Looking For Richard Essay

Pacino’s Looking for Richard is a modern reinterpretation of the underlying themes from Shakespeare’s Richard III. Power, ambition, and free will are recurrent themes in both, yet they also relate to the more basic elements of what makes us human. It is what has changed between Shakespeare’s portrayal of a monster and Pacino’s subversion of the character which gives insight into the respective contextual concerns. Pacino’s Looking for Richard demonstrates how the reshaping of an original text, Richard III, is influenced by the cultural assumptions, context and key values.

P1 - Cultural assumptions - the pursuit of power

Shakespeare makes symbolic use of cultural assumptions

Religion was a very integral and key part of the Elizabethan era.

Richard III was the final installation of Shakespeare’s history plays. During this time Shakespeare found success and was highly popular. As such, the values that are affirmed by the play’s ending align with the ruling of the Tudors at the time.

Shakespeare was creating characters who were not only more psychologically complex but with greater dimensions, even though during this time in Elizabethan England had very little understanding of human psychology.

War of the Roses

Their values consisted of rulers being chosen by god, Richard III allegedly killing the princes in the tower and taking the throne for himself was seen as defying the will of god.

In 1996, Al Pacino made his filmmaking debut with Looking for Richard, in which he both directed and starred as Richard himself.

This documentary, containing drama elements, was renowned for its appropriation of the original play, which was aimed at an American audience.

Was made in 1996, post-Cold War era, where individualism was a rising ideology. This meant that an individual's self-worth was determined by their goals and achievements as opposed to being predetermined by God. With this came the “American Dream”, a growing ideal where equal opportunities are provided to all Americans to achieve their goals and

As opposed to characterising people as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, society now recognises the numerous factors that influence a human’s behaviour. This means there is a deeper psychological understanding of desire, guilt, inner conflicts and other human experiences that the Elizabethan era categorised as God’s or the Devil’s doing.

Pacino says, “It’s always been a dream of mine to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people”, which clearly shows his intentions and explanation of why he created the film. He believes that there is a gap between Shakespearean drama and society today. He presumed that people generally misunderstand Shakespeare due to its density and lack of relatability. As Pacino has a passion for Shakespeare, he has a strong conviction that it can be understood and is relevant to the contemporary