King Lear (1987 film)

King Lear
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay by	Peter Sellars Tom Luddy
Based on	King Lear by William Shakespeare
Produced by	Yoram Globus Menahem Golan
Starring	Burgess Meredith Molly Ringwald Peter Sellars Julie Delpy Leos Carax Jean-Luc Godard Woody Allen Norman Mailer
Cinematography	Sophie Maintigneux [fr]
Edited by	Jean-Luc Godard
Music by	Ludwig van Beethoven J. S. Bach
Distributed by	Cannon Films
Release dates	17 May 1987 (1987-05-17) (Cannes) 15 September 1987 (1987-09-15)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1 million
Box office	$61,821[1]

King Lear is a 1987 American film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play in the avant-garde style of French New Wave cinema. The script (originally assigned to Norman Mailer but not used) was primarily by Peter Sellars and Tom Luddy. It is not a typical cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's eponymous tragedy, although some lines from the play are used in the film. Only three characters – Lear, Cordelia and Edgar – are common to both, and only Act I, scene 1 is given a conventional cinematic treatment in that two or three people actually engage in relatively meaningful dialogue.

King Lear is set in and around Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland, where Godard went to primary school. While many of Godard's films are concerned with the invisible aspects of cinematography,^[2] the outward action of the film is centred on William Shakespeare Junior the Fifth, who is attempting to restore his ancestor's plays in a world where most of human civilization—and more specifically culture—has been lost after the Chernobyl catastrophe.

Rather than reproducing a performance of Shakespeare's play, the film is more concerned with the issues raised by the text, and symbolically explores the relationships between power and virtue, between fathers and daughters, words and images. The film deliberately does not use conventional Hollywood filmmaking techniques which make a film 'watchable', but instead seeks to alienate and baffle its audience in the manner of Bertolt Brecht.^[3]