I don't generally get in on the on-line film reviews, but since I've yet to see one for Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet I'm going to jump right in.
First off: the length. On the outside, the four-hour plus running time seemed a bit daunting. But amazingly, for me anyway, the time flew by. The pace of this production is at a fever pitch almost the entire time. Even during the longer speeches, the actors are on the go. To me, the time seemed much shorter than the eternity that I had to sit through Mel Gibson's version from a few years ago.
Branagh seems made for Shakespeare. His non-Shakespeare roles always seem to lack something, but when he dons the Bard, he's unmatched. He brings the words to life--the language seems to roll off of his tongue as though that's just the way he speaks in real life. If only the same could be said for Jack Lemmon--but more on that in a bit.
First the positives:
One of the best things about seeing the full-length version was spending more time with Ophelia. In the versions I had seen before I always thought that she was a weak point. I mean she's a perfectly normal girl, her boyfriend says a few mean things to her, then she goes nuts? I always had trouble with why she would lose it. But this is because her part is always cut down from what Shakespeare had intended. This version gives you the full feel of the mental abuses which are constantly grinding on her, wearing her down. So that you feel it when the final straw snaps and she falls into madness.
I also loved Richard Briers' reading of Polonius. He came across as a crafty, evil hypocrite. Generally, Polonius is played as a bumbling doddering fool. His speeches ramble on babblingly because the man--though he thinks himself wise--is in fact a complete idiot. But Briers gives the impression of a more intelligent, but vilely shrewder Polonius. Although he is still a fool, he is a much shrewder, more vile, and downright evil fool. I suppose that rather than call him an idiot, you would call him a bastard. The reason that his speeches go on is that he is a know-it-all. Rather than being an idiot who doesn't know when to shut up, he is talking down to people who he sees as his mental inferiors, and therefore seems to think that lengthy explanations are necessary to get across his wisdom to these simpletons. This was a different interpretation of any I've seen before, and I thought it made his character much more interesting than the babbling idiot we usually see.
Robin Williams, though only in the film for the blink of an eye, was hilarious for that blink of an eye. And speaking of American comedians, Billy Crystal was unexpectedly wry as the gravedigger--no Billy Crystal mugging in this part, but still quite funny.
And finally, the ending, which is one of Shakespeare's most depressingly best, is well-done in this version. You really feel the dispair [sic] as, after all of this, everything comes crushing down on all of the main characters.
The only real bad points in my opinion were 1.) the few scenes in which the camera goes swooping round and round the actors in that frenetic whirling style that made Branagh's version of Frankenstein so incredibly annoying (well, it was one of the things which made Branagh's Frankenstein so annoying...); 2.) Jack Lemmon seemed to have a bit of a difficulty with speaking Shakespeare; and 3.) I have never liked the scoring of Patrick Doyle (who has, I believe, done all of Branagh's films)--his music often seems to be calling up an emotion much different than the emotions in the scene. But these were minor faults in an otherwise enjoyable film experience.
So my review? A great film. At four-plus hours, there were ample opportunities for this sucker to bog down. Yet, surprisingly, it seems to have fewer faults than many films of half its length. Branagh is dead-on as the Dane, and all of the cast (except one) are incredibly good as well. Oh, and I forgot to mention the cinematography is quite beautiful as well. All adding up to the best four-plus-hour movie I've seen in a long time.
Back to Hamlet reviews.