#o 2001

anyways i can only assume that the 2.9 rating on letterboxd is because people wanted it to be a stupidsilly movie bc it's set in high school and has teenaged characters, but "O" 2001 is actually an incredibly thoughtful and provocative adaptation of Othello that understands the themes of the original well enough to build on and play with them. it's got truth, reputation, nature, jealousy, it's got it all. most importantly, it captures both the disgust and the sympathy you necessarily feel for Othello without compromising either. it knows you Have to have both or else you become complicit in Iago/Hugo's narrative. AND it does all that even through a noticable shift in framework!!! in modernizing the themes of racism and misogyny, it shifts the focus from personal violence perpetuated by and through racial stigma to systemic violence perpetuated through personal vendettas, and somehow it doesn't sacrifice anything along the way. it allows O to be complicit in the violence, and then it makes damn sure the curtain is drawn back on whose nature he's reflecting. and this isn't a scene for scene, line for line adaptation, which makes it all the more incredible, because the writer understood the story well enough to tell the same story again without using any of the same words. literally nothing will ever be as compelling as O's last scene, and this is maybe the best Othello adaptation ever made, source: trust me bro.