Bikers, Guns, and iPhones Rule In Otherwise Faithful ‘Cymbeline’ Remake

Sandra Miska

To say that the works of William Shakespeare has stood the test of time would be to make the understatement of the century.  The Bard’s work has inspired countless of memorable films, many with a modern-day twist such as “10 Things I Hate About You,” “O”, and “Much Ado About Nothing”.  “Cymbeline” (formerly named “Anarchy”), a modern adaptation of the 1611 play, can be added to the list when it opens this Friday.

In the original play, Cymbeline is a British king whose daughter Imogen has secretly married a courtier, Posthumus, much to his displeasure.  Imogen sends her husband to Italy for his safety, and it is there that he meets the sleazy Iachimo, who bets Posthumus that he can seduce his wife.  After Iachimo uses trickery to convince Posthumus that Imogen slept with him (he sneaks into her room and steals a bracelet her husband gave her), Posthumus sends his servant Pisanio to kill her. He, however, reneges after being convinces of the woman’s innocence, and convinces her to disguise herself as a boy.

Additional villains include Imogen’s stepmother (just called the Queen) and her son Cloten, who are both furious the princess chose to marry the lowborn Posthumus over her stepbrother.

In director Michael Almereyda’s new film adaptation, which, according to reviewer Isaac Feldberg, is very faithful to its source material, Cymbeline (Ed Harris) is a drug lord and leader of a biker gang who rules over a small town with his new “queen” (Milla Jovovich).

After Imogen (Dakota Johnson) marries her father’s servant Posthumus (Penn Badegely) instead of her stepbrother Cloten (Anton Yelchin), disaster hits the newlyweds, further exasperated by the arrival of creeper Iachimo (Ethan Hawke, star of another Almereyda-directed Shakespeare remake, Hamlet).  In this updated story, Iachimo makes use of his iPhone to fabricate evidence of having slept with Imogen, and the battles are fought with guns instead of daggers.  Rounding out the cast as Pisanio is John Leguizamo, who memorably played Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet.”

“Cymbeline” opens March 13.