Gregory Doran's Hamlet (2009)

The first time I saw Hamlet was when I saw this movie about a year ago.  My only experience with the play before then was when I read it at the age of twelve and understood about four sentences.  I watched this movie in the afternoon before I went to go see a stage production of Porgy and Bess, and though it was a very worthy production, I regret to say I didn’t notice much of it because my head was so full of Hamlet. I became obsessed with Hamlet, and proceeded to re-watch it repeatedly for weeks on end before it even occurred to me to try to find other versions.  I went and bought a new copy of Hamlet, re-read it over and over again, and started memorizing extended passages.  If it weren’t for this movie, I undoubtedly would not be doing this project right now. 

Clearly this movie did a lot of things right, because it made such a strong impression on me.   While I still have a strong sentimental attachment to it, I think it’s an extraordinarily strong production even without taking into account that this movie will always have a special place in my heart. 

This film is based on a stage production at the Royal Shakespeare Company, but due to both stellar reviews and an extremely well known cast, it was turned into a TV movie after its stage run was over.  However, despite its play origins, it’s a proper movie, filmed on movie sets, not a stage, and with proper movie lighting.  Because of this combination, you sort of get the best of both worlds.  It looks polished and clean, like a real movie, but the cast has also had a year to work together, tweak scenes, and build up the relationships between the characters.  These strong relationships between the characters were among of the biggest strengths this movie.  Almost the whole cast was very strong, but in addition to being strong individually, they were also strong in their relationships with each other.  Within the first few scenes, most of the major relationships of the play were established clearly. 

The setting and costuming were modern, but nonspecifically so.  Unlike Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, for instance, it wasn’t set in a specific modern time and location.  I thought that worked well, as it gave the story a chance to create its own world with its own rules and customs, instead of trying to fit itself awkwardly into modern culture.  It was mostly filmed on location at St. Joseph’s College in London, and the set worked well.  It was slick and elegant, but also oppressive, dark and claustrophobic.  The shiny black walls and floors, two way mirrors and surveillance cameras all worked to give a sense of being constantly trapped and observed. 

The surveillance cameras were an interesting touch, and I thought they were incorporated fairly well into the action of the story.   Several little touches with them were excellent, such as the Ghost not appearing on camera and Hamlet ripping the camera out of the wall before “Now I am alone,” at the beginning of the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy.  However, some of the implications of having the cameras there didn’t seem to be very thoroughly thought through.  For instance, if Claudius was aware of everything that was captured on camera, he would have known about the Ghost’s appearance and several other events that it doesn’t really make sense for him to know about.  It was unclear whether he had seen the footage of them encountering the Ghost or not, but I think if he had, he would have behaved very differently than Claudius does.  However, I thought that overall, the cameras were a nice touch, and they were woven in lightly enough that they were consistently present but never distracting. 

The text editing was light, and mostly well done, but I thought there were some issues with the way the Fortinbras plot was done.  Basically everything about him was kept in except for his appearance at the very end.  That seemed strange to me, because it meant they spent the whole movie talking about Fortinbras, only for nothing at all to come of it.  It’s my feeling that either Fortinbras needs to be cut entirely, or you need to include his take-over at the end.  Leaving everything in but that seemed like a strange decision.  Except for that, I thought most of the cuts were well done, and got the movie down to around three hours without omitting anything major. 

They followed the First Quarto scene order in the second and third acts, placing the “to be or not to be” soliloquy and the nunnery scene before the arrival of the players.  While this scene order makes Hamlet psychologically simpler, I thought they did it fairly well.  Tennant’s delivery of the “to be or not to be” as a pure contemplation of suicide was fairly straightforward, but so beautifully done that I had no complaints. 

The only technical issue that I didn’t like was the frequent breaking of the fourth wall.  I know this was based on a stage production in which the actors would directly address the audience, but I personally find this to be a little disconcerting, especially if it’s done with the frequency and intensity of this film.  However, after seeing it a couple times, I got used to Hamlet breaking the fourth wall, and actually came to appreciate it.  Though at times it still seemed a little awkward, Tennant has very expressive eyes, and being able to make eye contact increased the intensity of his soliloquies in a good way.  However, I could not get used to Polonius breaking the fourth wall.  Polonius is not a character where you want that sort of intensity, and I found his constant asides to the camera to be really distracting in several scenes. 

Of course, part of the reason why this production was ever filmed was the two stars at the helm: David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.  They’re both extremely famous and popular television stars, but fortunately for this production, they’re also both classically trained actors with a lot of experience in Shakespeare.  In short, they were big names who really delivered. 

Tennant’s Hamlet was intense, high energy and scathingly intelligent.  At times he seemed almost manic, practically bouncing off the walls.  He was a man of high passions, swinging between extremes of emotion with alarming speed.  He also played up Hamlet’s sense of humor and Hamlet’s joy in being able to run circles around those who are less intelligent than him.  He was by far one of the funniest Hamlets I’ve seen, making his “mad” scenes some of the best around.  He was manic enough that it was believable that everyone thought he was insane, but it was clear to us that he was really just brutally mocking everyone around him, and having a great time doing it too. 

His ability to believably swing between extreme emotion made his delivery of his soliloquies, especially “Oh that this too, too sullied flesh” and “rogue and peasant slave” particularly interesting.  Instead of quiet meditations they were more like sudden outburst of emotions, encompassing fury, depression, confusion and everything in between.  His progress of emotions and thoughts was beautifully done, and his delivery was much more interesting and memorable than playing them as one-note philosophical meditation would have been. 

One thing that was played up with Tennant’s Hamlet was the idea of him being somewhere in between a man and a boy.  With Gertrude, he alternated between uncontrollable fury and a desperate need for a mom.  At the end of the closet scene, he broke down and cried on her lap like a little kid who only needed his mom to make everything better.  Of course, mommy couldn’t fix everything, but for a brief moment, he wanted her to.  With the Ghost, he so badly wanted his father back, and was devastated that the Ghost wasn’t really going to be a father to him.  One of the best moments was in the closet scene when all three were together, and for a moment they seemed like a normal family with a mom, a dad, and a little boy.  His costuming subtly underscored the way in which he had to psychologically grow up over the course of the play: he spent most of the second and third act in a red t-shirt with muscles painted on it, as if he was trying to appear older and stronger than he actually was. 

As Claudius, Patrick Stewart was significantly better than he was in 1980 when he played Claudius opposite Derek Jacobi.  There he went for a grinning, jovial Claudius, but he lacked the necessary darkness beneath that smiling exterior.  This Claudius was very different: a coldly intelligent, fanged politician.  He made an ostentatious show of mourning for this brother, but made a clear point of publicly spurning Hamlet in the first scene by addressing him after Laertes.  During the play within a play, he was especially strong.  As the murder was being re-enacted, he realized that Hamlet must somehow know.  His “give me some light” wasn’t panic.  A servant handed him a lantern which he held up to Hamlet and shook his head slowly, letting Hamlet know that he realized what Hamlet was doing and he wasn’t going to put up with it. He suffered from a brief attack of guilt, but after praying, he was able to coldly push it aside with a little smirk.  He was the type of Claudius who would tie Hamlet to a chair to interrogate him, and have him sedated to be taken to England.  At the end, he just shrugged, and gulped down the poison Hamlet handed him, as if he coldly evaluated the pros and cons of everything, even his own death.  As far as “terrifying Claudius” goes, he was excellent.  He was also a stellar Ghost: stern and commanding, and with the necessary otherworldliness to seem like more than an ordinary human.  The double-casting of the Ghost and Claudius is fairly standard, but works well. 

Of course, despite being the two biggest names in this production, they weren’t the only actors on stage.  Most of the rest of the cast was excellent, with one major exception, Mariah Gale’s Ophelia.  She started off well, doing an excellent scene with Laertes and Polonius.  She wasn’t buying a word of what Laertes said, but their strong bond was apparent nonetheless.  With Polonius, she was unable to outwardly defy him, so she unwillingly agreed to do what he said.  She was sweet and charming, but unfortunately, in all her scenes after that she was stiff and rather stagey.  Especially in her mad scenes, she just wasn’t believable. 

With that one exception, the cast was extremely strong.  Penny Downie’s Gertrude was amazing.  She wanted desperately for Hamlet to be her little kid, and the openly doted on him throughout the entire movie, even when he frightened her.   She was completely happy in her new marriage, and wanted nothing more than for him to be happy with her.  I think her best scene was the brief conversation she had with Claudius after the closet scene.  It’s a short scene, and it’s often cut, but she managed to convey so much information in those few short lines.  She was aware that he was a murderer, or at least strongly suspected it, and at first seemed inclined to hold her distance, but she was so overwhelmed by what had just happened that she needed him more than ever.  Regardless of what he’d done, she needed him, but for the rest of the play, she was, more than ever, torn between her son and her husband.  Downie showed the complexity and contradiction in a woman like Gertude elegantly, and was particularly good at communicating relationships.  

Peter de Jersey’s Horatio was everything Horatio can be: intelligent, loyal and completely rock-solid.  He had a strong enough presence in the first act that his reappearance in the middle of the third didn’t feel at all random, and his relationship with Hamlet was played with a light enough touch to be believable.  His constant concern for Hamlet was almost palpable, and he was very good at saying a lot in very few lines.  There was a wonderful moment in the Graveyard scene when Hamlet saw the funeral procession, and in that instant, it was obvious that Horatio knew whose funeral it was, but he simply couldn’t tell Hamlet.  If you’re going to end the play on “Goodnight, sweet Prince,” he’s the one you want to be saying those lines. 

Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius was less universally successful.  He very much went for the “doddering old fool” image of Polonius, and while he played very well against Tennant’s humor, it’s my feeling that Polonius needs to be a bit more of a threat than Davies was.  The other problem with playing tedious Polonius is that he often ends up being rather tedious.  Davies didn’t quite cross the line here, but he was often rather close.  Despite the somewhat weak characterization, he was genuinely funny in some scenes, and he never felt like a problem in the same way that Mariah Gale did. 

All the minor roles were done extremely well: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the Gravedigger, the Players, and Osric were all quite good.  Sam Alexander and Tom Davey as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were fairly sympathetic: they seemed like genuine friends of Hamlet’s, and Rosencrantz especially grew increasingly uncomfortable with what they were being asked to do.  They were also relatively distinguished from each other, with Rosencrantz more loyal to Hamlet and less interested in Claudius, and Guildenstern looking for some political gain.  However, they were both fairly hapless and well intentioned, making Hamlet’s treatment of them reflect badly on him.  I was glad to see a film brave enough to make Hamlet unsympathetic at times, and having them be sympathetic characters definitely had that effect. 

Ryan Gage’s Osric was definitely the best of the minor characters.  He was only on stage for a short time, as his scene was unfortunately trimmed, but he made a fantastic impression in that brief space. He was smarmy to the core instead of the usual effeminate foppishness, and it worked beautifully against Tennant’s gleeful mocking.  Gage had this spectacular fake smile, and his obsequious phoniness was completely hilarious.  He was completely a caricature, but the best kind of caricature, and a very welcome change from the “effeminacy is funny” type of Osric. 

Overall, it’s well acted, thoughtful and visually sleek: not perfect, but about as close as I’ve seen.  It’s a great watch for someone who’s seeing Hamlet for the first time, and for someone seeing Hamlet for the hundredth time; I’ve seen this movie probably fifteen or more times, and it’s never stopped feeling fresh and exciting.