Summary 
Updated to the Victorian late nineteenth-century and filled with colorful Cornwall landscapes, Trevor Nunn imbues this surprisingly cinematic Twelfth Night with a sense of adventure as well as a pervasive melancholy. Expertly cast and consistently well-played, the romance is delightful and the low comedy is at least amusing, with the two principals - Viola and Olivia - portrayed with particularly memorable charm.
Production
Directed by Trevor Nunn, released in 1996. 2:13.
Cast
Imogen Stubbs (Viola), Steven Mackintosh (Sebastian), Nicholas Farrell (Antonio), Ben Kingsley (Feste), Helena Bonham Carter (Olivia), Nigel Hawthorne (Malvolio), Mel Smith (Sir Toby Belch), Imelda Staunton (Maria), Toby Stephens (Orsino), Peter Gunn (Fabian) Richard E. Grant (Sir Andrew Aguecheek).
Analysis
Trevor Nunn, a former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, begins Twelfth Night - modernized to the late Victorian era - with a non-textual prologue, showing Viola and Sebastian as a sister-brother vaudeville team providing campy entertainment aboard ship. The twins sing - "hey ho the wind and the rain" - during a howling rainstorm, Antonio among their audience, but the ship founders in the storm, their piano sliding across the floor as people shout and fall. Tables overturn as the ship begins to sink, and passengers rush to lifeboats, but Viola is washed overboard. Her brave brother cries out, breaks free of the crew who try to restrain him, and leaps into the rolling sea after her. The siblings grasp hands underwater for a moment, but are separated and break the surface far apart, each thinking the other drowned. Nunn continues with Viola's 1.2 struggle, as Imogen Stubbs' plucky blonde heroine, endearingly resolute but woefully vulnerable, finds herself washed ashore - "what country, friends, is this?" - on a bright morning. When helmeted soldiers on horseback storm the beach wielding rifles, the Captain leads her to safety - "we must not be discovered in this place" - and they use a salvaged chest of entertainment costumes to dress her like her brother. They bind her chest and stuff the crotch of her trousers, then cut her long blonde hair (using some of it to fashion a fake mustache), and add shirt, coat, boots, and hat. Stubbs' Viola then practices speaking in a lower tone for a more masculine voice, even shouting into the wind to roughen her vocal chords. The Captain tells her of the dashing Duke Orsino ("I'll serve this Duke") and his passionate love for the mournful Olivia, and they watch from cover as the veiled Olivia somberly marches in her brother's funeral procession.
Nunn's cinematic style breathes fresh air and sunshine into the shadowy indoors staging of Twelfth Night, with interior scenes languishing within the panels of tapestry and dark wood inside the elaborately decorated and darkened homes of Orsino and Olivia, then bursting outdoors into autumnal panoramas of rolling green lawns, stretches of orchards becoming yellow and red with the season, and the rolling sea beside breathtaking cliff sides. The contrast shows both the effect of Viola's Cesario persona as well as the truly liberating nature of love on the compulsive mourning of Olivia and the self-indulgent pining of Orsino. Toby Stephens' dashing and thinly mustached Duke Orsino lounges indoors during 1.1, surrounded by concerned-looking man-servants within a stained glass room as a plaintive piano plays. Nunn's camera pans across the bored faces, some biting at their lips or rolling their eyes, to Orsino, his hand dramatically over his brow while he moans - "if music be the food of love, play on" - about unrequited love. Nunn's panning camera reveals Stubbs' disguised Viola as the musician at the piano, and when Orsino sits at the keyboard beside her, Stubbs' reveals her character's own passion with a lingering and longing gaze at the handsome Duke.
Nunn's film, set at the very end of the Christmas holiday season, evokes looming maturity with imagery of burning leaves, late autumn colors, and vaporized breath in chilly air, but he eschews the more typical rise of the Puritan era - "there shall be no more cakes and ale" - with its moralistic closing of the theatres. Dispatched to plea to Olivia on Orsino's behalf, Stubbs' Viola finds herself liberated as to her expression in the guise of being male rather female - a point made clearer by Nunn's modernization to the moral rigidity of the Victorian 1890s - and she can speak her own mind (and coyly discuss her own feelings for Orsino) regarding passions and self-expression. Helena Bonham Carter portrays Olivia as physically wan and emotionally enervated, undeniably lovely but sluggish with grief. She begrudgingly permits embassy from Cesario, veiling herself even within a darkened parlor, and Stubbs' Viola sweeps in with brash confidence and eloquence, literally and figuratively a burst of sunshine, as she draws the curtains and Olivia squints and flinches from the sudden brightness. Stubbs' charm - pointedly the expressiveness of a Victorian woman liberated from societal restrictions - is evident as she remarks slyly on Olivia's beauty ("if God did all") and fervently describes the Duke's devotion: Carter's Olivia is wide-eyed in enamored shock, leaning in close almost for a kiss, then stealing away with a backward glance, and leading them out for a walk - and a shared laugh - onto the rolling lawns of her estate. Carter's Olivia seems thrilled despite herself, and as Viola shouts "Olivia!" so it echoes across the grounds, sending birds flying with angry caws and startling Malvolio within - she chides Cesario ("sshhh!") but with a growing smile. Olivia makes a weak attempt at sending her/him away, rejecting the Duke - "send no more...unless it be you" - and looking longingly after Cesario after "she" rejects her offer of coins for the messenger service. Carter's energized Olivia seems brought back to life - "even so quickly may one catch the plague?" - her breath visible in the winter air, and she must bite the ring from her finger to send it after Viola.
The 1.3 low comedy of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew is played well, but certainly not equal to the charismatic grace and charm with which Stubbs and Carter imbue their roles. Malvolio, played with a condescending sneer and droll demeanor by Nigel Hawthorne, wears tiny spectacles and a black suit with a white shirt, resembling a cleric perhaps by design, and he inspects the servants' hands within the darkness of a windowless kitchen then circles the enormous room, frowning in disapproval. When he directs the staff in one direction, Maria and Fabian bolt in another, bursting outside into the sunshine upon the green hedges. They find Toby, sprawled drunkenly asleep against a stone statue, and when they bring him inside to Aguecheek - a rail thin, mustached redhead with bags under his eyes and yellow stockings on his legs - Toby's first instinct is to rip aside the curtains for more sunlight. Toby bangs on the piano in the foreground, Andrew dancing idiotically throughout the middle of the shot, and they finally stop when Hawthorne's malevolent Malvolio appears in the background doorway. Hawthorne plays Malvolio more as a stiffly arrogant foil for the free-spirited party crowd than as a restrictive religious influence, although a shot finds him within a church, the last worshipper to rise from his knees.
Feste, portrayed by a head-shaved Ben Kingsley as a traveling musical minstrel, presents the intellectual opposition to Malvolio, and they glare at each other 1.5 even as Olivia reproves them, and when all depart, Carter's gorgeous Olivia collapses within Feste's arms. Even the belching and staggering Toby - "a plague on these pickled herring" - blusters happily when he notices the newly returned Feste. Nunn moves the story quickly to the long-developing confrontation between Feste and Malvolio, pausing only to show Sebastian arriving in Illyria with Antonio 2.1, heading toward Orsino's court atop a horse-drawn carriage, as well as Stubbs' wide-eyed 2.4 struggle with a cigar that Orsino lights for her as they listen to a plaintive love song.
Toby and Andrew gracelessly scale a wall 2.3, Andrew thudding into the shrubbery with a crash, and they waken Maria with pebbles tossed at her window. They get drunk in the kitchen - "a stoop of wine!" - and are joined by Feste as Toby dances with Maria. Hawthorne's constipated-looking Malvolio, in a bathrobe reading a newspaper, endures the noise from their revelry only briefly, and Feste plays an accordion, sitting cross-legged atop a table and singing, "true love's coming." Nunn cuts to quick images of Olivia stirring unfitfully in her bed, then Orsino and Viola smoking cigarettes, talking about passion ("what is love?"), and playing cards. Toby provides percussion by banging on pots and pans until they are finally interrupted and admonished by Hawthorne's Malvolio, holding a yellow candle on a salver. They plot their revenge, Toby revealing admiration for Maria - "she's a beagle, true-bred" - before Nunn cuts to Stubbs' perturbed Viola 2.4, unbinding herself by candlelight as she pines for Orsino, then attending him, lovingly sponging his bare back as he bathes, steam rising from the water. Nunn splits the scene, moving the mournful Feste song "Come Away Death" to a later point.
Nunn fashions an amusing 2.5 love letter scene from a difficult-to-stage and contrived situation. Nunn's wide-angled lens shows from a distance Andrew and Toby playing croquet, servants behind them on the lawn, one burning a pile of leaves and the other pushing a wheelbarrow. Nunn cuts to Hawthorne's scarved Malvolio strolling along a rock-lined path, practicing his confession of love to Olivia - "to be Duke Malvolio" - as Toby and Andrew join Fabian to eavesdrop from behind the hedges. Malvolio addresses a Venus de Milo as if it is Olivia, then reads the forged letter aloud, as the three idiots scramble for cover and proximity to eavesdrop. After Malvolio practices his smiles but can only force a gassy sneer, the three dance, jump, and exclaim to rising music, then run to fall on their knees and bow to Maria. 3.1 fares even better, with the endearingly smitten Olivia trying on different garments in front of a mirror, hoping to impress - and entice - Viola's Cesario. Carter's Olivia, now radiant with lively eyes and a yearning demeanor, excludes Andrew from the walk in the garden, and she pours tea for Viola as they sit on a bench in hazy sunshine, the smoke from a burning pile of leaves visible behind them. She sends Cesario away, then cries, "stay!" and "I love thee so!" while kneeling before Stubbs' exasperated messenger boy, her hand upon Viola's chest. The romantic-comedy situation is deliciously impossible, and Stubbs' Viola helps Olivia stand but flees the garden, and Olivia follows, exclaiming and slamming the gate closed in Sir Andrew's face.
After a quick glimpse of Antonio disguised as a cleric - round glasses and pilgrim's hat - Nunn resumes 2.4 with an overhead shot of Orsino and Viola shooting pool, she rather poorly, their sleeves rolled high. Viola follows as the dashing Orsino runs out into a twilight rainstorm to request Feste - playing his guitar in the stables - sing for him. Kingsley's crooning tune is wrenchingly poignant, and when Viola looks up to Orsino and nearly kisses him, Feste notices. The ensuing windblown argument about love between Viola and Orsino is strikingly shot by Nunn in the deep blue light of the twilight rainstorm on the cliff side - "we men may say more, swear more" - until Stubbs' Viola sits beside Stephens' dejected Duke. Nunn cuts quickly to propel the story - pausing for a 3.1 shot of Cesario reluctantly returning to Olivia in the daytime, then Antonio fleeing the Illyrian guard 3.2 and being shot at before concealing himself within a canvas-covered apple cart, and then Toby and Fabian convincing Andrew to stay at court and challenge Cesario - then moving to Malvolio's 3.4 humiliation. Olivia lounges in her chamber as the red-robed Malvolio enters and displays his cross-gartered yellow stockings. Hawthorne's Malvolio pursues with painful confidence, kneeling before her and kissing her hand, misconstruing her command to "go to bed," then crawling after her and seizing her by the hips. Carter's shocked Olivia is bemused then amused - "midsummer madness!" - but rushes off when Cesario is announced, leaving Hawthorne's Malvolio to leap directly toward an overhead camera shot in the jubilance of a misunderstood "victory."
Nunn continues 3.4 with a depiction of the dueling cowards that is perhaps the film's funniest scene, leading toward the whimsical conclusion. Andrew storms down a staircase in a fury with his written challenge - "there's vinegar and pepper in it" - and stretches and practices with a blade. In the beauty of the orchard, Toby accosts Viola - "bloody is the hunter" - and speaks of Andrew's wrath: "he's a devil in private brawl." Toby then extols Viola to Andrew - "that is the very devil" - until both contestants are frightened out of their wits. Viola's struggle to escape Fabian and flee is comically conjured as Cesario's bloodthirsty eagerness to duel: "there's no remedy." But the two cowards stand facing each other in fencing position with foils up, frozen in fear and completely motionless even after Toby calls for the duel to commence. When they do begin to fight, they do so with panicked desperation, and the flurry and the fury of their brawl sends Toby and Fabian scurrying for cover. Antonio notices the duel from the cover of his passing applecart, and he leaps out to come to Viola's defense - "put up your sword!" - mistaking her for her brother Sebastian. When the Illyrian guard arrives on horseback, firing pistols to halt the heated duel, Antonio is immediately arrested, then angered at Viola for not coming to his monetary aid: he slaps away an offered loan and shouts, "will you deny me now?"
Stubbs' Viola, now confused and disoriented, is played with beguiling charm and vulnerability, a very likeable portrait of a brave young woman beset by the grief at the loss of her brother as well as a newfound passion that she cannot express. Nunn cuts to Sebastian's similar confusion (and fight) 4.1, when Viola's brother is accosted by Andrew but proceeds to not only pummel him but Toby as well. The brawl is broken up by Carter's impassioned Olivia, who embraces Sebastian and buries her face in his chest, imploring him lovingly, and of course, this time the handsome young man acquiesces. Olivia's sudden gleeful joy is a delight to behold, as is Sebastian's excited confusion, He questions whether he dreams - "still let me sleep" - and responds to her comely, "wilst thou ne ruled by me?" with a manfully resolute, "madam, I will." Meanwhile, Stubbs' Viola, strolling by the seaside cliffs, ponders the possibility her brother has survived: "prove true, imagination!"
The 4.2 disguise of Feste as Master Topas, and the vengeful comeuppance of the imprisoned-in-darkness Malvolio, is the film's weakest and most disconcertingly ugly moment, ironically bookended by the two best scenes. Feste dons a fake beard, hat, and black clerical suit - "if only I were the first to dissemble in such a gown" - and speaks with the filthy Malvolio, desperate for freedom - "I am not mad!" - from a dark and dirty prison. Hawthorne's Malvolio pleads between wooden boards in a squirmingly uncomfortable scene - the punishment far more cruel than the crime - but Nunn wisely softens the cruelty with a quick cut to the breathlessly passionate Olivia kissing and caressing a happily awestruck Sebastian within her chamber. Nunn follows with their 4.3 marriage - "I'll follow this good man and go with you" - and after a shot of the despondent Malvolio, Feste sings directly to Nunn's camera before turning to watch the 5.1 arrival of Duke Orsino on horseback with a group of soldiers. Stephens' Orsino is distracted from Antonio's claims against Viola - "most ingrateful boy there, by your side" - by the arrival of Olivia - "here comes the Dukeess, now heaven walks on earth!" - his sudden boyishness quite charming, although he is subsequently crushed by her supposed cruelty: "live you the marble-breasted tyrant still." When he and his crew of soldiers turn to depart, she stops them with, "Cesario! Husband!" and Stubbs' "No, my lord, not I!" is said with comically earnest exasperation.
The concluding reunion is a triumph of spirit, captured with whimsy and visual flair by Nunn, the performers perfect in their roles. Viola strolls in confusion at the edge of the group as Sebastian approaches - "I'm sorry, madam" - from the opposite side. Orsino and Olivia stare wide-eyed at them both - "how have you made division of yourself?" - in comical confusion. When the smitten Sebastian kisses Olivia, the lust in her expression is palpable when she ponders the two identical versions of the man she loves: "most wonderful!" When Stubbs' perplexed Viola finally turns, she is confronted by everyone staring at her, captured by Nunn in a long shot. Nunn then cuts to both brother and sister singly approaching the other - "I had a sister" - in separate shots, until they finally reunite and embrace in the same frame, as music soars. After Sebastian removes Viola's fake mustache, he returns to again kiss Olivia, and she of course embraces him as her husband. Stephens' Orsino, murmuring, "I shall have share in this," approaches Viola, and when she turns away in disbelief and terror, he gently turns her around, and they kiss as the entire household breaks into applause. In nicely sentimental moments, Antonio is freed from his chains and forgiven, and the laconic Feste places a yellow chain tenderly around Viola's neck. Servants line the walkway and wildly applaud as the two couples enter the house.
Nunn ends an often wonderfully entertaining film with a softened version of what can be a harsh ending. The one-shoed Malvolio arrives limping - "you have done me wrong, notorious wrong" - and is snickered at. Fabian accepts the blame, then Feste descends the steps behind them, mocking Malvolio's letter - "some are born great, some achive greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them" - while wearing a toupee: "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Malvolio makes a threat - "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you" - but stumbles ascending the staircase, lessening the gravity of his remark. Nunn cuts to a shot of the jubilant cast from directly above, then shows Feste off again as night falls - "hey ho the wind and the rain" - walking out into the twilight Dukeryside, passing Andrew on a horse-drawn cart, then the freed Antonio emerging from the house, followed by newlywed Toby and Maria embarking upon a carriage, and finally Malvolio stomping away, luggage in hand. As the closing credits roll, Viola emerges in a lovely and feminine gown for a celebratory party within Olivia's once dark and dour home, and amid music and dancing, the two couples kiss. Nunn's final shot is Kingsley's twinkling-eyed Feste by the seaside cliff, looking at the camera and singing, "I'll strive to please you every day," then laughing and half-dancing off. Nunn's wonderful Twelfth Night, an inspired and well-performed entertainment, benefits from the complexities of its modernization to Victorian times and a corresponding reduction of the impact of Puritan influence.