“Sweet lovers love the spring,” wrote William Shakespeare, and this spring in Athens, you can catch him on the big screen. This May, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will show films about or adapted from the plays of Shakespeare on Thursday nights at 7 p.m., in conjunction with the exhibition “Life, Love and Marriage Chests in Renaissance Italy.”
The first film, “Romeo + Juliet” (1996), screening May 2, recreates Shakespeare’s most famous play within the hip modern suburb of Verona, California. The dialogue and the classic tale of two star-crossed lovers remain the same, but the environment is familiar to modern viewers, the soundtrack includes such 1990s artists as Garbage, the Cardigans and Everclear, and the style resembles a music video. Baz Luhrmann directed the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
“Shakespeare in Love” (1998) screens May 9. The Academy Award–winning film creates a fictional relationship between Shakespeare and a young woman who poses as a man in order to star in one of the writer’s plays. Suffering from writer’s block, Shakespeare needs a new muse. He soon finds inspiration in the form of a beautiful female aristocrat, but her daring determination to act in his play puts their already forbidden relationship on even more dangerous ground. Directed by John Madden and co-written by playwright Tom Stoppard, it won seven Academy Awards and stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Judi Dench, Ben Affleck and Rupert Everett.
The final film in the series, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1990), screens May 16 and considers the philosophy embedded in Shakespeare’s plays. Tom Stoppard both wrote the play it is adapted from and directed the movie. The two side characters Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) ramble obliviously through Elsinore Castle and its environs as the events of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” unfold around them. While visiting their old friend Hamlet (Iain Glen), the pair engage in an ongoing philosophical debate about free will versus predestination, each trying to prove absurd positions while trying to make sense of the peculiar goings-on in the castle.
Organized by Contemporanea Progetti in collaboration with the Museo Stibbert, “Life, Love and Marriage Chests in Renaissance Italy” is on view at the museum through May 26 and comprises around 45 works of art related to its theme and representative of life and social customs in Renaissance Italy. During the Italian Renaissance, cassoni, as the elaborately decorated wedding chests of the time are known, were an important part of marriage rituals and were perhaps the most prestigious furnishing in the house of newlyweds. Typically, they were commissioned in pairs by the bride’s father as part of her dowry and to hold her trousseau.
Films at the museum are free and open to the public and sponsored by UGA Parents Leadership Council.
By McKenzie Peterson
