The Shakespeare Play that is named after Julius Caesar is primarily about Brutus and Cassius, yet in all its Hollywood movie adaptations top billing always seems to go to whoever plays Mark Antony. He is also much more conventionally the main character of another Shakespeare Play.
And back in the Golden Age of Hollywood Historical Epics the biggest movies set during this century tended to be movies about Cleopatra where inevitably Mark Anthony becomes the male lead.
Something about Mark Antony, or the popular perception of the kind of person he was, makes him the character of this era Actors of a certain caliber most want to perform. A compelling combination of Honor and Hedonism, Impulsiveness and Cunningness, Rage and Romance.
As someone who’s often very cynical about the more gritty and “realistic” approach usually taken by more modern fictionalizations of the Ancient World, Antony is a character I particularly fear would lose his appeal. I can admit how a character like Caesar could benefit from a more three dimensional modern writer. Antony however is a character I tend to cynically presume will just be turned into a caricature.
Not to mention my more complex feelings on how the art of acting has changed. I don’t consider any actors you commonly see in contemporary Movies and TV to be bad, but the style of acting I enjoy the most has gone out of fashion in Hollywood. I can’t picture any MCU actor competing with Marlon Brando, Carleton Heston and Richard Burton. In contemporary acting I'm most a fan of the Voice Acting you hear in English Dubs of Anime. So it's Crispin Freeman, John Michael Tatun and Dan Green who I’d love to hear play Mark Anthony.
So imagine my surprise when during this last week I almost 20 years late to the party finally watched HBO’s Rome TV series and James Purefoy completely blew me away. Now I have to admit he kinda seemed like what I was cynically expecting early on, but by the end of episode 6 I was suddenly sold, but it’s in season 2 that he really gets to shine. He’s distinct from the classic takes I referred to above, yet still inline with them in a way I didn’t expect from something so modern.
This show takes historical liberties already in season 1 but they become more significant in season 2. But I don’t care about that when I’m being entertained by what I’m watching. And this show was entertaining all around. I’ve seen complaints about how Cleopatra is depicted but I found it refreshing, not how I’d write her but refreshing nonetheless.
But I made this post to talk about Mark Antony's fictionalizations. I titled it “Dramatic Actor” rather than “leading Actor” because he’s never been the sole title character, he’s Cleopatra’s Lover and Caesar’s Avenger, and an Antagonist in the more rare works that portray this history with Octavian as the protagonist.
And all this meaty dramatic material comes from still drawing on only select portions of his life and career. As a Christian who likes to look at at least all BC History as revolving around Jerusalem it’s notable that he had been in Judaea at least twice, as a young man under Gabinius in the 50s and then in 37 BC during the Triumvirate when he defeats the Parthians and Mattathias Antigonus. Maybe there have been Israeli movies depicting at least the latter of those, I wouldn’t at this time know.
HBO Rome covers some stuff not usually covered but missed plenty of other opportunities like the above. I’d also really like to actually see Fulvia onscreen for a change, she sounds like a compelling potential Anime Girl, as does her first husband Clodius.
Since I have been a pretty vocal critic of the Great Man Theory of History I can imagine some who miss the point of that debate would find it weird for me to then make a long ramble about one of those titular great men. The dispute between Great Man Theorists and Materialists is about what drives History. And the story of someone viewed as a Great Man of History even though he ultimately lost in the end is a great opportunity to demonstrate how Material Conditions can doom anymore no matter how capable or “Heroic” they are.
It’s possible the real Marcus Antonius had little in common personality wise with the idea of Mark Antony I’ve been talking about. Those who criticize the adage “History is written by the winners” are often taking it too literally, the point is to pay attention to the biases of who’s writing. If it was 100% literally true all the time we’d still popularly view Antony and Cleopatra based on the utterly demonized portrait Octavian's propagandists tried to paint. However the positive depictions however indirectly eventually go back through that propaganda.
However in my view Historical Fiction needs to be viewed the same as other adaptations, the desire of some people to moralize about getting history wrong in fiction I find annoying. People shouldn't be using fiction to learn history in the first place. Mark Antony the character I like watching so much should on some level be viewed as a Legend inspired by History just like King Arthur.
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