So basically, I loved Al Pacino's Looking for Richard so much that it prompted me to launch one of the most enjoyable and defining ongoing projects of my life ... and then apparently thought I never needed to see it again.
I think the possible explanations for this are worth exploring.
1. A fear that it would not measure up to my memory of it. Nineteen ninety-six was a really great year at the movies for me personally, as the numbers two through four on my rankings became all-timers for me. Two are in my current Flickchart top 20 (Fargo at #7 and The Cable Guy at #16), and the highest ranked of those three -- my #2 of 1996, Flirting With Disaster -- is one of those go-to's I always think of when I consider my favorite "modern" comedies (though I don't know how modern 26 years ago is now). Its Flickchart ranking is none too shabby at #48. When we get to posting my actual 1996 rankings at the end of the year, we can explore how many other 1996 movies may have leap-frogged Looking for Richard in my mind or in my heart, but I reckon pretty quickly after the end of 1996 I knew how much more these movies meant to me than Pacino's documentary would mean going forward. I didn't regret the choice so much as noted its strong immediate impact on me, acknowledging it was an impact that wasn't likely to repeat itself on a revisit.
And speaking of revisits ...
2. I don't usually rewatch documentaries. Pacino's directorial debut was the 815th movie I have seen more than once in my life. Do you know how many others are documentaries? Thirteen. And that's with stretching the definition to include things like Bo Burnham: Inside (though I excluded the comedy specials by Eddie Murphy and -- gulp -- Bill Cosby that I used to watch on repeat, and would no longer add to my movie lists today), and with mitigating circumstances like the movies I watched multiple times while considering them for a documentary film festival. Documentaries I watched more than once by actual choice? You can almost count them on one hand. And none of those 13 movies have I seen more than twice.
3. Accessibility. You don't hear people talk very much about Looking for Richard these days, likely either a function of its availability or a determining factor in decreasing its availability. I bought my copy from a closing video store about seven years ago, so my own accessibility has not been a problem recently, and I suspect most video stores worth their salt would have carried it. But it's not streaming on any of my streaming services, though you can rent it through iTunes.
Whatever the reason, my first #1 was neglected until Tuesday night -- and it remained my only #1 I had not seen more than once, as well as the only documentary I have ever selected as #1. Yes, even my #1 of 2021 is something I've already seen twice.
So the burning question: What did I think of Looking for Richard, at long last?
Before I get into that, I'll remind you that as I go through 2022 watching every movie I have selected as my #1 of the year, I don't plan to write about each of them here. I want to save some suspense for the end of the year when I reveal a ranking from #1 to #26. But Looking for Richard is an exception, both for the uniqueness of never having revisited it previously, and for the fact that I really haven't written about it on this blog. (A tag did previously exist for it as I wrote about it ever so briefly in a 2011 post ranking my top ten documentaries.)
So yeah, I liked it quite a bit, but I did not feel myself overwhelmed by that special feeling you get from a favorite movie. It's a very solid documentary with a very interesting project of how to help translate Shakespeare to the masses, but a masterpiece? I think not.
So I thought I'd try to put myself back in the headspace of late 1996/early 1997 to analyze why this was such a big win for me.
If memory serves, I saw it over Thanksgiving weekend with my friend, whom I lived with for a short three-month period at that time. The film was released on October 11th, so that sort of tracks -- six weeks was an easily attainable theatrical run back then, especially if the film was acclaimed, like Looking for Richard was. So there could have been a bit of a giddy holiday vibe in the air as we watched it.
I think my once and future girlfriend was also in attendance at that screening, though it's possible this was at our screening of Trainspotting in the same theater during those few months I lived in Somerville, Massachusetts. It would have been in a small group of others, not just her and my friend. She and I dated in 1991 and again in 1999/2000, so this would have been a sort of halfway point between those two poles. It's possible this added a little frisson of excitement to the experience.
Then I remember how much my friend also loved the movie, so I suspect we fed off each other's enthusiasm. Incidentally, this is the same friend who has also been ranking his movies for most of those 25 years, though I know he didn't do it in this first year. He may have been on board by 1997 though.
So as I said earlier, I certainly do not regret having selected Looking for Richard as my #1 movie. It was a true snapshot of how I felt about the film at the time, and it is indeed a really good film, possibly even a great one.
I suspect it also resonated with me as much as it did because I was only a year removed from college at that point, and I had taken at least one if not multiple Shakespeare classes in college. Although I obviously loved the Bard, and felt the academic drive to parse and understand his words, there were always texts that didn't click with me. So I suspect I really appreciated Pacino's effort to simultaneously stage a stripped-down version of Richard III (which I had never read, and still have not read) and explain its plot in plain terms as he was going, intermingled with interviews with regular people to kind of lay the groundwork for what he was up against. The input of scholars (who aren't credited on screen) and acting greats (who also aren't credited, but I know Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi and John Gielgud when I see them) also made the journey fun, plus I enjoyed the casting of the likes of Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder and Kevin Spacey in the play. (Yes, I enjoyed Kevin Spacey. I cannot retroactively delete him from history, much as we might like to, so when I am confronted with him I take his work at face value.)
And the film really does have a good vibe. Pacino has a lot of fun with his collaborators, sometimes argues with them vehemently, and at all times reveals the obvious passion he feels for this material.
One thing I did notice was that this clearly came out in the age before color-blind casting. Not a single actor of color was chosen to essay any of the roles, which was a pretty standard practice back in the day. There are a few minority faces among the interview subjects, but it's pretty tokenish in nature. Again, though, just as we were naive about the monster that is Kevin Spacey back then, we were also naive about representation. "It's more realistic if these people who live in 15th century England are all white." That logic would have bought off any of our qualms back in the day, had those qualms even risen to the level of our awareness.
You may think it's evident that Looking for Richard is now pretty likely to finish last in my end-of-year ranking of #1s, but hey, we have a long way to go. I still have 23 other films that could disappoint me -- if that's even an accurate way to describe this viewing of Looking for Richard -- and I already have a few other candidates in mind.
I'll watch my next one in about two weeks ... and probably not write about it here.
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