Michael Hoffman's 1999 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream transports the drama's action from ancient Athens to an imaginary Italian village named Monte Athena at the turn of the nineteenth century. In this rendition of the play, Duke Theseus isn't a conquering hero but a tired and seemingly ineffectual bureaucrat. Similarly, Hippolyta, his bride-to-be, isn't the powerful Queen of the Amazons, but a bland, yet beautiful, Victorian feminist. In transporting the play's action, Hoffman seems to have erased the drama's magic and vibrancy, leaving an insipid film, overloaded with Victorian gadgetry. As the film's opening narrative announces, bustles are out and bicycles are in; thus, the lovers chase each other madly through the woods on bicycles, their tooting horns providing a constant, jarring racket to the performance. Even the boisterous Bottom, the errant weaver, and the magical fairy kingdom have lost their charm. This film rips away the drama's magical, gossamer wings, leaving a dull, earthbound husk in their place.
Somehow this version of the play manages to disperse even Bottom's free flowing exuberance. While Shakespeare's Bottom is a bluff, self-assured, and good-hearted clown, Hoffman presents a self-conscious, easily disappointed Bottom. Kevin Kline's rendition of this working-class character seems out-of-place with his fellow working men when he arrives on the scene in a three-piece suit — gone is Bottom's sensual, down-to-earth appeal. In a scene added by Hoffman, a group of boisterous young men pour wine over Bottom as he does an impromptu performance on the street; Kline's Bottom is humiliated, rendered a laughing stock among his village folk in a self-conscious manner that doesn't fit with the play's more complex presentation of Bottom. Another odd addition to the play is Bottom's wife. This shrewish woman judgmentally watches her husband as he performs for the crowds and disgustedly dismisses her husband following the scene in which he is drenched with wine. Once again, Hoffman creates an angst-ridden Bottom whose character does not reflect the original text.
