Every year, Fabio Cavalli directs plays inside a maximum-security prison in Rome, starring murderers, drug traffickers and Mafia lowlife. The directors of Caesar Must Die, brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, record one such production, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But the film isn’t actually a documentary because much of the action is staged and one of the actors, although once an inmate, is now a professional actor. This mixing of genres seems to have upset some reviewers, but it didn’t bother me. The portrayal of the personalities of the confined prisoners is, for me, merely a supplement to the fact that Julius Caesar is just one great play.
