The new four-hour, 70mm, big screen version of Hamlet is a once-in-a-lifetime experience which is probably just as well. Purists will go gaga over a rare chance to see Shakespeare's ghostly domestic drama performed in its entirety. Everyone else may prefer to wait for the two-hour version which opens in three weeks.
You have to admire director Branagh's zeal. He swears he hasn't cut a word from the original text (and a quick quiz seems to prove him right). This purity is obviously a plus for lovers of the Bard but something of a burden in the first two hours.
The problem here is that a) there's little actual action, it's mostly relationship-setting and chat about recent key events - the death of Hamlet's father (Brian Blessed) and the swift remarriage of his mother (Christie) to his venal uncle (Jacobi); and b) much of the verbiage consists of long monologues with little repartee.
This is fine when the actors are as skilled as Branagh (an undoubted genius at portraying Shakespeare on screen - his Iago in Othello is still one of the best). But the monologues clunk with awkward supporting actors like Jack Lemmon, as soldier Marcellus, and the colourless and far too old-looking Michael Maloney who plays Ophelia's brother Laertes.
Ah, the age thing. Branagh's Hamlet is a more haggard, distracted-looking chap with none of the testosterone-charged aggressiveness which made Mel Gibson's 1990 offering such a treat. But to balance that, Branagh's steamy scenes with Winslet's passionate Ophelia have even more poignancy: this older Hamlet has no time for love.
And there are gems from unexpected sources: jovial-looking Briers makes his Polonius, Ophelia's father, downright creepy in later scenes, with more than a suggestion of overly-sour possessiveness where his daughter is concerned. That's the real bonus of seeing this Hamlet uncut: Branagh reveals things often discarded in movie versions or even on stage. He really plays up the impending attack by Fortinbras (a satisfyingly menacing performance from Cold Comfort Farm heart-throb Rufus Sewell).
There are other treats: Gerard Depardieu swaggers casually and slurrily through as servant Reynaldo and Billy Crystal is very funny as the First Gravedigger, sensibly using inflection, not over pronunciation like some of his too proper co-stars. Robin Williams swishes through as a camp Osric, too buffoonish to truly amuse.
And the film looks wonderful. Branagh has staged his Hamlet as a late 19th century saga and the Austro-Prussian costumes are exquisite. Ophelia's demise is truly tragic thanks to English rose Winslet and the whole thing winds up with, if not a bang, a fairly satisfying rumble. If it never feels nearly as energised as the recent Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare lovers surely won't care.
Rating 7/10
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