Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet seemed to be made with the philosophy “go big or go home.” Everything about it was big, from the length to the sets to the cast.  It was really Hamlet on an epic scale, and though it wasn’t perfect, it was incredibly impressive. 

As I’ve said before, I love it when the play is run full or almost full text.  Every character just blossoms with the little nuances offered by the full text.  It’s more complex in every way, and I think only good things come of that.  It is long, but I think the length of this Hamlet was one of its greatest strengths.  Branagh handled the length well, and energy and engagement never seemed to ebb.  Despite being four hours long, it never felt long to watch.   

With the full text, everything is zoomed out.  This isn’t just a play about one man, one family or even one country, and the epic scale of the play was emphasized here, to great effect.  Through the use of silent scenes, Fortinbras was woven into the plot much more thoroughly than he usually is.  He was shown right away in the first scene, again when Cornelius and Voltimand returned, and again as Horatio read a news headline before the play within a play.  By incorporating these brief silent sequences, Fortinbras was already a familiar character by the time he actually appeared in the main action of the play in act four, and the continental scale of the story never felt lost.  In Branagh’s movie, Denmark was powerful, and the story of what happened to its royal family wasn’t a self-contained tragedy.  

As befitting such a powerful court, Elsinore itself was massive, stately and gorgeous, breaking free from the cliché of Hamlet set in a winding, dark, oppressive place.  Everything was brightly lit, rich, and frankly gorgeous.  Of course, even if it’s pretty, Denmark is still a prison.  Branagh achieved the sense of paranoia and isolation in Elsinore, even in this lavish castle, by incorporating hidden doors, two-way mirrors and secret passageways into every room.  No matter how alone you thought you were, someone could be watching or listening or sneaking in, and in no place could you ever be truly alone.  The sense of paranoia and vastness worked to great effect, particularly in the second half of the play when the huge halls seemed to empty out, leaving only very small individuals, surrounded by spies and hidden doors. 

“The bigger the better” mentality of this film also affected the casting.   Almost every part was played by an A-list actor, including not just major characters, but also silent roles and one-line parts.  Richard Attenborough played the English ambassador, with precisely two lines.   John Gielgud played Priam in a brief silent scene.  Robin Williams was Osric, Gerard Depardieu was Reynaldo, Charlton Heston was the Player King, Jack Lemon was Marcellus, and so on.  Sometimes, this worked well, lending a gravitas to each part, and showing that no character is truly minor.  Sometimes, it was strange and distracting, especially with the characters who were only on screen long enough for you to go “Whoa, that’s Robin Williams!” before they were gone again, having left little impression of the actual character. 

While the celebrity cameo casting was certainly distracting in some cases, in others it was incredibly effective.  Charlton Heston as the Player King is the biggest example of how giving a relatively minor role gravitas can really change the effect it has.  He was simply spectacular, both in his Priam speech and as Gonzago, and as a consequence, these scenes were two of the most striking of the entire movie.  When he was delivering the speech about Priam, you felt, as Hamlet did, a sense of rapture, and his character Gonzago really came alive in the brief time he had.  Instead of portraying the players as joke, Branagh decided to make them a group of extremely talented professionals.  I feel fairly strong that this is the right approach; Hamlet is so invested in their talent that it seems strange to make jokes of them. 

In part because of Heston, and in part because of some fairly inspired direction, the play within a play scene was one of the most effective in the movie.  All the complex layers of everything happening were there: Hamlet’s almost manic excitement, Claudius’ suspicion, then panic, Gertrude’s offense, Ophelia’s hurt, and the constantly watching eyes of the crowd.  Everything came together into a few moments that felt almost perfect, with all the complex layers of emotion coming through clearly.  It built up the tension of the moment better than any other version of the scene I’ve seen, emphasizing the public nature of the play and the extent to which Hamlet’s behavior was completely out of line.  Thanks to the decision to cast serious actors as the players, the whole scene came together almost perfectly. 

Putting aside the sometimes odd celebrity cameos, most of the casting was beautifully done, especially the casting of the core set of leads. 

Derek Jacobi was spectacular as Claudius, really nothing short of amazing.  He essentially portrayed him as a good man who made a serious mistake from which he couldn’t free himself.  He was in love with Gertrude, guilt-stricken for what he’d done, and essentially a good and gracious king.   As the story progressed, he went from being a good man who’d done one bad thing, to a man who had to harden himself to do many more.  Jacobi fully embodied every side of Claudius’s character: his love for Gertrude, his regret, his coldness, his political savvy, and his increasing fear as the story progressed.  It was a gorgeous, nuanced performance, establishing him as one of the best film Claudiuses ever and as one of the undisputable stars of this film. 

Kate Winslet as Ophelia was the second great star of this film, and, like Jacobi, she seemed to really capture the full nuance and range of her character.  She was vulnerable, but not pathetic, and she had enough life and personality that I could believe she was a woman who Hamlet fell in love with.  Branagh chose to explicitly show that they previously had a sexual relationship by using flashbacks, and I thought that was an effective choice.  It made what was at stake in their interactions extremely clear, and it also served to highlight exactly how horrible Ophelia’s situation was.  One of Winslet’s greatest strengths was how she showed the descent into madness.  By making the course of her insanity clear, she drew incredible, raw power from her mad scenes, and I thought the flashbacks to their previous relationship were an effective way of showing more of her story.  

Richard Briers was an interesting Polonius, much darker and more dangerous than is usually done.  His Polonius was by no means a doddering old fool, and though he had aged a bit, he was a powerful head of state with few qualms about playing dirty or being casually cruel when necessary.  It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his children, he just cared about his position more than them and he didn’t seem to be very in touch with Ophelia’s emotions.  He brought her in to read Hamlet’s love letter to Claudius and Gertrude, seemingly unaware that having to do that would terrify her.  He also very roughly shoved her into a confessional and yelled when trying to make her tell the truth about Hamlet’s relationship with her.  However, he wasn’t just a cold machine, and he tried his awkward best to comfort her when she was visibly upset.  By showing a Polonius who was a mixture of caring father and scheming politician, he made a character who was much more interesting than the typical old, forgetful idiot. 

Only one aspect of his characterization seemed strange, and that was the inclusion of a whore in the Reynaldo scene.  My sister and I watched this twice together, and both times we weren’t sure who she was, if she was a whore, or whose whore she was supposed to be.  We eventually decided she was a whore, but disagreed as to whether she was Reynaldo’s or Polonius’s, and only by listening to the director’s commentary could I figure out that she was supposed to be Reynaldo’s whore who had been brought along for Polonius’s enjoyment.  I understand the idea of making Polonius look unscrupulous and hypocritical to add to this characterization of a much darker Polonius, but this felt like overkill, in addition to just being unclear. 

Nicholas Farrell did an excellent job with Horatio.  He was the solid rock, steadier and more assured than almost anyone else in the play, and he maintained a very strong presence, even in scenes where he had little to say.   Sometimes Horatio can seem to vanish completely during act two, making his reappearance in act three seem almost random, but Farrell made a strong enough impression in act one and silently in act two that he never had that problem.  He added a few nice touches to the role that helped cement him as Hamlet’s grounding tether, such as his extremely cautious and hesitant reaction to the play within a play and his obvious distaste for Hamlet’s dismissal of the significance of murdering Rosencrantz and Gildenstern.  Unlike a lot of Horatios, he wasn’t a bland yes-man, due to both Farrell himself and the use of the full text, which almost always fills out a lot of Horatio’s character. 

Julie Christie’s Gertrude was strong, but not quite as much so as the other leads.  She was very much in love with Claudius, and also very involved in the running of the state.  In multiple scenes she was shown signing documents with Claudius, and they had two equally sized thrones at the head of the main room.  Her relationship with Claudius played out well, but a lot of the rest of the time she seemed to sort of fade into the background, and in her closet scene with Hamlet I never quite got the sense of them relating to each other as mother and son.  It’s important in that scene that the extent to which that relationship is broken comes through, but there has to be the sense that it was there in the first place.  That said, she was mostly quite good, just not quite as good as the other leads around her. 

As for Branagh’s Hamlet, I felt more mixed about his performance.  At moments, he was great.  He particularly sparkled in his interactions with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, the scenes with the players, and the aftermath of Polonius’ death.  At those moments, Hamlet seemed to come to life on screen.  When he was on, he was really on, showing a nuanced, varied Hamlet.  He was incredibly excited by the players, and his passion and love for them was abundantly obvious.  He was clever, quick and witty, and he used his humor to distract from the cocktail of anger, depression and self-hatred he was swimming in.  He got a lot of the nuance of the character and successfully showcased all of Hamlet’s different sides and layers. 

Unfortunately, at other moments he seemed stuck in his own head, as if he was thinking too hard about too many things and he couldn’t just relax and let the character speak.  He had a certain staginess at these moments, and though he wasn’t really bad, he was just a lot flatter than when he was really on.   Listening to the director’s commentary on the film, it became really obvious why this was happening.  For every shot, he was talking about what every character was doing, how the camera guys had told him to move, all the different camera angles that had been worked out over weeks, the way the other actors were delivering their lines and all the other million things on his mind as director.  It was such a technically difficult film to shoot because of the constant use of long, circling, tracking shots in rooms filled with mirrors, and it seemed like he just got so caught up in the technicality of the directing that he stiffened up when acting some scenes.   During the commentary on the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, he commented that the camera man had told him exactly when he had to step forward in order for the camera not to be seen in the mirror, and I think the fact that he was thinking about that and not the lines was too apparent in some scenes, including that one. 

The film’s “go big or go home” motto also worked against it at several key moments.  During Hamlet’s first encounter with the ghost, Branagh went fairly all-out with the special effects, including the ground quaking, the Earth cracking open and steam and fire shooting out of the cracks.  All that was accompanied by Branagh voicing over the “angels and ministers of grace” speech, which he essentially shouted with no inflection.  It was one of the least effective moments of the film, and one of the least subtle.  Brian Blessed as the Ghost was fairly subtle, and was much more effective than any amount of supernatural earthquake. 

Branagh also went as big as possible during the “how all occasions” soliloquy and it was really, terribly ineffective.  Like with the “angels and ministers of grace” speech, he essentially said it as loudly as possible with little inflection, and the whole time the camera slowly zoomed out to show him standing on a mountain top.  In the background, violins soared, and the whole effect was just so overdone as to be ridiculous.  Even more so than the Ghost scene, the excessive dramatics were completely ineffective, especially considering the inherent inwardness of the soliloquy. 

The swordfight at the end was also overblown, though unlike with the previous two examples, the effect was mixed instead of completely negative. Despite being quite long and dramatic, the fight itself was smooth, well choreographed and well done.  However, the aftermath of the fight went far over the top with drama.  Laertes was thrown off the balcony and landed almost twenty feet below on his back; Hamlet threw the sword to impale Claudius from behind, then swung down on the chandelier to make him drink the poison.  The idea of impaling someone with a sword thrown from the other side of the room sounds silly, and that was exactly how it looked, and the chandelier was too Phantom of the Opera to be believable. 

Having Fortinbras stage a full-scale invasion of Elsinore also felt over the top, in addition to being contradictory to the text.  Fortinbras goes to Elsinore on a diplomatic mission, not in an invasion, and having him invade seemed like action for action’s sake.  There’s already so much going on in the final scene that having soldiers invading was more distracting than anything else.  

Much better was Hamlet’s death, where he defied convention by dying alone on the ground with Horatio standing apart from him.  I thought not having him die in Horatio’s arms worked well and significantly increased the agony of the situation. Seeing Horatio, a loveable character if there ever was one, too distraught to go to his dying friend was appropriately heartbreaking, and the threat of Horatio’s suicide felt much more real when Hamlet literally could do nothing to stop him.  His death was painful and had all the subtlety that was otherwise lacking from the final scene. 

This was a big film in every way possible, and despite its flaws, I think it’s one of the most impressive Shakespeare film adaptations I’ve seen.  I’ve seen this movie five times, and I’ve liked it better each time I’ve seen it.  Every time I watch it over, its strengths become more apparent and its flaws become easier to overlook.  There’s a lot to dislike here, but there’s also a lot to love, and as the only full-text film of Hamlet, this is an absolute must-see for any Shakespeare fan.