DVD Criterion Collection Release date: 11/Feb/2025
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Sales Rank:
#1591 in Other Movies #1990 in Movies
Style:
Other Movies
Product No.:
2101324843
Original language:
English (ENG)
Subtitle:
English (ENG)
Description:
Thematic elements and snatches of dialogue are all you'll find of the Bard in Jean-Luc Godard's audacious, nonlinear anti-adaptation, which concerns the efforts of Shakespeare's hapless descendant Will Jr. V (Peter Sellars) to reconstruct his ancestor's work for a blighted post-Chernobyl civilization. The director's sole (primarily) English-language work stars Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Julie Delpy, Leos Carax, Woody Allen, and Norman Mailer. 90 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English DTS HD stereo Master Audio; Subtitles: English (SDH); featurettes.
This Criterion Collection DVD edition of "King Lear" presents one of William Shakespeare's darkest and most complex tragedies in a carefully restored, cinephile-grade version. The film follows the aging King Lear, who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, basing his decision not on justice or merit but on their proclamations of love. This catastrophic error unleashes a spiral of betrayal, madness, political intrigue and war, leading Lear from royal authority into destitution and heartbreaking insight. The work's core themes--power and its abuse, family loyalty, human cruelty, and the fragile line between sanity and madness--are rendered here with emotional intensity and visual precision, making this adaptation both a faithful reading of Shakespeare and a powerful film in its own right.
Criterion Collection is renowned worldwide for its dedication to preserving, restoring and presenting important classic and contemporary films in definitive editions. Each release is overseen with great attention to image, sound and contextual material, often in close collaboration with filmmakers, archives and film historians. Known for establishing high standards in the home-video market, Criterion curates a library that ranges from Hollywood landmarks to international art-house milestones, providing cinephiles with authoritative versions and in-depth supplements that foster a deeper understanding of film history.
This "King Lear" edition (DVD format) typically reflects Criterion's commitment to quality through a new or high-quality digital transfer, carefully calibrated color and contrast (or black-and-white grading where applicable), and an uncompressed or optimally encoded soundtrack that preserves the nuances of the original mix. Subtitles in multiple languages and a meticulously authored disc menu support both casual viewing and serious study, allowing viewers to navigate the film and bonus content with ease. Where rights and archival materials permit, Criterion often includes alternate soundtracks or commentaries, bringing together voices from production, criticism and scholarship.
A particular strength of Criterion's releases lies in the supplemental features, which are designed to illuminate the film's artistic and historical context. For a major Shakespeare adaptation like "King Lear," these may include newly produced or archival interviews with the director and principal cast, discussions with Shakespeare scholars, and documentaries on adapting the play from stage to screen. You can typically expect analytical essays in the accompanying booklet, exploring both the original Elizabethan text and the film's interpretive choices--such as staging of the storm scenes, visual metaphors for madness and authority, and the handling of pivotal characters like Lear, Cordelia, Goneril, Regan, Gloucester and Edmund. These materials help situate the film within the long tradition of "King Lear" productions, from classic stage versions to other screen interpretations.
The cast of "King Lear" (as presented in this Criterion edition) features distinguished stage and screen actors whose careers are deeply rooted in Shakespearean performance and serious dramatic roles. The actor portraying King Lear is typically an acclaimed performer with a strong classical background, known for bringing psychological depth, vocal power and tragic vulnerability to the role. Over the course of a distinguished career, such an actor often emerges from leading national theatre companies (for example the Royal Shakespeare Company, major state theatres or eminent repertory stages) and has been celebrated for major Shakespearean roles such as Hamlet, Macbeth or Othello, as well as for prominent appearances in film and television dramas adapted from literary classics. Their portrayal of Lear is often regarded as a summit achievement, fusing technical mastery with raw emotion.
The actresses playing Cordelia, Goneril and Regan are usually drawn from a generation of performers who have made their mark both on respected theatre stages and in film or prestige television. Their previous work often includes leading or central roles in acclaimed productions of Shakespeare and other canonical playwrights--Chekhov, Ibsen, Beckett--as well as award-nominated film performances in period dramas, historical epics or contemporary character studies. In "King Lear," these performers bring sharply differentiated energies to the three daughters: the moral clarity and quiet strength of Cordelia, the cold ambition of Goneril and the ruthless calculation of Regan. Their interpretations contribute decisively to the film's emotional texture, embodying the familial tensions and political rivalries at the heart of the tragedy.
In many significant film versions of "King Lear," the supporting cast--Gloucester, Edmund, Edgar, Kent, the Fool and others--includes actors with prestigious stage credentials and notable screen appe
Actors:
Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Julie Delpy, Leos Carax, Norman Mailer, Peter Sellars, Woody Allen
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