My Own Private Idaho

In his script for My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant captures some elements of William Shakespeare's plays Henry IV parts I and II, but overall he fails to capture the tone of the Bard's works. This failure arises on two different levels, the quality of the language itself and the way in which Van Sant twines the subject of sexuality throughout his script. Both of these will be considered in this paper.

It may seem unfair to compare the work of any modern writer to that of Shakespeare, for his language is simultaneously so spare and so lush that it may well be impossible for any modern writer effectively to capture the tone of his writing while still sounding modern. In other words, any attempt to replicate Shakespearian cadence by a modern writer would only ring false. However Van Sant does not even seem to try for the level of poetry that Shakespeare brings to his prose. We see Shakespeare's attention to meter and to rhythm from the opening lines of each play, as in this speech by Henry at the beginning

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Category: Film - M