This is (about) power: the brute struggle for power that has run through every society in every world. In this film, it's the struggle between Sulla and Marius, and the struggle between Caesar and Sulla, and the struggle between Caesar and anyone who holds him back. Jacobi is chilling as a vicious dictator, and so's Kani and so's Adler. But what's even more chilling is to know that most of the people in the film – the 90 per cent of the cast who are real prisoners – live like this all the time.
As you see Adler's Caesar trying to seduce a big, fat gang leader of another prison, and then the "pirates" who have kidnapped him on his way to somewhere else, and as you see the way people look at him, with fear, and envy, and awe, you see how brute power has always worked: with any tools, and at any price...
Many of the actors may not have had much in the way of formal education, but they speak the lines, from the very poetic script, as if they wrote them. One or two even did. The poem that opens StringCaesar was written by a prisoner, and so was a rap about Caesar, delivered in a crowded "court". This is certainly a film about Julius Caesar, but it's much, much more.
Except from Review by Christina Patterson 13.09.12
"(JAIL CAESAR )...is a vibrant meeting of many universes, a convincing,
thought-provoking and visceral collision of man’s instinct to survive.."
Reviewed by Jean Lynch
StringCaesar South African filmmaker Paul Schoolman has dramatized the formative years of Julius Caesar against the backdrop of three prisons (Pollsmoor, Cape Town, Cardiff in Wales, and Drumheller in Alberta, Canada), giving some roles
to respected professionals (Derek Jacobi, John Kani, Alice Krige) but augmenting them with a talented cast of hardened convicts. “Kill whom you wish to kill, rape whom you wish to rape!” orders Jacobi, clad in orange jumpsuit as the Roman general Sulla,
and his words ring with authority amid the concrete walls of the Pollsmoor common room where the scene is staged. Schoolman uses various narrative pointers - split screens, captions in graffitti lettering - to surmount the challenge of telling a historical tale with
actors speaking various languages, but what really puts this across is his brilliant governing conceit, which drives home the brutal politics of the Roman Republic.
In english and subtitled Xhosa and afrikaans. - J.R.Jones
91 minutes.
The filmmakers deftly construct the material into a powerful whole, finding new evocative depths in the story of the Roman dictator.
From KOMMERSANT.RUCYRIL RAZLOGOV about JAIL CAESAR in the ‘49 SEATS’ program
‘In ’49 SEATS’ program from time to time are discovered masterpieces for audiences enjoying movies in all media -mainstream and festival theatrical and TV releases - and seeking also the growth direction of film which may lead to great achievements, or be forever gems of originality in the arts,
classics recalled with admiration.
The main sensation of this ’49 SEATS’ program will certainly be JAIL CAESAR by Paul Schoolman ... JAIL CAESAR is remarkable.
(It was made almost a year before the
Berlin film triumph of the Taviani ‘Caesar must Die’)
“A brilliant re-evocation of Roman history from the last consulship of Marius to the first Triumvirate, played by Blind Summit, and written and directed by Paul Schoolman...deeply concerned with war and politics ...its historical integrity is a standing rebuke to Robert Graves, and its dramatic capacity remarkable.”
Excerpt of a review in The Irish Times by Owen Dudley Edwards
JAILCAESAR “is an amazing, incredible watch delivering a proper old Greek classic catharsis for the viewer. A must see.”
Caesar turns to look at the swarm of angry underlings. “They have a power, an energy,” he observes. “If you could funnel or tap that, they could take down kings. As it is… they’re wasted.”
That’s exactly what Paul Schoolman’s project has done:
“by the ‘total theatre” of Blind summit. We all know about tyranny. We know about rape and murder and torture. Stalin, Hitler, Amin, Chile, South Vietnam, Korea. We
know about it. But to keep the realisation of its horror alive and awaken once more our recognition of the precious gift of freedom we need to experience at least a frisson of fear from time to time. I confess to a desire to seek the safety of the exit in this show...
The play deals with the early life of of Julius Caesar
who proved to be just another in a long line of nasties. Driven by enormous vanity and insatiable ambition
he is capable of any perfidy, any outrage. The power of this production is achieved by the enormous energy
and vitality of the company. They create the sensation that these horrors are taking place all around while we,
the audience, in the manner of everyman, everywhere, stand silently by.”
Julie Buckroyd
PAUL SCHOOLMAN’s JAIL CAESAR “has the energy of interactive theatre and the look of a Dogme Collective entry.
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