Class Disparities and the Doom of Monarchy

The Kotzinstev film adaptation of King Lear was much different than I was expecting. Rather than familial relations or madness, what stood out to me the most was the incredible portrayals of the upper and lower classes in the film.  While we don’t really see that much depiction of the classes in the actual play, the differences between the royalty and the lower class is put at the forefront of the film, and uncomfortably so when we see Edgar, Gloucester, and Lear all scrounging around the countryside with a band of the poor.  It was uncomfortable to witness, and I watched the rest of the film within the context of the disparity between social classes.

One particular area that this was incredibly highlighted to me, was the scene of Cordelia’s death.  The image we see in Kozintsev’s film is haunting, and  the way that the scene lingered on told me that this was something that Kozintsev felt incredibly strongly about.  Put against the context of the actual play and the Brook film (in which we see Cordelia hang for approximately 1 second), this scene was an eerie commentary on the fate of monarichical rule, in that it is doomed to fail.  By focusing on the death of arguably the best character in the play, Kozintsev seems to be drawing our attention to the corruptness of monarchy,  in that not even the good people can make it out alive.  We forget about the treachery seen between family members, and instead focus on the larger issue of what happens when there is such a disparity between classes.  Put against the context of other Lear adaptations, and the play itself, the Kozintsev film takes on a much darker and more politically charged aura.