863Sickles An all-star cast takes on Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. Laurence Olivier is Lear -- once a mighty king, now a weak, jealous old man. Tired and in need of rest, he divides his kingdom among his three daughters. Cordelia, the youngest, is good and kind, while Regan and Goneril are wicked schemers who soon turn against the king and try to murder him! Lear has loyal friends, like Kent the noble, and his jester, the Fool. Colin Blakely makes Kent into the perfect, rugged sidekick, as brave and reliable as Sam in LORD OF THE RINGS. And John Hurt makes the haunting, half-crazed fool as helpless and pitiable as Gollum, without all the creepy sliminess.But the real stars of the play are actually the villains. Diana Rigg is delicious as Regan, the younger of the two "wicked sisters." Even when she is shiveringly evil, (joking about Gloucester's pain as she pokes out his eyes!) she remains a stunningly desirable woman. And the twisted affair between Regan and the studly but wicked Edmund is much more erotic and involving than in most productions. Robert Lindsay captures the gigolo side of Edmund perfectly, always teasing and tempting and making poor love-struck Regan literally pucker up to kiss the empty air. Diana Rigg really plays all sides of the character -- watching her pout and sulk in her tent would be sweetly endearing if she weren't so truly and completely cruel. As a result the viewer is spellbound, unable to resist the evil but horrified by the inevitable tragedy.With an all-star cast, original scenery and a haunting musical score, this bold production is Shakespeare at the summit!

alan-morton ***Look, the play's been around for 400 years, so it's unlikely that my comments will contain any genuine spoilers***I'm sorry that so many people don't like this version of King Lear and mention Olivier's performance in particular as something they object to. I think that Olivier's performance is awesome. It contains the essence of a once-powerful man struggling to achieve some control over his decline. It seems like something grown within him rather than lines he had to deliver. The descent into madness and that quiet, miserable interlude before death are faultless. I've sat hopefully through so many versions of the play over the years, and squirmed at the bombastic acting of those scenes, but in this version it really doesn't occur to me that I'm watching a play. When the central character is as engrossing as Olivier makes him, all the sub-plots and other characters fall into place.Never having been much of a fan of Olivier's screen work, I was surprised to discover that he was every inch as great an actor as is usually claimed.

Robert J. Maxwell Here is Olivier in his 70s, a guy who simply could not stop working. In his last years, visibly old, his face fallen, disabled by disease, he still kept calling his agent and asking, "Can't I work"? I'm going to cut the guy some slack. I mean -- the very fact that he was able to PICK UP Cordelia and carry her at his age was no mean feat! And I didn't catch any gross weaknesses in his performance. Or in anyone else's for that matter. Diana Rigg could turn anybody into an ice cube just by looking at him or her. I loved John Hurt's Fool, especially, and the relationship between him and Lear, the latter amused by the former's insults, even while warning him that he may go too far. John Hurt was my supporting player in a courtroom movie in which I was the sketch artist, "From the Hip," a story far superior to anything Shakespeare ever wrote. All seriousness aside, as for "Lear" the play, I just don't know. The plot of full of holes and unpleasantnesses. Basically the engine behind the story is that Goneril and Regan brown nose the King, while Cordelia says with blunt honesty that she loves him as much as her bond to him demands, no more and no less. "Nothing will come of nothing," and so forth, says Lear, understandably confused because she's not following the usual interactional grammar. Well, all Cordelia has to do is say something like, "Wait a minute. I really do love you. It's just that I'm not going to throw myself at your feet to get a piece of your property. My love means more than that." But no. Tragedy builds upon tragedy. And it's LEAR who is ordinarily blamed for this misunderstanding! Well, that's a patriarchal society for you. And, pardon, but what happened to The Fool? He disappears without explanation halfway through the play! What happened? Did WS lose a few pages of the play and then forget about them? And that eye-gouging business -- discomfiting. And at the end, with Lear moaning over the dead Cordelia, he comes up with something like, "And my poor fool is hanged". What's that all about? Was Cordelia a fool? Was he referring to "The" Fool, who was hanged somewhere in the missing pages of the ms.? Lear winds up in a gale on the moor, running around naked, and afterward decorating his hair with posies like some berserk Mellors. Does he deserve this because he didn't catch Cordelia's covert meaning? Why should misfortune after misfortune be heaped upon Lear? Isn't being very old enough of a tragedy, all by itself, for Lear? Or for Olivier? For anybody?