1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 35: Hamlet
Today is even colder and snowier, so it’s good to review an especially wintry movie: Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.
This is the *biggest* Hamlet. All of Shakespeare’s lines are delivered in just over four hours, often at breakneck speed. I doubt anyone could follow the story who didn’t already know it. (Of course, people do know it.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Jack Lemmon appears in the first scene. He plays a watchman. We can guess there will be a parade of cameos in the manner of Around the World in 80 Days.
King Claudius – jolly, chipmunk-cheeked Derek Jacobi – addresses his court. In the crowd are many familiar faces. Bright-eyed Ophelia (Kate Winslet) is easy to spot. Queen Gertrude (Julie Christie) beams at Claudius’s side.
Then the camera swings over to Hamlet, who stands apart, in shadow. Branagh is well into his thirties, but he looks like a high school sophomore. His hair is bleached blond. He wears a peacoat, tight pants, and boots – all black, of course.
Claudius ends his speech; confetti rains down; courtiers depart; Hamlet stays to soliloquize. At this point, we expect Walter Matthau to come pushing the confetti with a large broom. (He doesn’t.)
I cannot do justice to the character of Hamlet, or to this production. Roger Ebert reviews it more insightfully than I ever could. I think he is right about three things: (1) Hamlet himself is incredibly complex; (2) it is therefore profitable to look at other characters first; and (3) this unabridged production lends itself well to this task.
Murder, to one so judicious as Claudius, is acceptable; what is not is the systematic violation of decorum. Hamlet is too uncouth and, therefore, too dangerous. He must be done away with.
(Daddy Hamlet, played by that ogre, Brian Blessed, seems to have been downright wild.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as clueless as people usually imagine them to be (no doubt because of the “spinoff” dramas by W.S. Gilbert and Tom Stoppard)? These two characters are puzzled by their friend Hamlet; but then, almost everybody is. In this movie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are no more foolish than other “men of the world.” It’s natural that they should take their orders from Claudius.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
What of Ophelia, the supporting character that Hamlet loves best – and who suffers most – and whose destruction is most painful to behold? Is she wronged by Hamlet? Is she to blame for her suicide?
Given her continued association with Polonius – and, by extension, Claudius – what choice has Hamlet but to reject her?
That she is blameless is the propaganda of the court. The two commoners who dig her grave are not fooled. They judge her thus (I reproduce a paraphrase; the first speaker is played by Billy Crystal, who is in fine form):
I’ll stop here, having said nothing of Hamlet’s famous indecisiveness, or of his charisma, or the father-son relationship, or the Christ-parallels that Branagh makes visually explicit. “Of making many books [about Hamlet] there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Also: Of watching Hamlet movies there is no end. It took several weeks to get through this movie, and I confess I was bored at first. But by Act Five I was rooting devotedly for the twerp – and expecting to read and watch a great deal more of Hamlet.
This is the *biggest* Hamlet. All of Shakespeare’s lines are delivered in just over four hours, often at breakneck speed. I doubt anyone could follow the story who didn’t already know it. (Of course, people do know it.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Jack Lemmon appears in the first scene. He plays a watchman. We can guess there will be a parade of cameos in the manner of Around the World in 80 Days.
King Claudius – jolly, chipmunk-cheeked Derek Jacobi – addresses his court. In the crowd are many familiar faces. Bright-eyed Ophelia (Kate Winslet) is easy to spot. Queen Gertrude (Julie Christie) beams at Claudius’s side.
Then the camera swings over to Hamlet, who stands apart, in shadow. Branagh is well into his thirties, but he looks like a high school sophomore. His hair is bleached blond. He wears a peacoat, tight pants, and boots – all black, of course.
Claudius ends his speech; confetti rains down; courtiers depart; Hamlet stays to soliloquize. At this point, we expect Walter Matthau to come pushing the confetti with a large broom. (He doesn’t.)
I cannot do justice to the character of Hamlet, or to this production. Roger Ebert reviews it more insightfully than I ever could. I think he is right about three things: (1) Hamlet himself is incredibly complex; (2) it is therefore profitable to look at other characters first; and (3) this unabridged production lends itself well to this task.
The movie’s very sets emphasize the role of the throne as the center of the kingdom.Yes.
The role of Claudius … is especially enriched: In shorter versions, he is the scowling usurper who functions only as villain. Here, with lines and scenes restored, he seems more balanced and powerful. He might have made a plausible king of Denmark, had things turned out differently. Yes, he killed his brother, but regicide was not unknown in medieval times, and perhaps the old king was ripe for replacement; this production shows Gertrude … as lustfully in love with Claudius. By restoring the original scope of Claudius’s role, Branagh emphasizes court and political intrigue instead of enclosing the material in a Freudian hothouse.Amen, amen. The less the play is abridged, the better we understand this competent, worldly ruler. It’s his bad luck that his nephew and heir is such a twerp. Or so Hamlet must seem to those who are comfortable with “business as usual.”
Murder, to one so judicious as Claudius, is acceptable; what is not is the systematic violation of decorum. Hamlet is too uncouth and, therefore, too dangerous. He must be done away with.
(Daddy Hamlet, played by that ogre, Brian Blessed, seems to have been downright wild.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as clueless as people usually imagine them to be (no doubt because of the “spinoff” dramas by W.S. Gilbert and Tom Stoppard)? These two characters are puzzled by their friend Hamlet; but then, almost everybody is. In this movie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are no more foolish than other “men of the world.” It’s natural that they should take their orders from Claudius.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
What of Ophelia, the supporting character that Hamlet loves best – and who suffers most – and whose destruction is most painful to behold? Is she wronged by Hamlet? Is she to blame for her suicide?
Given her continued association with Polonius – and, by extension, Claudius – what choice has Hamlet but to reject her?
That she is blameless is the propaganda of the court. The two commoners who dig her grave are not fooled. They judge her thus (I reproduce a paraphrase; the first speaker is played by Billy Crystal, who is in fine form):
GRAVEDIGGER: Are they really going to give her a Christian burial after she killed herself?This is one of the easiest passages to follow, even in Shakespeare’s language. There is no hurrying through the lines; the whole play is slowed down for this scene, which begins humorously and then turns profound when Hamlet regards the skull of an old friend. He considers that beautiful women and mighty kings also must return to dust:
OTHER: I’m telling you, yes. So finish that grave right away. The coroner examined her case and says it should be a Christian funeral.
GRAVEDIGGER: But how, unless she drowned in self-defense?
OTHER: That’s what they’re saying she did.
GRAVEDIGGER: Sounds more like “self-offense,” if you ask me. What I’m saying is, if she knew she was drowning herself, then that’s an act. An act has three sides to it: to do, to act, and to perform. Therefore she must have known she was drowning herself.
OTHER: No, listen here, gravedigger sir –
GRAVEDIGGER: Let me finish. Here’s the water, right? And here’s a man, okay? If the man goes into the water and drowns himself, he’s the one doing it, like it or not. But if the water comes to him and drowns him, then he doesn’t drown himself. Therefore, he who is innocent of his own death does not shorten his own life.
OTHER: Is that how the law sees it?
GRAVEDIGGER: It sure is. The coroner’s inquest law.
OTHER: Do you want to know the truth? If this woman hadn’t been rich, she wouldn’t have been given a Christian burial.
GRAVEDIGGER: Well there, now you’ve said it. It’s a pity that the rich have more freedom to hang or drown themselves than the rest of us Christians. Come on, shovel. The most ancient aristocrats in the world are gardeners, ditch-diggers, and gravediggers. They keep up Adam’s profession.
OTHER: Was he an aristocrat? With a coat of arms?
GRAVEDIGGER: He was the first person who ever had arms. …
Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,That such thoughts are ever before him is what makes Hamlet too undecorous, too unworldly, to be like Claudius and the rest. His sense of inevitable corruption makes him incorruptible.
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
I’ll stop here, having said nothing of Hamlet’s famous indecisiveness, or of his charisma, or the father-son relationship, or the Christ-parallels that Branagh makes visually explicit. “Of making many books [about Hamlet] there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Also: Of watching Hamlet movies there is no end. It took several weeks to get through this movie, and I confess I was bored at first. But by Act Five I was rooting devotedly for the twerp – and expecting to read and watch a great deal more of Hamlet.