In terms of physical space in relation to self-destruction, the movie "Bonnie and Clyde" and Shakespeare's "Othello" are very similar. The way Arthur Penn in "Bonnie and Clyde" and Shakespeare in "Othello" move their lead characters through the physical space of their worlds helps us understand the psychological effect of crime in the one and jealousy in the other. Let me explain.
When Bonnie and Clyde first start their crime spree, they have the whole country before them. They travel from state to state, town to town robbing banks and enjoying the mobility of being young Americans with the mobility of the automobile.
But, as time progresses and their crimes increase, they begin to come under the scrutiny of the FBI. They appear on Most Wanted posters. They have to become more furtive. There are fewer and fewer places they can go. We watch their world contract. Gradually, their whole world is the automobile that once was their vehicle to freedom. Slowly, it becomes their prison.
By the end of the movie, their world is very small. They are figuratively suffocated by their crimes and at the end of the movie, it is this confined space of the car where they meet their death, shot up by the FBI.
Othello, too, is a man of the whole world when the play begins. In his testimony to the duke and senators upon being accused of winning over Desdemona by witchcraft, he describes how he has been from the top to the bottom of the world and seen all kinds of strange sights.
As the play progresses, Othello becomes affiliated with the wide expanse of the sea, and his is the military lord of the sea, as the Turks are defeated and Othello arrives at Cyprus.
At Cyprus, Iago begins to work his diabolical schemes upon Othello, and in his jealousy, Othello's world begins to shrink, to fold in upon him. Iago isolates him more and more from others, blocking his access to anyone who might set him straight. Othello is obsessed. His obsession increases his claustrophobia.
Soon his world is the citadel. Soon, his whole world is his bedroom chamber. No longer the master warrior of the high seas and foreign lands, by Act V, Othello's world is confined to the room where he and Desdemona sleep. The action being confined to this small space is a physical portrayal of a psychological and spiritual truth: deeds and emotions that rob one of life rather than affirm life, have as part of their consequence the sensation of the world closing in.
Shakespeare seemed to understand this as he slowly but surely shrinks Othello's physical world, even as his mind and spirit close in on him. Likewise, the world closes in on Bonnie and Clyde and they turn on each other and on those close to them. In both plays, with the freedom of expanse gone, the madness of confinement imposes itself upon these characters, and they are destroyed.
1 comment:
Brilliant.
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