One of the giants of cinema, Dovzhenko or Renoir or Kurosawa, might have been able to wrestle almost four hours of film into something of infinite jest and excellent fancy. Hamlet has some astonishing sequences and Kenneth Branagh offers a fascinating character study of the poor Dane, but the film is a noble failure too often adrift within its 70mm frame.
Only a rogue and peasant slave would suggest there's skullduggery in Branagh's overkill of the classic. With his three-hour-and-58-minute interpretation of every blessed line in the text, it's a sad fact that this was a job for either a genius or a madman, and Branagh is neither.
He's a practical impresario presenting yet another passionate piece of theatre, but while Henry V was made simple and glorious by its tight budget and Much Ado About Nothing couldn't lose as a brightly lit Tuscan comedy, Hamlet is doubly cursed by both too much money and a surfeit of directorial fussing.
Shakespeare's most convoluted work, rich warehouse of words though it is, leaves Branagh hoist by his own petard. Somehow finding space for so many scenes and characters, the eager director can't resist filling in any blanks with flashbacks, as if he's ultimately unable to trust the immutable text. Thus Ophelia and Hamlet are graphically shown to be ferocious animals in bed, and Claudius is seen as keenly saddened that he has to pour poison in his brother's ear.
The first-act arrival of Hamlet's preternatural Pop to get things rolling is handled with enough clumsy theatricality to resemble Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky, and the special effects in a pre-battle scene just before intermission look like a rummage through the bargain bin at Matte City.
Interiors, on the other hand, are handled with a courtly grace. Hamlet's first soliloquy on his too, too solid flesh rings out in an empty hall of mirrors, and the "To be or not to be" speech is equally reflective.
Casting, always a problem with Branagh, is again uneven. Rather than take arms against the sea of troubles presented by too much plot, Branagh simply chooses to twiddle every knob on the character console, then prop it all up with non-stop underpinnings of especially menacing old music.
Polonius (Richard Briers) is now no pontificating fool but an oft-wise counsel of state. Claudius (Derek Jacobi) may have committed fratricide but he's not all bad. Kate Winslet's Ophelia is mad but can still somehow craft those floating garlands in the dead of winter, and Julie Christie's Gertrude seems to saw the air, all sound and no style.
Jack Lemmon is an odd choice for 3rd guard, looking far too old and tired to be on watch at the gate at Elsinore, but to his credit the lines come more trippingly than those of Gérard Depardieu (a monosyllabic Reynaldo), Robin Williams (a toy-soldier Osric), Nicholas Farrell (a mumble-mouthed Horatio) or Michael Maloney, particularly unsuitable as a Laertes more wild-eyed than Hamlet.
Only Billy Crystal and Charlton Heston pull off their brief star turns. Crystal gives his gravedigger the guts to do a Brooklyn accent complete with cigar, and Heston hands majesty to the player king.
As for Branagh himself, he has an easy assurance within the prince. When Hamlet is the jester, telling cruel truths to those around him, the actor gloweth ferociously. As madness descends on Elsinore, Branagh's portrayal of dementia is clear-headed in its intensity.
Like Clinton at that overly long inaugural, Branagh displays greatness despite his failings.
At the Varsity.
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