Hamlet has never been quite as brisk and exciting as Kenneth Branagh makes it in his new movie version, even though he has chosen to adapt William Shakespeare's play at full length. The movie runs four hours, including a 20-minute intermission that comes well past halfway through the story of Denmark's ancient, anxious prince.
He's not quite as ancient as Shakespeare imagined him, since adapter and director Branagh has set the play in the 19th century. This means that Branagh, who stars as the melancholy Dane, and Derek Jacobi, who plays Hamlet's uncle (and step-father) Claudius, get to wear the sleek, handsome uniforms that you might expect to see on Douglas Fairbanks in The Prisoner of Zenda, all asparkle with brass and epaulets and tight breeches.
In fact the play has plenty of court intrigue, just like some 19th-century romantic adventure. There are dashing saber duels, plots aginst the crown, and the threat of foreign armies at the gate of the castle, which is itself played by the magnificent exterior of England's Blenheim Palace.
This infusion of Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling action is due also to Branagh's decision to true [sic] the complete text of the play. The short version of Hamlet that audiences are used to seeing, both on stage and screen, is stripped to its psychological core, omitting a great deal of the palace plotting.
Branagh emphasizes the political power struggles behind Hamlet's anger and indecision. The prince is outraged at his widowed mother Queen Gertrude, played by Julie Christie, who has remarried two months after her husband's death.
The king, played by burly Brian Blessed, is seen only in flashback and as the ghost who reveals to his son that he was murdered by his ambitious brother Claudius (Derek Jacobi). Now this villain has succeeded not only to Denmark's throne, but to the royal bed, and Hamlet swears to kill him, but cannot quite complete the deed.
Everyone knows this plot, of course, and the million-and-one priceless quotations from Shakespeare's text that have passed into the language. Branagh and his excellent cast give them all a fresh burst of energy. The soliloquy that begins "To be or not to be" is brilliantly staged in an ornate hall of state that is lined with mirrored doors. This is the handsome movie's principal set, and it is an eye-popping stage for everything from mad scenes to bloody sword fights.
The mad scenes fall on the shoulders of young Kate Winslet, who plays Ophelia, Hamlet's lover, with a new urgency and touching passion (director Branagh even throws in a couple of nude love scenes).
Though most of the cast is British, there are some typical Branagh attempts at stunt casting American stars. There's nothing wrong with Jack Lemmon's performance in the small role of a palace guard who spots the king's ghost - he's distracting just because he is Jack Lemmon. And Robin Williams seems baffled about how to behave as the comic courtier Osric. Billy Crystal, on the other hand, shows spirited assurance playing the gravedigger.
Best of all is Charlton Heston as the player king. It has never been a stretch for Heston to play an old ham actor, but he brings considerably more depth to the role, and rises to the level of Kate Winslet's Ophelia and of Richard Briers, who makes her father Polonius into a much wilier character than graces most productions. French star Gerard Depardieu makes a cameo appearance too, as the agent of Polonius.
Branagh's adaptation and direction of this Hamlet are so ingenious and enjoyable that it seems a bit churlish to note that his own performance as the prince has its ups and downs. He is brilliant and provocative in the Dane's small moments but whenever called upon to raise his voice in some great speech (just before the intermission in particular), Branagh lapses into less than inspired showboating.
Considering his accomplishment in bringing a fresh and lively perspective to this most familiar of all the world's great plays, he hardly needs to preen so conspicuously in any scene. Lucky for him and us, there are few of those moments in a four-hour evening that flies by.
Hamlet is rated PG-13 (contains some violence with blood, a little Elizabethan bawdy talk, and brief nudity).
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