Mark Reviews Movies: MEASURE FOR MEASURE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 3, 2020

Despite the title and the characters and some of the basic story beats, Measure for Measure does not credit the play by William Shakespeare, which is probably for the best. It's certainly similar to the play, featuring a "Duke" who pretends to go away, leaving another man in power to test that man's character and abilities. The man fails, quite badly and with potentially tragic consequences for a man who technically broke the letter, but certainly not the spirit, of the law. Somehow, things work out in the end—in the play at least.

Shakespeare's work is one of his "problem plays," in that it's difficult to categorize as comedy (Sex and some mistaken or changed identities play into the story, and it ends with a couple planned weddings and one relationship that's open to interpretation) or tragedy (The whole story seems to be moving toward it, and if at least one step of a convoluted plan fails, as it does in other plays by the Bard, it very well could resolve that way). The play also directly deals with a central question—a problem, if you will. Is law, strictly and ruthlessly followed despite the circumstances, the be-all and end-all of justice, or is the human capacity for mercy capable of finding resolutions that achieve a more compassionate form of justice?

One could adapt this play for the period in which it's set, but modernization, considering that the plot deals directly with laws against fornication, would be a tricky proposition. The screenplay by director Paul Ireland and the late Damian Hill attempts the latter maneuver, setting this story amid a counsel housing building in an unnamed city in Australia.

The "Duke" here, who puts an underling to a test of character and observes the ensuing damage, is not a noble leader in this version. He is a crime lord, played by Hugo Weaving, whose business is off-the-books loans. His underling remains Angelo (Mark Leonard Winter), but he is far from the hypocritical moralist of the play. Instead, he is a hard-nosed enforcer of debt-collection and a drug dealer, who sees selling meth as the only way for this illegal operation to remain in power.

The main problem with this problematic version of the less-famous problem play should be apparent by now. There is no question of law or justice in the equation the screenwriters have put forth. The main characters exist outside of the law, and even the story's single representative of the law, a detective, is a corrupt figure, at the behest and on the payroll of at least two criminal enterprises in the city. The result is a counter-intuitive, self-defeating adaptation, and the original elements of this story don't hold up too well, either.

Its opening, a race-based spree killing by a drug addict, certainly establishes a potentially devastating question for this story, which the screenplay immediately and rather coldly dismisses. Instead, Duke, who believes showing mercy to loan customers will make them return and wants Angelo to stop dealing drugs after the murders, leaves his right-hand man in charge, watching how Angelo behaves from a security monitor in his penthouse. Meanwhile, Claudio (Harrison Gilbertson) and Jaiwara (Megan Smart), who start a relationship after almost being killed, face pushback against their love by her older brother Farouk (Fayssal Bazzi), a devout Muslim and crime lord who disapproves of her sister dating outside of their ethnicity and faith.

While Shakespeare's play gets right to the heart of the plot and the question in its second scene, Ireland and Hill's screenplay takes its time and offers little beyond the blossoming relationship between the star-crossed lovers and the dynamic between Duke and Angelo. The screenwriters establish these characters, who only exist for the plot, and take their time getting to the plot itself, which has been transformed from its source material to such an extent that even the filmmakers don't seem certain what dramatic questions to ask.

Claudio is eventually arrested on false charges at the behest of Farouk, and Angelo attempts to extort sex from Jaiwara in return for negotiating Claudio's release (Those familiar with the play will note that Jaiwara is serving the role of two characters in the original story, which leads to some awkward scenes between the lovers in prison). Again, neither the law nor justice actually figure into this story, so with any kind of moral or ethical debate scrapped from the tale, the only questions that remain are ones of plot. Can Jaiwara save Claudio without dishonoring herself? How will Duke respond to Angelo's repeated betrayals of his wishes? What will become of the conflicted Angelo, who finds himself offending his boss and the leader of a rival gang?

The answers, just as the questions, are self-contained, only dealing with the characters (performed with some skill) and the plot in a world that has no patience or concern for the bigger questions upon which the source material was founded. Measure for Measure isn't Shakespeare, and while that's usually an empty criticism, it's not one when the filmmakers are consciously going for that comparison.

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