In addition to this re-orientation toward the title character, the screenplay by Semi Chellas offers some interesting revisions of Shakespeare’s original.
Over the months of T.’s presidency, I have noted an ever increasing dearth of joy. It has gotten harder and harder to find. I see the lack of it to be not unlike a snow fog that has taken up permanent residence.
To put it simply, many of us are so mired in the busy-ness of everyday life that we don’t, or can’t, look up long enough to assess what we do and when we do it and how effective we are in doing it in our daily lives.
as if time could run backwards at their beckoning;
as if winter could recede from my fingers and the white gate swing wide,
with the fall riot returning to the bracketing treelimbs,
thence to turn verdant and alive, the schoolyard now summer-empty.
There most certainly is a chill in the air. This chill is so pervasive and blowing from so many directions that our impulse is to bundle up, protect ourselves, cover our faces from this stinging wind.
Instead of saying, as one might, about any other ruler, "The King's in council," here they always said. "The President is tweeting in his dressing room.”