Hamlet
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Movie Reviews of Hamlet
Movie Review: Solid and interesting
Summary: 5 Stars
Each detail is worked in to the modern setting brilliantly. The camera work is excellent. The actors perform well and deliver the classic dialogue in a genuine manner. Top to bottom this is a solid film, an interesting adaptation, and is probably as entertaining and thought provoking as the material was intended to be by its sublime author in 1601.Movie Review: Absolutely Superb
Summary: 5 Stars
The cinematography is first rate. The casting was spot on. The performances are sterling. The soundtrack was riveting.
The film is highly recommended.
This is at least the third motion picture rendition I have seen on "Hamlet". It far surpasses the others.
Movie Review: The lead actor is superb
Summary: 5 Stars
I like all versions of this classic and, this is one of my favorites--the ending is not accurate to Shakespeare's original, but...who cares...Movie Review: "TO BE" in my DVD Collection Forever
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent delivery service / brand new dvd...it' a keeper!Movie Review: Much better than might be expected
Summary: 4 Stars
Some reviewers have complained about the acting and the casting for this modern dress Hamlet. Clearly Bill Murray as Polonius is something of a joke. He is competent in speaking his lines, but he might have achieved a better effect had he played the part for laughs. (Although The Bard certainly would not have liked that.) Polonius is paradoxically a figure of ridicule because of his pomposity while at the same time he is the repository of some ancient wisdom. It's a delicate part to play and I don't think Bill Murray got it right.
And then there is Julia Stiles as Ophelia. I thought she was competent, but failed to project the sort of distracted, suicidal imbalance that the part demands. And why didn't they let her sing the ditty instead of just pronouncing it before the king and queen in the mad scene? If Stiles can't sing a little (and it only requires the thinnest of voices) maybe she shouldn't have played Ophelia.
Kyle MacLachlan played Claudius as an Enron-type CEO, merciless in his greed and malevolent in his desire to secure his hold on the corporate reins of power. The prayerful scene (overheard by Hamlet) in which Claudius remarks aloud that his "words fly up," but his "thoughts remain below" is done in the backseat of a limo driven by Hamlet! In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet does not kill the king at that moment because Claudius's soul might very well go to heaven since he is in prayer. Recall that the ghost of Hamlet's father complains that he was murdered with "no reckoning made," but with all his "imperfections" (sins) still upon his head.
Most questionable to some is Ethan Hawke as the "sweet prince." But I thought he did an excellent job and was very like a 21st century, privileged American (a secular "prince") pretending to be going crazy. And I am sure that the Ophelias in the audience thought he was just wonderful.
Certainly there can be little criticism of Diane Venora who played Gertrude to a tee. Incidentally the queen's chamber scene worked wonderfully well with Hawke becoming well the son disgusted with his mother, and she, seeing her tragic failings in her son's eyes, becoming the very embodiment of shame.
I also liked Karl Geary as Hamlet's loyal friend Horatio. I thought it was interesting that here he has a silent girlfriend who is almost always with him. (She's silent because Shakespeare wrote no lines for her!)
But putting all that aside, what I think is wonderful about this production is that it worked! Modern Hamlet in New York City, the "king" really the CEO of a Danish corporation, the kingdom, that corporation, the castle, its New York corporate headquarters. How simple. But would it play? And what adjustments and cuts and pastes would have to be performed on Shakespeare's immortal script? Well, practically none. A lot was cut out, but almost all productions of Hamlet leave out a lot, c.f., Olivier's Academy Award-winning film from 1948; Zeffirelli's 1989 Hamlet light starring Mel Gibson, etc. The most notable exception is Branagh's magnificent Hamlet from 1996 in which nary a word was cut from the text of the play. If you really want to experience Shakespeare's Hamlet at its best and fullest, see that Hamlet from 1996 starring Kenneth Branagh, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie and Derek Jacobi. You can read along as you watch it. (See my review.)
Here we have selected speeches played over a backdrop of modern life in the Big Apple. Every word is from Shakespeare with the exception of a couple of things seen on TV. A security guard plays Marcellus; Fortinbras' army in the background is a rival corporation seen in newspaper headlines; the drape behind which the ill-fated counselor hides only to be stabbed by Hamlet becomes here a hotel closet with mirror through which Hamlet fires a bullet so that Polonius becomes indeed "still."
There is a sword fight at the end as in the great play, between Laertes (Liev Schreiber, who brings some welcome subtlety to the role) and Hamlet. It seems natural in a sense because both privileged young men could have taken fencing at prep school and university. There is no bubbling brook across which Ophelia lies. Instead she finds her quietus in the hotel's fountain.
The graveyard scene in which the skull of "Yorick--I knew him" is unearthed is skipped over, probably because the tit-for-tat between Hamlet and the gravedigger would not make much sense to modern audiences. (Laertes still jumps into Ophelia's grave, but I must say without the full bravado that Shakespeare intended.)
I guess I liked this more than others because I expected a lot less and was pleasantly surprised. Part of the power of the production comes from the close camera work on the faces of the players--something that surely would have delighted Elizabethan audiences--particularly when listening to some of the longer speeches. The trick in all of this is to make the Shakespearean speeches sound natural and very like what people today might say. I thought that Michael Almereyda, who wrote the adaptation and directed, pulled this off very well.
For those of you who are high school teachers, I highly recommend that you show this to your classes. It will definitely help your students toward an appreciation of this great and timeless play. (And then show them the Branagh film.)