Plays and Movies

I really enjoyed our discussion last class about whether the scene we watched in class was an appropriation, interpretation, etc. of the play. I always just thought of a play being turned into a movie as something that wasn't able to be changed much because all of the lines were already given. From watching the movie in class and on the blog, I can see how, especially with Othello not having stage directions or detailed scenery, a director or producer can also take the words of the play and the scenes and portray them in the film very differently than another director or producer would.
Also, while watching the movie in class it was especially interesting to see, in comparison to the movie posted on the blog, how these specific directors chose to portray the play since Shakespeare chose not to leave stage directions. Noticing which lines the directors chose to leave out of the play was curious as well. I wasn't aware of how much of a difference it makes until I watched the version in class where Desdemona doesn't have her "not dead yet" moment.
In middle school we read Romeo and Juliet, and we also watched two versions of the movie. We watched the version with Leonardo DiCaprio in which the movie takes a very modern look at the play but keeps all the original dialogue, and we watched an older version in which the original dialogue is the same but a much more traditional view.
A Question to Think On:
Do you think Shakespeare purposefully left his play without stage directions so that it may be left up to interpretation; Did he want people to use their imagination or for the play to be timeless, to fit into any future culture?