Lecture Library

“Knavery's plain face is never seen till us'd” (Othello, Act 2, Sc. 1, 299).

Geoffrey Sax's and Andrew Davies's ITV version of Othello (2002) is one in a wide range of film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, and this version offers new ideas and resolutions to the famed piece. Shakespeare's works have always lent themselves to adaptation because of their many memorable characters and plots, and the medium of film allows for actors and directors to interact with the original texts in new ways. Geoffrey Sax and Andrew Davies demonstrate this with their adaptation of Shakespeare's classic play The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. They set the story in contemporary London, and the characters of Othello and Iago (now John Othello and Ben Jago) work at the Metropolitan Police Department. It is well known that the character Iago has more lines than the titular character in the original text (by over two hundred lines), so by focusing on the character of Ben Jago this adaptation from stage to screen can be further studied. The ways in which Ben Jago speaks directly to the camera throughout the film, and is the only character to do so, references this reworking from stage to film. His character is always aware of the camera and treats the viewer as his confidant, and this awareness reflects the stage role of Iago in Othello. Throughout the play Iago acts as an intermediary not only between different characters, but also the audience. Ben Jago does this by continuously breaks the fourth wall, a common method used in theatre, but not typically found in film. The director Geoffrey Sax uses this technique to effectively enhance his adaptation from stage to screen.

This version of Othello is different from other Shakespeare film adaptations as it does not use Shakespeare's text. Unlike other modern film adaptations of Shakespeare (such as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet from 1996 which takes place in contemporary California but still uses the original text), Othello takes place in contemporary London and modernizes the language. This allows the writer, Andrew Davies, to make new choices when adapting the play to film (such as indicating social standings based on speech, as can be heard with John Othello's polished speech and Ben Jago's distinct accent). The camera movement used in the film is also very striking: Geoffrey Sax does not limit his camera to reflect the stage (such as using a steady camera with few, simple cuts). Rather, Geoffrey Sax manipulates and exploits the camera to make use of the film medium. He uses camera movement and rapid editing to reflect character thoughts and inner turmoil throughout the story, both of which Othello is full of. This is further illustrated with Ben Jago's direct addresses to the camera.

Ben Jago addresses the viewer almost immediately in the opening of the film. The spectator witnesses a private moment between John Othello and his fiancé, Dessie Brabant (Desdemona) as they embrace in their bedroom. As the camera slowly tracks away from the figures on the bed, as if to give them privacy, Ben Jago begins to speak in voiceover:

(Clip: Introduction/Ben Jago voiceover)

Ben Jago's voiceover (and the sounds of police cars) intrudes upon this intimate moment between John and Dessie who have been alone for only one minute in the film. Jago's verbal intrusion into this intimate scene foreshadows the ways in which he will control and manipulate these character's lives for his benefit. The viewer expects the voiceover to be a normal extradiegetic narration, until the sudden cut to Ben Jago sitting in the police car identifies him as the speaker. The camera is steady, with no movement, making the scene eerily calm (a stark contrast to the extradiegetic, ominous violin strings played in the background). Jago turns and begins speaking to the viewer, addressing the viewer as if they are his confidant, and tries to convince the viewer of his feelings (by sitting up and staring down the camera). His use of past tense when he tells the viewer “I loved him too, you know” indicates that Jago will be narrating the story, dictating what will be said and shown throughout the film. Sax advances Jago's role from intermediary and confidant to active storyteller.

Perhaps the most captivating of all the scenes in Othello occurs after John Othello is given the position of Police Commissioner (after Jago has successfully had the previous Commissioner fired by recording his racist comments). In contrast to the steady, calm Ben Jago witnessed in the introductory scene (and the stoic Iago from the original play) this Jago erupts with rage and emotion. One of the more mysterious and intriguing aspects of Shakespeare's play is that the motives of Iago are never made fully clear, and the character hardly shows any emotion. His strongest line relating to his feelings is spoken in the first act, “I hate the Moor” (1, 3, 368). However this scene gives the audience a clear look into Jago's mind, who uses much more hateful and powerful language. This montage sequence demonstrates how Sax is using the filmic medium to show the inner workings of this character in a much more effective way than could ever be done on stage. Not only does the actor, Christopher Eccleston, portray the emotions brilliantly, but the ways in which quick cuts and sharp angles are used to show his anger further intensifies the scene. In thirty one shots over fifty seconds, the camera follows Jago as he storms through the Metropolitan offices, yelling his nasty soliloquy at the camera:

(Clip: Ben Jago Freak-Out)

The editing switches back in forth between many different shots as the camera follows Ben Jago down the hallway: the camera begins behind him, and then switches to in front of him, then to the side, all the while shifting between high and low angles and close ups and mediums shots. The effect becomes disorienting, reflecting the many thoughts and feelings that are racing through Jago's mind. The ominous extradiegetic music adds to this overwhelming feeling, especially at the moment in which the music matches with the trashing of Jago's fists through the air (00:34). Ben Jago is still aware of the camera throughout this sequence, as he looks directly at it; however it is never quite clear if Jago is aware of the viewer (as his confidant, like the first scene). After all, it is uncharacteristic of him to shows his emotions to anyone else (this is the only time we see him emotional throughout the film). Sax portrays the sequence as if Jago was grappling with his conscious and inner feelings, and uses the camera as a stand in for Othello, where Jago can direct his emotions (for example, when Jago screams at the camera what Othello just told him: “I know it should have been you, Ben! I know it should have been you!”).

Directly after this scene Ben Jago leaves the office and walks briskly down the sidewalk, in which he looks to the camera and sarcastically notes “well, what a passionate performance!” This self-reflexive moment in the film references both the play and theatre. It is also significant that what Jago indicates as his “performance” is the only time in which Jago expresses his true feelings, whereas throughout the film he is putting on a performance for Othello and the other characters.

(Clip: Passionate Performance)

During his soliloquy in the earlier scene Ben Jago (while still aware of the camera) was not aware of the viewer. In this scene he reconnects with the viewer as he continues to walk down the street, the camera continuing to follow him in a long tracking shot from left to right, matching his pace. Jago has reverted back to his seemingly friendly and trusting manner in which he interacts with the other characters, just as he is described in the play as “Honest Iago” (2, 3, 160). However the viewer wonders whether to trust him: Jago clearly has a nasty side to his personality. But by disavowing it as a “performance” and remarking, “I'm rather surprised at myself”, the Jago successfully convinces the viewer that this is an anomaly. This scene indirectly references the moment in Othello in which Iago delivers his famous “Garden Speech”. The speech is relevant to his negation of his performance:

Virtue? A fig! `Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills (1, 3, 316-322).

Like the character of Aaron from Titus Andronicus, Iago (and Jago) believes that he does not have to change unless it benefits him: as the gardener of his body, he can determine what to do and how to use it. It is this advocacy for control that Jago loses during his “passionate performance”. Throughout Othello the idea of the Moor as changeable and someone that can easily be controlled is believed by Iago and exploited by him. However, the film shows that Iago can also be changeable and can lose control as well (a moment which is never shown in the play). This scene shows Jago as human and just as uncontrollable as Othello, and puts them on the same level. But Jago will use this moment of lost control to his benefit in reclaiming the audience. When he tells the viewer “this will end in broken hearts. Not yours though, or mine” we are led to believe that he is back to his previous calm persona. His “cheer up!” also reflects the head cock in the car from the introduction of the film, as if the viewer is still his confidant.

Another striking moment in which Ben Jago breaks the fourth wall (for the last time of the film) occurs during the dinner party scene towards the end of the film. At this moment, Othello is convinced that Dessie is having an affair with Michael Cass (Cassio), the young lieutenant whom he asked to watch after her. A quick tracking shot moves from left to right behind Jago's head as he turns to face the camera: his head creates a divide in the mise-en-scene between his girlfriend Lulu (Emilia) on the left side and John and Dessie on the right. This stop of the camera with Jago's face shows that not only does Jago have control of the story, but he has control of the camera, too:

(Clip: Breaking 4th Wall)

The camera pauses at an extreme close up of Jago's face, the high lighting of the scene contrasting Jago's pale face and eyes with the dark shadows in the background. Jago crowds the frame almost uncomfortably, and speaks in a hushed whisper. Whereas on stage an actor can directly address the audience, it is nearly impossible for them to be as direct and confiding as Jago is in this scene. Sax takes the traditional aside used in theatre and places it in a direct address, using the frame and camera to portray this as uncomfortable and unsettling. “I'm almost sorry I've started this,” Jago seems to tell the viewer sincerely. Because, as Jago himself says, “It's beyond my control”, and is no longer his responsibility.

The ending sequence of the film parallels the beginning and therefore acts as a bookend. After the deaths of Dessie and John, the repercussions of Jago are still unknown. A steady camera shows a white background in an ambiguous space, and then Ben Jago steps into the frame to have his Police Commissioner portrait taken (he has achieved his goal), and his monologue echoes that from the beginning of the film:

(Clip: Final Scene)

This direct look to the camera and similar monologue reflect the blocking used when directing a play on stage. The viewer recognizes this address from the beginning of the film, and knows that the story is coming to a close, and the viewer realizes that they have been manipulated all along. Jago didn't love Othello, as he mentions in the beginning. Rather he loved him as a means of getting to his goal, that of Police Commissioner. The extra diegetic sound is also significant in this clip: the thunderous bell that rings right at the moment Jago looks into the camera reveals to the audience Jago's true feelings. The face that looks to the camera (a frown, without recognition) is no longer the face that the viewer has witnessed throughout the film within the asides. Now Jago has distanced himself from the viewer. Ben Jago's final words: “It was about love, that's what you got to understand. Don't talk to me about race; don't talk to me about politics. It was love. Simple as that” is similar to Iago's last line of the play in which he states: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word” (5, 2, 309-310). In both circumstances the audience is left confused, and suddenly dismissed. The way in which the light overwhelms Ben Jago's face in the final shot does not allow the viewer to see his expression, and the viewer comes to the realization that they never really understood what Jago was thinking, though he seemed to be confiding in them throughout the film.

In his essay Shakespeare in the Age of Post-Mechanical Reproduction: Sexual and Electronic Magic in Prospero's Books Peter Donaldson describes the direct address as the “most dominant and dominating of all vocal positioning in cinema”, which Ben Jago undermines throughout the film. What makes the character of Iago so interesting (and has fascinated scholars for years) is the ways in which his character can never fully be understood: it is never clear what his motives are, or what he is thinking at any time. Sax and Davies use the film medium to exploit this ambiguity by using direct addresses and fourth wall breaks throughout the film. However, Jago undermines these film techniques throughout the story. While traditionally this method is used to speak the truth and reflect a character's thoughts, Jago manipulates the viewer just as he manipulates the characters within the story. With the final frame of the film the viewer realizes that they never truly understood Ben Jago, and that Jago was just using the viewer and the camera for his own means. As Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe write in their New Wave Shakespeare on Screen, “his intimate access to the viewer in the form of direct address, knowing winks, confessions, and so on, has its dramatic roots in the many asides Shakespeare scripted for Iago, derived in turn from the older performance conventions of the medieval Vice figure” (126). By adapting stage directions to film, Sax's uses a familiar film technique and undermines it to represent the character of vice that is Iago.

The ways in which Iago is able to manipulate Othello in the play sometimes seem extreme and obvious, and it becomes hard to imagine how Othello could be so gullible (or how a viewer can even have sympathy for his character). Iago mentions this supposed obviousness, stating “Knavery's plain face is never seen till us'd” (2, 1, 299). This relates to the ways in which Ben Jago interacts with the camera throughout this film. The viewer believes that he is confiding the truth throughout the whole film, and yet the viewer is never quite sure what Ben Jago is thinking until the final photograph, in which he has distanced himself from the viewer, and yet his plain face is seen. Jago undermines this filmic technique for his benefit, and this undermining reflects Geoffrey Sax's adaptation from stage to screen. The character Iago has confused viewers for hundreds of years after the play was first performed, and now continues to confuse in the age of digital media.

Works Cited