Review Grade: B
Just out of curiosity, I looked up Hamlet in my ever handy Halliwell's Film Guide. Leading off is Laurence Olivier's 1948 version, which earned him the Academy Award as best actor while taking the award as best picture for itself. It weighed in at 142 minutes. The Russian Hamlet of 1964 lasted 150 minutes. Tony Richardson did another English version in 1969, starring Nicol Williamson, at 119 minutes. The Americans tried in 1991 with Mel Gibson starring in Franco Zeffirelli's reading of something cheesy in the state of Denmark, which dithered on for 135 minutes. One version I was not familiar with: Hamlet Liikermaailmassa (Yes, the double i, a and s is correct), a 1987 Finnish entry oddly translated for non-Finnish-speaking audiences as Hamlet Goes Business, the story of intrigue for control not of Denmark, but of a rubber duck factory. It was only 86 minutes long. If you have tears to shed, sweet Bard...
Enter Ireland. Center stage Kenneth Branagh with his 238-minute assault on the senses, outlasting those other, mere mortal efforts by an hour and a half. This four-hour ordeal, plus welcome intermission, passes as quickly and gracefully as a winter at Elsinore. The film opened in New York on Christmas Day, just in time to qualify for the Academy Awards this year--which, it was hoped, might give it a second life at the box office.
Its initial release was extremely limited, understandably so since theater operators cannot make money with a movie that admits only two sets of ticket-buying patrons per day. Throughout the dark months of winter, Hamlet seeped into the market for "limited engagements" at small art theaters around the country; but, sadly, the marketing plans that relied on a boost from Oscar nominations never materialized. Mr. Branagh himself was nominated for Best Script Adaptation, which, considering the co-author, would have been a bit of an embarrassment to anyone else. To be fair, the film received generally positive end deferential reviews.
As a card-carrying literary snob, once and future English teacher, monstrously inept but persistent mimic of Shakespeare's majestic cadences, Hibernophile and general fan of Kenneth Branagh, I rejoiced when Hamlet oozed into a local theater during a slow week, when I had the time to take on a new life's work. Why am I the only knave of the realm to cast crumbs of rage 'pon tranquil seas of flattery and thus put bile to the tongue of sycophants? In brief, I didn't like it very much, but it took me a while to figure out why.
Length is a factor, of course, but some long films create a world of imagination in which time is immaterial. Think of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia at 221 minutes or Gone With the Wind at 220. In Hamlet however, the length becomes a negative factor, not in terms of lost circulation in the lower extremities and extra quarters in the parking meter, but because it reflects an unresolved fundamental conflict in the artistic media. The poetry simply does not fit on the screen. It competes with the cascade of images, leaving one exhausted and longing for a respite. Fatigue of mind and imagination as well as of body stretches hours into eons.
More concretely, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a supreme example of the play of introspection. The poet brilliantly constructs his lines and situations to bring his audience into the mind of a young prince confused by life and tortured by his inability to make his world right again. A gifted actor on a bare stage speaking lines of unparalleled power and beauty opens the character's alternating spasms of confusion and resolve. Even reading the poetry privately engages one in the pain of Hamlet's self-inflicted dilemmas.
Movies, by contrast, don't do that type of soul-searching very well. Film is a medium of action, of epic scope and visual symbol. Words have their place, of course, but the dialogue must fit the images; and dialogue, even lengthy verbal exchanges, provides interludes to explain motivation for action.
By refusing to cut the play to fit the screen, Kenneth Branagh reverses the natural order. He deliberately chose to include all Shakespeare's magnificent language, with the result that much of the film consists in talking heads, very articulate heads to be sure, but still dreadfully static. He uses extreme close-ups to suggest the relationship between the words and the interior lives of the characters, but the lengthy takes invite an orthodontic inspection of Charlton Heston's pointy lowers and Jack Lemmon's impeccable, if oversized, porcelain uppers. Mr. Branagh's extended soliloquies, also done largely in tight close-ups, thrust his face at the groundlings, and his loud, Dolby-enhanced, sputtering rendition of the lines suggest that his immense head may be ready to detonate. On a stage, where there is some distance between actor and audience, the passion would be mesmerizing. On the screen it warns of an explosive spray of spittle over the first five rows.
Mr. Branagh surely realized this intrinsic conflict between stage poetry and film action when he first resolved to bring Hamlet to the screen. He added a few action scenes, some of which inject the visual action that the film so sorely needs, and others seem more interpolations that lengthen the film with few added benefits. The opening wedding scene features a spectacular procession of the court and ends with a shower of confetti as the newlyweds leave the chamber. It's extravagant, but it works. Later, Hamlet meets his ghostly father in the woods, and the ground belches infernal steam like a good--or not so good--Roger Corman horror movie.
The special effects fulfill established Hollywood conventions for chaffing with the undead, but at best it is a distraction, at worst a jarring parody of lesser films. On stage, such visual pyrotechnics would not be necessary. In film they are, but in Branagh's Hamlet, which remains essentially a stage play, they don't fit. Branagh ladled action on top of the words without integrating them. The result is length, not artistry.
Another marketing strategy led Mr. Branagh to cast familiar faces to draw the curious to the box office, and for the most part these name actors fare surprisingly well in unfamiliar Shakespearean territory. In the opening scene, Julie Christie, as Queen Gertrude, has few lines and spends the first several minutes smiling uncomfortably at the camera, but as the drama builds up its own momentum, she becomes quite effective in her conundrum, torn as she is between son and husband. Charlton Heston, with his patented grimace, radiates strength and dignity as the Player King. Billy Crystal has a small part as the cynical grave digger, but his brash screen personality fits the character perfectly. Robin Williams, as Osric, appears only in the final scenes, keeps his frenetic energy in check and becomes a competent but understandably nervous referee for the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes.
In contrast, poor Jack Lemmon, a splendid film actor who should have known better, is embarrassingly miscast and misdirected in the role of Marcellus, the guard. No longer credible as a soldier hardened by lengthy service in many Scandanavian winter campaigns, he should display his whistling orthodontic splendors as an aging undertaker pondering retirement, or if he must be in Hamlet, then he should be courtier or diplomat, not a soldier. Richard Attenborough, Gerard Depardieu, Rosemary Harry (sic) and John Gielgud walk on and off so quickly that one scarcely notices their teeth, or anything else about them.
The more experienced Shakespeareans are uniformly excellent. Kenneth Branagh stresses Hamlet's frenetic energy over quiet introspection. Perhaps this was inevitable. Branagh the writer chose not to cut Shakespeare. Thus Branagh the director was forced to infuse cinematic life into the long voyage into the interior of the character by having Branagh the actor provide a pyrotechnic performance to move things along with some energy. His Hamlet is more impulsive than perplexed, a valid but disappointing reading of the part. Derek Jacobi brings vast experience to his role as Claudius. He seems to fade into the background as a King who is elegant, shrewd and devious, and who does not want to give his enemies any target to attack. It is a masterly performance. Kate Winslet makes Ophelia not only beautiful, but in turn passionate and vulnerable. In the near future, she should become a major figure on the British and American stage, with or without the help of Jane Austen and William Shakespeare.
The sets and costumes are sumptuous, and the cinematography of Alex Thomson makes of them a visual feast. This is an extremely handsome film, but again, the very beauty clashes with the content. Shakespeare set his play in a dreary northern climate, not sunny Italy, and dressed his prince in "customary suits of solemn black," since he understood the somber mood of the action. This filmed version uses the traditional black costume mainly to set Hamlet apart from the white and crimson attire of the other courtiers.
The standard film histories give us more to ponder than the sheer tonnage of this current Hamlet. For the first 50 years of film making, including the first 20 years of the sound era, I could find no reference to a filmed Hamlet. That is astonishing, since in the "film d'art" era after the turn of the century, early "prestige" film makers captured celebrities like Caruso and Bernhardt on film, doing their thing in absolute silence! Perhaps those daring experimenters realized that the Great Dane would be a dog on film and wisely passed. Olivier took up the challenge and succeeded, but he cut the play to the size of the screen.
Branagh has been more faithful to the text, but in so doing has "the engineer hoist on his own petard." Fidelity to the text of the play has undermined the integrity of the film. At least he did not include the rubber duck factory.
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