Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Simply A Masterpiece

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It was a really good film... but I HATED IT. Objectively, it was a really fantastic and apt adaptation of the play, but subjectively, I would have rather watched paint dry. Set in some desolate, almost dystopian, icy, barren landscape; the production design was brilliant and unique, perfectly capturing the desperation of the play. Unlike so many other filmic Shakespeare adaptations, it actually worked really well as a movie, and made the most of "film" as a medium; making the set and the costumes add to the feel of the play. However... It was dull, boring, tortuously long, depressing.... I couldn't stand it. I'm a Shakespeare fan, and I thought I knew this play, but the adaptation still left me thoroughly confused, primarily because I struggle with faces, and every character looked exactly the same. Overall, I'd say steer very clear unless you are a very dedicated King Lear fan, or a very dedicated Peter Brook fan.

Paul Scofield is a magnificent actor and for me the definitive Lear,but his powerful performance is grievously handicapped by some savage editing of the text which renders much of the story confusing to those coming new to the play This is bad enough but the neurotic direction of Peter Brooks makes it worse It is a bleak play and the frozen watelands of the external scenes are apt and well rendered by the camera crew.I maintain however that if we are to grasp the full horror of Lears's predicament we need to see how far he has fallen and the interiors look scarcely more inviting than the moorland =In Lear text is paramount and nothing should take our attention away from the words and the actor uttering them .Brook evidently does not agree and the camera is constantly fidgeting and at times not even focussing on the actor but zooming around like an over active fly It is not an uplifting play being rather about the fragility of sanity and reason,the key line for me being" as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/they kill us for their sport" It should be an unsettling experience because of the story and the implications for us as humans,and not because some showoff with a movie camera wants to prove he is a "Director" and in the process sabotaging a uniformly fine cast

I can think of few other films that carry such epic and classical themes, yet have been so fully and masterfully realized on the screen. I have been returning of late to my 25 favorite films, and "King Lear" has not faded one bit, albeit a poor transfer to video. Peter Brook's vision is staggeringly bleak, yet every actor, scene, and line reading is deeply suited to the text and Brook's vision. The camera work and editing, a tour de force. I think it is his finest film.Paul Scofield may have been the greatest actor in the English-speaking world, yet he made relatively few films, prefering the stage. Yes, he was honored for A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, but that was an easy roll for him. His Lear demands to be seen: from his opening shot in the stoney silence of his tree-trunk throne to his moaning in the storm with his Fool to his howl of grief at his lifeless, cherished daughter, this is a performance to be returned to time and again.Plus, there is a supporting cast to beat all: Irene Worth as Goneril (with a surprising death scene), the great Jack MacGowran as the Fool, Patrick Magee as Cornwall, Cyril Cusak as Albany, and Brook stalwart Robert Lloyd in the difficult roll of Edgar. The film was shot in Jutland, Denmark, during the winter, and the setting is as bleak and barren as Lear's eldest daughters' feelings for their confused father.Why is this film so rarely seen? It deserves a new, letter-boxed print, and it seems a project right up Criterion's alley. In the meantime, make the effort to find a copy. It's on DVD in England.

First of all, even though I didn't like this film, it certainly deserves a lot more than the 23 votes and one user review (mine) that it currently has. After all, we're talking about a film version of "King Lear!" Unfortunately, this version looks like someone slipped some heavy sedatives into the actors and didn't give them time to recover before filming started. Paul Scofield is undoubtedly a fine actor, but his version of "King Lear" strikes me as being too phlegmatic instead of choleric, the way I imagine Lear to be. On the other hand, maybe this play is just so tragic that it is way more difficult to stage than "Hamlet", "Julius Caesar" or "Macbeth". If this doesn't seem plausible, than just consider which one of the "Big Four" tragedies seems to be the least commonly staged and filmed. In "Hamlet," something is rotten in the state of Denmark; in "Lear" almost everything and everyone in the entire world is rotten. Is it possible for someone out there in Tinseltown to make a really epic film version of this epic tragedy? I don't know, but I'd certainly like to see Kenneth Branagh give it a try...