The presence of the live audience means that Plummer can be broad and theatrical in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a real movie. His Caesar is a hearty, bumptious fellow who uses effects like shouts, long pauses, and, especially, hearty stage laughter. Caesar ends his first scene with one word—“Incorrigible!”—and Plummer tears into that line like it’s the big meal he eats in the fourth act. By watching this film, we can get a better understanding of how an experienced stage actor feeds off the audience response, “which not only is necessary,” he explains, “but which inspires you to be better.” Avrich says that Plummer’s rapport with the audience is part of what this evening is about: “You see him shine when the audience reacts. It’s reflected in his lines, it’s reflected in his face.”
But the difference between Plummer on stage and Plummer on film is still real. Even Cimolino, who thinks that this film provides “the best of both worlds” of movies and theatre, adds that there’s no substitute for the live experience of an actor like Plummer, for “the power of his body in space, as well as his voice.” Though the quality of the image is better than you’d get on one of the old CBC broadcasts of Stratford plays, it’s still very much a reproduction of a theatre performance in a very different kind of theatre: acting that worked beautifully when it was live can seem too broad when the HD camera captures it, and the audience in the recorded performance sometimes laughs at jokes that don’t come off with the movie-theatre audience. Plummer explains that seeing a theatre performance on film isn’t always a satisfying mixture, because in the theatre, “you are seeing it from a distance. You are not up close. Our performances and the way we gauge them are geared for that distance.” Even the pickup sessions with extra close-ups couldn’t solve this problem, because “if you tone down too much, you lose energy.”
So HD filming is a compromise, not a substitute for either theatre or movies. But the film, which will also air on the Bravo! cable TV channel later this year, at least lets us see a major production in decent quality; without it, Avrich explains, “You see it and experience it for one season, and then it’s gone.” Plummer himself calls the film “one of the better attempts I’ve seen, I must say,” but adds that it would be better to “rethink the whole thing and concentrate much more on the medium we’re doing it for.” What filmgoers will see on Jan. 31 is an idea of what it must have been like to see Plummer live, and that’s still more interesting than seeing him in the average movie. “He’s very particular about his legacy,” Avrich says. That legacy might be well served by this screening; at least it’s a better part of his legacy than the scene where he lip-synched to Edelweiss.
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