Comrade Shakespeare – Jaguar against Kingdom

When the tragedy “Richard III.” The comrade William Shakespeare came on stage for the first time around 1593, the English potentate, which gives rise to the name, had been underground for more than a hundred years. No fabric from Shakespeare’s present, but one who negotiates temporary problems. Shakespeare has often occurred: historical or purely fictional events serve as a dramatic scaffolding.

The unconditional will for updating – be it in the film or in the theater – is therefore also a curiosity. The contemporary audience is understandable only what the presence breathes, according to the popular belief. It is exactly the other way around: all the many signs that should mean that we are dealing with a situation in the here and now, closes the view for the larger conflicts.

Burhan Qurbani has for his film »No animal. So wildly. ”, Who celebrated its world premiere at the Berlinale these days, accepted Shakespeare’s“ Richard III. ” And suddenly the rose wars no longer take place between two English noble houses, but the Yorks and Lancasters are two competing German-Arab gangster families in Berlin-Neukölln.

Genosse Shakespeare

As you like it: Every two weeks, Erik Zielke writes about great tragedies, political lubricating theater and the fools from the past and present. He finds inspiration from his comrade from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

You can find all columns here.

So the well -known wrong path that flattened the comrade Shakespeare by updating and mutilated? Not at all. Because Qurbanis underworld shapes are just as fed to us, artistically exaggerated and forever far away like an English king from the 15th century.

You can’t praise enough that the director found the courage to let his actors speak verses on the screen. The playwright Enis Maci has taken care of the new transmission of the Shakespeare piece, which changes entertaining between high sound and gangster speech. If you then make it for what has become proverbial “a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” applied too thick.

It is quite obvious that Qurbani wants to find the strong family gang from the old English monarchy in the criminal milieu. He invents the really big pictures for his great tragedy. He cleverly trusts Shakespeare as a director. And where he deviates from him – and he always does – he succeeds in exciting settlements about which, even if you do not agree, you can argue well.

Shakespeares Richard becomes a Rashida at Qurbani. If the title hero is distorted by nature in the bard from Stratford, Rashida’s flaw is her gender in a world of men. Not on the battlefield, but as a lawyer, she did her part for the family. The film begins with an impressive court scene and thus conveys the complex mixture without the gesture of explanation. Kenda Hmeidan, who gives the main character, plays multifaceted and convincing. In general, you can see a line -up of how they rarely offer German films.

For some of the figures in the play, Qurbani finds equivalents, others omit, change them far -reaching. With Shakespeare, however, he believes in the conflict and the drama. No milieu study and no social drama he brings on the screen. A polite thriller rather. Qurbani is interested in the power and the bloody way, but above all in the failure of the powerful. And he knows how to tell his story, he learned from the best.

“No animal. So wild. «: Germany 2025. Director: Burhan Qurbani. Book: Enis Maci/Burhan Qurbani. With Kenda Hmeidan, Verena Altenberger, Hiam Abbass, Mona Zarh Hoshyari Khan and Mehdi Nebbou. 142 min.