Director: Oliver Parker – 125 minutes – Year: 1995

The value of this film lies in its reminder of the power of Shakespeare's plays. In this adaptation, the importance of plots where a single dramatic action governs the story's destiny becomes clear. Thus, the betrayal orchestrated by the character of Iago sets in motion the machinery of jealousy that culminates in the tragedy that defines the film. It is then worth asking whether the protagonist of the play is the cunning Iago, or the confused and manipulated Othello.

The critics said in 1996
Written by Casimiro Torreiro for the Spanish newspaper El País:
http://elpais.com/diario/1996/03/14/cultura/826758002_850215.html

Othello speaks of the devastating nature of feelings, of the social and emotional inferiority experienced by someone of another race living among strangers; of the role of women as mere commodities in the dealings between men. This version by Parker, to use more contemporary language, also serves to remind us that this passive role as commodities is a consequence of women's subordinate position within patriarchal society, a social construct shaped, among other things, to make their ignorance of feminine values more bearable and to enthrone ambition and violence as supreme values.

Desdemona, Othello, and Iago thus personify so many victims of a value system based on the mirage of power: Iago corrupts the pure love of Othello, a primal man who is ignorant of the subtlety of feelings but who experiences his own with volcanic intensity. And Desdemona is the lamb sacrificed on the altar of that ambition.