On 21 January 1997, Kenneth Branagh's film version of Hamlet received its United Kingdom premiere at the newly opened Waterfront Hall in Belfast. It was an important event, as the audience was able to appreciate Branagh's four-hour realization of Shakespeare's play in a spectacular chrome and glass environment, a manifestation of the prosperity that has come to Belfast in the wake of the peace process. But the occasion also provided an opportunity to reflect upon the achievement of this extraordinary actor and director. If, in Britain, Branagh has been maligned for his "populist" readings of Shakespeare, film critics in the United States have praised him for his reworking of Renaissance theatrical traditions and acute cinematic intelligence.1 In this essay, I will discuss the numerous virtues and isolated infelicities of Branagh's Hamlet in an attempt to discriminate between these judgments. While paying close attention to the film's textual sensitivity, I will also concentrate upon the "cunning" (or "art") of its "scene" (or representational devices).
I
Perhaps the most impressive element of the film is Branagh's performance as Hamlet, played in such a way as to bring out the multiple dimensions of a tortured psyche. Thus, from a grieving son lurking in the shadows at the start, Branagh moves to an explosive "man of action" in the later scenes, a knowing impersonator of madness and a theatrically dynamic presence. While Branagh clearly points up a personality-based and romantic reading of Shakespeare's play, the film is arguably more obviously dominated by its political resonances. For this Hamlet constructs Denmark as a militaristic state. Already in the opening scenes, there are glimpses of preparations for war; Hamlet strides through an arsenal on his way to encounter the ghost; and displays of fencing practice punctuate the narrative, fore-shadowing the catastrophic conclusion. It is to Branagh's credit that he has restored to Hamlet its military subtexts, and the film does not hesitate to demonstrate the extent to which Denmark's power is dependent upon the cooperation of a gallery of soldierly underlings--Rosencrantz (Timothy Spall) and Guildenstern (Reece Dinsdale) wear regimental sashes; guards invade Ophelia's chamber; and the grave digger (Billy Crystal) arranges skulls side-by-side with all the precision of a campaigning general. Nor is this merely an extraneous interpretation. The play abounds in marital rhetoric, as when Claudius enjoins the "kettle to the trumpet speak,/The trumpet to the cannoneer without,/The cannons to the heavens" (V.ii.272-74). Branagh takes his cue from the specific orientation of Shakespeare's text in a persuasive reconsideration of the material bases upon which Elsinore's preeminence is founded.
It is part of the versatility of the film's representational scheme that Branagh also develops the Fortinbras sub-plot, which is so often omitted from modern productions. Frequent use is made of parallel montage whereby the "scene" cuts between unfolding wrangles at Elsinore and the relentless advances of Fortinbras's army. At one point, newspaper headlines are deployed to highlight the threat of the Norwegian commander, played with an icy implacability by Rufus Sewell. As the film progresses, it would seem as if there is every justification for the nervousness of the sentry who patrols the castle's gates.
The "cunning" of the film's representational devices can be apprehended no less forcibly in set design and staging procedures. Joel Fineman's work on fratricide and cuckoldry has established the importance of Hamlet's "doubling" structures and assessment and mirrored arrangements. Branagh's Hamlet fits well with this assessment, since its interior scenes take place in a state hall lined with windows and mirrored doors. In such a setting, Hamlet is forced to confront reflections of himself, such as Claudius (Derek Jacobi), who, with his blonde hair and clipped beard, bears an uncanny resemblance to Branagh's Dane. The points of contact between the characters are also incestuously underlined when Hamlet pushes Ophelia (Kate Winslet) against one of the hall's mirrors, not realizing that Claudius and Polonius are hidden behind it. Branagh himself has observed that the set was intended to suggest "a vain world ... looking in on itself ... that seems confident and open but conceals corruption" (qtd. in LoMonico 6). It is a bold and critically current view, and one for which there is considerable textual support. Once again, Branagh is keen to place a visual slant upon the concerns of the text, and this imperative is ably demonstrated in the presentation of a court, which, as it contemplates its own self image, faces only an inevitable decline.
To the broad brush strokes of the design can be added the nuanced local effects with which the film abounds. As the "cunning" of the film is displayed in its overall montage, so is it revealed in a spectrum of more specialized scenic details and connections. First, several fresh areas of meaning come into play in images of domestic intimacy. After an assignation with a prostitute, Polonius (Richard Briers) dresses himself to tutor Reynaldo (Gerard Depardieu) in the art of surveillance, which makes an intriguing link with the following scene where Ophelia describes Hamlet's appearance before her "with all his doublet all unbrac'd" (II.i.78). As she recovers upon her father's bed, it is implied that Ophelia has been abused by Hamlet and will be prostituted by her brothel-frequenting father. Second, the density of scenic business reinforces the narrative continuum and creates unexpected poetic correspondences. Claudius and Laertes (Michael Maloney) quaff brandy together as they plot Hamlet's downfall. Their conspiratorial drinking is immediately overtaken by the description of Ophelia's drowning, and subsequently by the grave digger's observation that a tanner's hide "is so tanned with his trade that a will keep out water a great while, and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body" (V.i.164-66). Through such networks of "liquid" allusion, visual stimuli in the film enrich the play's textual fabric, exposing reductive, consuming systems in which a woman's innocence is at the mercy of paternalistic hypocrisy.
By concentrating key scenes of the play in particular locations, the film pushes to their furthest extent the areas of overlap between visual messages and verbal utterances. Notably the chapel, a dimly lit but ornate interior, serves as a suggestive site for the prompting of confessional revelations. Toward the beginning of the film, Polonius thrusts Ophelia into a confession box to quiz her about the "very ecstasy of" Hamlet's "love" (II.i.102). A more unsettling use of the box occurs when Claudius creeps into it to lament his "rank" (III.iii.36) offence. Lighting upon Claudius, Hamlet forces his knife through the grill, becoming an unpunctual but unconsoling father confessor. As well as enhancing the impression of a world suffering from the effects of withholding secrets, these locational moments complicate the implications of the play's rhetoric. When Hamlet urges Gertrude (Julie Christie) to "Confess [herself] to heaven" and "Repent what's past" (III.iv.151-52), for instance, one is reminded of a developing intrigue that finds its expression in parodic gestures toward absolution. As confessional textual details are taken up in the film's confessional sequences, a lively sense of escalating frustrations is elaborated.
The partnership shared between the verbal and the visual is demonstrated most eloquently in the scenes involving the ghost. Played by Brian Blessed and shot from a high angle perspective, the ghost is discovered as a militant spectre of colossal proportions. As the ghost confesses its secrets, bursts of flame break through the forest floor and smoke billows about the trees, apt metaphors for the opening of the sepulcher's "ponderous and marble jaws" (I.iv.50) and for the "blasts from hell" with which the supernatural visitation is associated. Similarly, when the ghost appears in Gertrude's chamber, an eerie music sounds, stressing again the possibility that Hamlet senior may be a demon in disguise. True to the infernal suggestions of Shakespeare's text, the film imagines the ghost as a force whose motives are questionable in the extreme.
Characteristic of both the general representational strategies and the local colouring is the productively restless camera work. Often, repeated camera movements illuminate psychological connections. In the opening scene, the camera zooms outward to show the disappearing ghost, a trajectory followed again for Hamlet's "How all occasions do inform against me" (IV.iv.32) speech: the comparable tracking shots hint at a revitalized paternal and filial alliance. More striking, it might be suggested, are the ways in which the camera prowls around groups of characters, often exploiting 360-degree pans. When Claudius and Polonius agree to spy upon the prince, they are circled by the camera, as is Hamlet on confronting his mother in her "closet." In this scene, in fact, the voyeuristic impression created is reinforced by the chamber's Tiepolo-like wall paintings of eavesdroppers leaning over balustrades to watch an event of clearly spellbinding significance. This innovative use of the camera has several effects. At once, it adds to the sense of a court dominated by dark secrets and political espionage. In the same moment, it sharpens an awareness of the ever increasing danger of Fortinbras's army, a force which will eventually encircle the castle itself. The closer Fortinbras draws, the more exactly does he seem to represent the eye that subjects all of Elsinore to an uncompromising, comprehensive scrutiny.
II
Despite the obvious felicities of Branagh's interpretation, there are moments when the film suffers from a textually unwarrantable amount of scenic business. Such is the enthusiasm to illustrate the action, that the film occasionally provides the audience with a surplus of informational materials. Admittedly, some of these additions are superficially attractive, as when Hamlet senior is presented sleeping in his orchard, only to be retrospectively upstaged by the Player King who appears in an identical colorful costume. At other points, however, ambiguities in the text are flattened by the assumption that the spectators are incapable of imagining for themselves. Jump cuts, flashbacks, and spliced narratives--such as images of Claudius's hand untying Gertrude's bodice, of Claudius keeping "wassail" (I.iv.9). and of Hamlet and Ophelia making love--take away from the plural meanings that the verse alone is able to generate. In this way, although the urge to fill in the spaces that the text leaves open makes for a clear story line, it also reduces the "heart" of the play's "mystery" (III.ii.357), substituting a one-dimensional reading for irresolution and elusive uncertainty.
Equally troubling is the recourse to sentimentality in scenes where a much harder or even ironic sensibility would seem to be at work. The score is generally excitedly august, but several musical themes seem inappropriate. As an example, one can cite the scene in which Laertes takes leave of Polonius, which provides the politician with an opportunity to bully his son into filial subservience. Yet in Branagh's Hamlet, romantic organ music (in conjunction with soft focus camera work) is instrumental in subordinating the text's ironic potential to a bonding between father and son that can be dramatically supported only with difficulty.
In the same mold are those moments when Hamlet views "man" (II.ii.303) as a "quintessence of dust" (II.ii.308), and when Ophelia laments the disruption to his "noble mind" (III.i.152): a romantic theme sounds precisely at the point where the text calls for a bitter or dissonant musical accompaniment. With such romantic musical evocations, the film runs the risk of papering over some of the more unpalatable dimensions of the text--including Hamlet's participation in the victimization of Ophelia--and comes close to putting a rose-tinted view of the Dane in the place of a more all-embracing political critique.
III
Notwithstanding individual shortcomings, Branagh's Hamlet most often captivates with its blend of sumptuous internal scenes and sweeping exterior visuals. If, moreover, the film caters to the postmodern viewer in piecing out textual gaps, it also manages to find new preoccupations in an all too familiar narrative. The film is perhaps at its freshest, and at its most absorbing, after the "Intermission," when the break-up of Elsinore is an urgent prospect. Clearly apparent in the film's latter stages is the shrunken character of the court: only a handful of attendants are present at Ophelia's funeral, a stark contrast with the swelling numbers flocking to enjoy the play-within-the-play and an indicator of Claudius's waning control. Even before Fortinbras makes his spectacular final entrance, monarchical authority is wavering, as Gertrude's increasingly sour expressions indicate. When the climax arrives, Fortinbras's troops crash through the state hall's windows and mirrored doors, a timely lesson for a court that has been incapable of recognizing its own fragile illusions. Hamlet is given a soldier's funeral, a move which identifies him with Fortinbras, the commander whose superior military prowess allows him to declare himself the state's inheritor.
But Branagh's Hamlet goes beyond a simple dichotomy between military technology and political supremacy. In many respects, it probes deeper levels of meaning, which lie outside the merely filmic and textual relationship. Above all, this Hamlet is intertextual in that it repeatedly articulates its connections to a host of other texts and histories. Faithful to the 1623 First Folio version of the play, the film is suitably bookish, and a favourite retreat for Hamlet is his book-lined study: it is here, not accidentally, that he consults a treatise on demons before setting out to confront the ghost. Branagh, it seems, is concerned to authenticate himself as a leading Shakespearean by stressing the decision to realize the entire play, an undertaking unique in the theatrical record. In this endeavour, he is aided by many of the luminaries of the Shakespearean establishment. There is more than a passing intertextuality involved in casting Derek Jacobi as Claudius, for the actor played Hamlet in 1979 at the Old Vic, took the part in a BBC version of the play in 1980, and directed Branagh in the title role for the 1988 Renaissance Theatre Company production (Branagh vi-vii.175). If Jacobi is Branagh's filmic father, then Branagh is Jacobi's theatrical son. A legitimating imperative would also appear to lie behind the casting of John Gielgud (Priam) and Judi Dench (Hecuba) in non-speaking appearances, and an intertextual dimension is certainly detectable in Charlton Heston's cameo role as the Player King. By drawing upon the pooled resources of Stratford-upon-Avon dignitaries, and of Hollywood "epic" veterans, Branagh, with typical audacity, sets himself up as another epic filmmaker, as a bardic interpreter with impeccable credentials.
Yet the film's intertextuality does not end with casting associations. Part of the grandeur of the film depends upon the numerous exterior views of Blenheim Palace (masquerading as the castle of Elsinore), which is shot in a wide-screen 70mm format. From this "scene" of epic architectural magnificence a number of intertextual resonances can be inferred. Following the defeat of the French at Blenheim in 1704, the palace was constructed for the Duke of Marlborough as thanks for a landmark victory. Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim in 1874, and members of the family still live at the palace. With these contexts in mind, it can be argued that Branagh's Hamlet operates as a metaphor for historical conflicts between England and France, between England and Germany, and even between the English royal family and a more powerful political entity. The film is too complex to be straight jacketed within a simple allegory, however, and equally invests in provoking contrary readings that go against its more obvious contextual correspondences. At the close, the imposing statue of Hamlet senior is toppled to the ground, and any spectator attuned to the recent collapse of the communist countries will not miss the parallel. Branagh's Hamlet is an eloquent disquisition on the perils of aristocratic and royal authority; it is also a "cunning" celebration of the plebeian forces that contest the ownership of power and privilege.
What, finally, of the "scene" of the premiere itself? By staging the premiere in Belfast, Branagh, poised between two cultures in that he was born in Belfast but brought up in England, is bringing Shakespeare back to an adopted Irish homeland. Something of this was hinted at in the promotional material about the charity that the screening of the film supports: "First Run Belfast" sponsors local thespians to stage theatrical ventures or to study drama outside Northern Ireland. Hamlet, one might suggest, represents Branagh's attempt to negotiate, like Hamlet himself, a tricky trajectory (and a narrative of exile and return) between London, Hollywood, and Belfast, just as the Danish prince follows a similar journey from Wittenberg to England and finally to Denmark. When Julie Christie introduced the film at the premiere, she too made use of the "homecoming" motif, describing Branagh, strangely Gertrude-like, as "your boy." Branagh, however, was not present. Away in the United States filming The Gingerbread Man, he was available only as a simulacrum on a videotaped message, transformed into a ghostly echo of his cinematic counterpart.
1 See Christopher Goodwin. "Love Him, Loathe Him: Ken Divides Us All," The Sunday Times (19 January 1997): 8-9: and Geoffrey O'Brien. "The Ghosts at the Feast," The New York Review of Books (6 February 1997): 15-16.
Branagh, Kenneth. "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare: Screenplay and Introduction. London: Chatto and Windus, 1996.
Fineman, Joel. "Fratricide and Cuckoldry: Shakespeare's Doubles." Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. Ed. Murray M. Schwartz and Coppelia Khan. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980: 70-109.
LoMonico, Michael "Branagh's Hamlet--Power and Opulence." Shakespeare 1.1 (1996).
Shakespeare. William. Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London and New York: Methuen. 1987.
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