Campbell Scott's Hamlet (2000)

Campbell Scott’s Hamlet is unfortunately obscure, and it really doesn’t deserve to be as little-known as it is.  It’s one of the most successful Hamlet adaptations I’ve seen, in no small part due to Scott’s captivating, intense and nearly flawless portrayal of Hamlet. 

The setting looked slightly post-U.S. Civil War, and though I’m not sure how much that time period does to illuminate Hamlet, I don’t think it presented any problems either.  The Southern manor was gorgeous, and the costumes were nicely done.  I think it’s a nice time period to set Shakespeare movies and plays in, because it feels distant, but not too far removed from modern culture.  You resist the urge to impose modern cultural standards on behavior and speech, but it also doesn’t end up feeling like something that happened forever ago in an alien world.  Overall, the look was crisp and attractive, and definitely a step up from the other TV movie Hamlets I’ve reviewed so far. 

The text was also nicely edited, cutting the play down to three hours without ever feeling like it was missing anything huge.  The only large omissions were Horatio’s attempted suicide, and Gertrude’s narration of Ophelia’s death.   Both of those seemed acceptable to me, but one more minor cut seemed very strange.  In the closet scene, Hamlet never explicitly tells Gertrude that Claudius is a murderer, but there is one moment that takes place in about three lines where he alludes to it and she realizes with shocked horror.  It’s very brief, but without those lines, Gertrude leaves that scene without knowing or suspecting Claudius’s role in Hamlet Sr.’s death.  I think her knowing that is important for how her relationships with Claudius and Hamlet are staged for the rest of the play, so omitting those three lines seemed very strange to me.  Except for that, the cutting was carefully and thoughtfully done, and it definitely illustrated that it is possible to stage Hamlet in three hours without having to remove any major plot points. 

While the whole cast was strong, Campbell Scott’s Hamlet was by far the best of them.  He had a raw intensity about him from start to finish, and a very natural quality as well.  He never felt stagey or forced, but instead came to life as a very real character.  It was completely compelling. 

I’m of the camp that views Hamlet as completely sane throughout, and though Scott never quite crossed the border into insanity, his Hamlet definitely hovered around it, particularly in the immediate aftermath of his encounter with the Ghost.  He was shown pacing through Elsinore, hearing echoes of the Ghost’s voice over and over again in his head, and slowly growing more and more manic.  The encounter with the Ghost was staged as particularly traumatic for Hamlet, with an unnerving, zombie-like Ghost who simulated his own death on his terrified son, who thought he was really dying.  It was a terrifying, near-death experience for Hamlet, and it nearly drove him insane. The Ghost’s voice wouldn’t leave his head, and he slowly grew more manic and more despairing.  The famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy was relocated to just before his encounter with Polonius, when he was at the height of his despair, and I thought it was an effective change.  The soliloquy was read as a pure contemplation of suicide, and he really did seem on the brink of doing it.  Though it was a fairly simplistic interpretation of the soliloquy, it worked well, and nicely illustrated the state of mind he was in after meeting the Ghost. 

His mocking of Polonius and his joy in running circles around everyone else took on a darker edge here, because it was only then that he would stop hearing the Ghost’s voice.  After the meeting the Players, he was relieved to say “Now I am alone,” only to realize that this meant he’d have to hear the Ghost again in his own head.  Only by talking to himself in the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy could he maintain his grip on reality. 

Though those scenes were played with him struggling to maintain sanity, other scenes where Hamlet more commonly loses control of himself were played with much more restraint than usual.  The closet scene in particular was very calm, with Hamlet furious but in control of himself.  In fact, I found it to be a bit too calm.  The closet scene needs to feel like the breaking point Hamlet’s anger towards his mother, and though he berated her, I didn’t really get the feeling that anything in their relationship majorly shifted as a result of the scene. 

However, I liked the way several other elements of that scene were staged.  The moment where he killed Polonius came off as him genuinely thinking that Polonius was the King, not as him simply running wild and out of control.  His earlier terror of the Ghost, and the mania he felt after the encounter, played wonderfully during the closet scene.  When the Ghost reappeared, he wasn’t just startled or ashamed; he was truly scared out of his mind by it, presumably thinking that this time it was actually going to kill him instead of just pretending to. 

His reaction to Polonius’s death was also particularly interesting, and one of the darkest moments of the movie.  Though he felt guilt immediately afterwards, his reaction to his guilt was to mock Polonius’ death. The sight of Hamlet laughing merrily, covered in blood, was completely chilling.  Having Ophelia come to the scene where he was being interrogated added to the darkness of his reaction to being a murderer.   We’d seen Hamlet using humor to cover up insanity before, but now he was using humor to handle being a murderer.  The “how all occasions” soliloquy was staged as happening later that same night, and it worked very well as a reaction to having killed a man earlier that day, and it had a real weight to it that that soliloquy often lacks.  He didn’t do any of the theatrics that Branagh did, and it was by far the best delivery of that soliloquy I’ve seen because of the sense of psychological grounding it had. 

Though I could talk about Scott’s performance all day, this wasn’t a one-man show.  Fortunately, most of his supporting cast was also quite strong. 

Jamey Sheridan’s Claudius was cold and calculating, and while he wasn’t Derek Jacobi, he did a good job with the part, playing one of the most chilling Claudiuses I’ve seen.   He didn’t have too much nuance in terms of character, but as a purely chilling, powerful King, I’ve never seen anyone like him.  His reaction to Gertrude drinking the poison was particularly telling; he didn’t panic or stop caring about the fight, and he seemed primarily to be angry with Laertes for not having killed Hamlet yet.  In the first scene especially, Hamlet seemed like a little boy in front of him, and that was exactly how Claudius treated him. 

Blair Brown’s Gertrude was also very strong, and much more nuanced than her husband.  Her relationship with Hamlet was particularly good, and they seemed to really interact with each other as mother and son.  She doted on him, but was also willing to tell him off when his behavior became out of line.  She was sexually entranced by Claudius, and though their relationship became stressed, they never lost their faith in each other.  She didn’t know what she did when she drank the poisoned cup, and due to the strong sense of her failed relationship with Hamlet, her death felt particularly tragic. 

Roscoe Lee Browne was an excellent Polonius, playing him as a shrewdly intelligent politician.  In the behind the scenes commentary, Browne said that he initially wasn’t interested in playing the role, feeling that Polonius was old and doddering.   Apparently, Scott persuaded him to take it by telling him “Roscoe, you’re not old, and please don’t dodder.”  He certainly did no doddering here, and though it resulted in the loss of some otherwise very funny scenes, it added to the very real threat Hamlet faced in opposing the King, and it made it very clear that Elsinore was a place where intelligence and political skills were of utmost importance.  In the brief, silent scene that introduced him, he was shown burning a document while several attendants waited on him, and I think that summarized who his Polonius was very well. 

Lisa Gay Hamilton was a strong Ophelia who never broke down before her insanity.  She was strong enough to stand up to Hamlet, and their dynamic together made it easy to infer that they had previously had a passionate, sexual relationship with each other.  Her strength and impassivity were a welcome change from the typical weak, constantly sobbing Ophelia, but I think she took it a bit too far, making her madness seem almost random.  Though the mad scenes weren’t bad, they seemed to come out of nowhere character-wise. 

One interesting choice was to cast Byron Jennings as both the Ghost and the Player King.  It added an extra dimension to Claudius’s reaction during the play scene, since he wasn’t just seeing the murder re-enacted, he was seeing it re-enacted with a man who he suddenly realized looked exactly like his brother.  His portrayal of the Player King was especially strong, and though the play itself was heavily cut, he gave the character quite a bit of heft.  He also seemed to be very much an adoptive father figure to Hamlet, adding to the smart casting choice of having him also play Hamlet’s real father. 

The more minor characters, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Gildenstern, Osric and the Gravedigger were all competent but fairly unremarkable.  Rosencrantz and Gildenstern were a fun combination of genuine friends and political gain-seekers, and Horatio was competent but fairly bland. 

The movie did, however, have two major weak points: the soundtrack and Laertes. 

The soundtrack was the worst of the two, because it was distracting throughout the entire movie.  It was a strange combination of drumming and elevator music, and the tone remained chipper regardless of what was happening on screen.  The uniformity of tone was bizarre at best and completely distracting at worst.  The slightly jazz vibe of it was also very strange in contrast to the post-Civil War look of the film.  During the graveyard scene it sounded like hold music on a telephone, and during scene transitions there tended to be a lot of loud, bizarre drumming that didn’t serve much purpose.  I really have no idea what they were thinking, but I certainly would have rather had no soundtrack at all than this. 

The second weak link was Roger Guenveur Smith as Laertes.  He commented in the behind the scenes special feature that he worked really hard to get a lot of subtlety into his portrayal of Laertes.  He certainly did.  Way, way, too much subtlety.  He essentially whispered every line he said with no inflection, and the effect was actually rather funny.  I’m not quite sure how one can calmly whisper lines like “The drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard!” with a straight face, because I certainly couldn’t watch it with a straight face.  It’s easy for Laertes to overdo it, and many of the actors I’ve seen play him this month do go way over the top.  However, calmly whispering everything was way too far in the opposite direction, and it really hurt a lot of the major scenes in the last two acts. 

However, I found it fairly easy to overlook those two issues because the rest of it was so impressive and compelling.  Campbell Scott’s Hamlet was everything one could ask for in Hamlet, and one of my favorite portrayals of him.