"Lead on, Spirit."

In 1981, Anthony Hopkins played Othello for the BBC's production of the complete plays. All the BBC Shakespeare was thrilling to me then, as I'd never seen but one production, and that a sorry little college show of "The Scottish Play." (MacDuff's ghost was obviously done with a slide-projector. Oh dear.) I'd read the play of course, and seen production-photographs of the great Olivier in the role, likewise Paul Robeson, Orson Welles, but I'd never seen an actual performance. So Hopkin's Moor was to be my first. Even then, I could see Hopkins was a remarkable actor, that the cast was uniformly good, but it is the codpiece I remember.

In filming all the plays, the BBC had given over each in turn, as I remember it, to a director and or star, to make of them what they would, so long as the text was, if not complete, then authoritative. What happened thereafter was left to the artists. Brave decision. Uneven results. Some of the casting was less than stellar, even in major roles, some of the productions frankly stodgy. Didn't matter much to me at the time. Shakespeare! Right there on my wretched little "portable" TV! I watched every play, every broadcast. Then came this BBC, Elizabethan production, with Othello as a Welsh-creole pirate: Hopkins in a huge fluffy wig, and tan-face, with an earring, pumpkin-britches, and yes, a codpiece. And no tastefully suggestive silk jock, mind, but a ship's prow of a thing, that in profile looked to knock over candelabras or put out poor sleeping Desdemona's eye. I kept waiting for someone to set a tea service on it. It was distracting. That's how I remember it anyway. True, I was but a horny teenager, even then inclined to notice the details, shall we say, but still, it was an interesting choice.

I suppose I had certain expectations not met by that production. I had an Othello in my head, and he was taller than Anthony Hopkins, and, well, black. Besides the costuming, I don't think I could quite appreciate Hopkins playing then; I expected something grander, I guess, less human, less real? At any rate, not what I got.

Tonight I watched a few clips of Hopkins' Othello on Youtube. Quit wonderful, and not so much as a flash of crotch-padding, so far as I noticed. Since my first Othello, I've seen the recording of Olivier in the part, and the Orson Welles film, and at least three other Othellos. If Hopkins still doesn't quite look the part to me, now I can at least appreciate the subtle fury with which he played the handkerchief scene with Bob Hoskins' Iago, the bulldog physicality, the rough, conversational rhythms both actors used to break the verse into something like a real argument. It was fascinating and new to me this time.

And that is what I've learned from seeing Shakespeare played time and again: he works. Whatever the style or period of the production, indeed, whoever the lead actor, if he is good, Othello is a great part and a great play. Thinking back, Macbeth even managed to be interesting in that appalling amateur college show I saw as a boy. Shakespeare is indestructible.

Likewise, Dickens.

My friend and I went to see the new Disney movie of A Christmas Carol. This is the latest animated version, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge. We saw it in 3D, my first such experience, wore the funny shades and everything. (It worked remarkably well.) When my friend C. visits, we always go to see animation. My beloved husband refuses, calls them all "cartoons," and so I wait until C. comes up from California for Thanksgiving, and then I get to catch up.

My two favorite screen Scrooges are still Alistair Sims and, from the television version of twenty years ago, George C. Scott. Malevolent delight in the early scenes with Sims, which still seems a perfect choice, and then, come redemption, the only genuinely delightful, and funny reading of Scrooge ever, really. Scott manages to be the only really frightening Scrooge, with that grand voice, and his repentance is both real and moving. Both magnificence performances.

Jim Carrey, trapped in a kind of puppet show, comes nowhere near the subtlety, and strangely, nowhere near the humor of Sims, and frankly his Scrooge is never frightening in the least. Yet, his isn't a bad performance, even in a less than fully acted film. (This "motion-capture" animation still looks dead, despite the technical innovations of recent years. It has neither the full plasticity of a drawn image, nor the humanity of simply a filmed action, somehow combining the worst rather than the best of either art; limiting the actors by taking their faces from them, without adding anything in the way of interesting visual comment. Static caricatures, with realistic skin-tones, are still neither fish nor fowl. Someday, maybe, just maybe, but for now? Still not a good idea.) Carrey's Scrooge, at least when he isn't being pointlessly shrunk to the size of a mouse and chased through a sewer-pipe, in the most egregious departure from the text, is a faithful portrayal, and for the most part this is a surprisingly faithful telling. It is odd though that Carrey's best moment comes as The Spirit of Christmas Past, here literalized as a flame-headed candle. Carrey affects a slightly distracting Irish accent in the part, but his voice is otherwise rather wonderfully other-worldly, and he gutters and sparks in a wonderfully weird way. In fact, again weirdly, Carrey is best when playing with himself so to say, as he also voices Christmas Present well, though with an equally distracting Yorkshire heartiness that takes a bit of getting used to. Worked though. Carrey's Scrooge is best when he's frightened; pettish and sulky, and genuinely funny as he makes quite asides in response to unlooked-for dangers. His is a little Scrooge, even when he's not being bounced around in miniature on an ice sickle, and that is a perfectly acceptable choice, if not a very moving or interesting one.

And that would seem to be the point. When we see Scrooge as a boy, left alone in an empty schoolroom at Christmas, or see the empty corner where Tiny Tim should be, Dickens' genius for pathos glows as bright as ever, whatever the production. And when Scrooge's own bitter words are used against him in the magnificent scene when Ignorance and Want are exposed to him, Dickens' righteous anger still moves us, whatever the silly special effects employed.

So, would I recommend this Carol? Certainly not in preference to either of the other two I mentioned. Not even, I think to Mr. Magoo. Yet it was grand seeing Charles Dickens' (not Disney's) A Christmas Carol again, and on a huge movie-screen, so yes, yes I would recommend it. Dickens' Carol is as indestructible as Shakespeare. Can't be seen without pleasure, even in a puppet show with Jim Carrey. See it, or better, read the book.