Looking for Richard is a pretty cool film. I think it’s nice that students get to do a film for the hsc. It’s kinda cool to see pacino just acting like a regular guy. There’s a lot of thing you can gleam from the film. I think the photography of New York is nice. The actual scenes they do of the play are bad bad bad. It’s like cheap tv stuff. English departments across Australia do not understand film and always choose bad films to study. Anything actually complex will go over the english teacher’s heads. They can only understand what is served up to them on a platter. Looking for Richard is alright though. I like films that mix up fiction and non-fiction scenes. The film is as much a study of the people of New York as it is Shakespeare. That’s not necessarily true. But it would be a great point for an essay. Sometimes sounding smart is better than actually being smart. And english teachers are easy to fool when talking about film. Because they don’t understand it. I don’t think they ever will. The great sham of english as a subject is convincing you that there is anything objective about it. It’s kind of like fascism. Write this way, think this way. Film is such an elusive and abstract medium (it can be) that they need to teach better ways of writing about it.

Hugo Nihill