Kevin Kline's Hamlet (1990)

Kevin Kline’s Hamlet was originally a Broadway production, and was later filmed for television.  From the looks of the film, not much was changed from the stage production; it’s consequently very visually dull.   You’ve basically got an empty stage, modern day costuming, and poor lighting.  The look was fine, but not exciting.  However, just about everything else in this production could also be described as “fine but not exciting.”  Almost none of the acting or staging was bad, but it seemed to be weighed down by its own seriousness, and as a consequence, nobody really had any fun and it never really came to life.   It was solid, but about as bland as Hamlet can get. 

I thought the modern day costuming worked fairly well, though it seemed to have a tendency to wander throughout different decades.  Most of them were wearing modern-looking suits, except for Claudius, who was in a military uniform.  Hamlet later changed into a tunic that could have been from just about any time period, and the final swordfight was done in pants and suspenders that looked more turn of the century than modern.  I wouldn’t really describe this as a modern adaptation of Hamlet because there weren’t really any other changes in the staging to make it modern besides the costumes.  However, I thought the costumes worked just fine, and they added to the characterization of several characters, like the bureaucratic Polonius in a stiff, perfect suit. 

For once, I don’t have any real complaints about the editing of the text.  It was trimmed down a bit, but the editing was fairly light and carefully done, leaving the movie at three hours long.  It was a nice medium length, and though a couple of line omissions pained me, the same would be true no matter how the text was pared down. 

Kline himself was a mostly solid Hamlet, occasionally drifting into staginess and once in a while coming to life.  Most of the time, he was fine, but not particularly interesting.  Most of what he did felt conventional and bland, and though it wasn’t bad to watch, I also walked away without any real sense of who his Hamlet was.  In a way it was interesting, because it was so similar to just reading the text.  Few of the ambiguities that arise from reading the text really felt answered by his performance.  

There were, however, a couple of moments where I thought he really stood out.  The first one was after his first “mad scene” with Polonius.  He was sitting on the ground, leaning against a pillar, and as soon as Polonius left, he just curled up in a ball on the ground and tried to sleep.  It showed beautifully how exhausted, overwhelmed, vulnerable and trapped he was, and it conveyed those things much better than breaking down in tears or throwing a fit would have.   He was generally a rather weepy Hamlet, deploying the “single tear trickling down the check” device in almost every soliloquy, but in that one action he showed much more than a million “single tears” would have.    He had a few other moments that stood out: his delivery of the line “It hath made me mad,” towards the end of the nunnery scene, his fight with Claudius after he killed Polonius, and his interactions with Laertes in the swordfight scene.   In each of these he seemed to lose some of his stiffness and really put some life into the part. 

Other than those few moments though, his whole performance just felt a little flat and a little stiff.  I was constantly aware that he was acting, not just being, and even though he was mostly acting fairly well, it was always still acting. 

Some of the other characters came through more clearly and were much less stiff.  In particular, Peter Francis James as Horatio, Brian Murray as Claudius, Josef Sommer as Polonius and Michael Cumpsty as Laertes were much better characterized than Hamlet himself was, and their acting felt less stiff and bland. 

Peter Francis James was a gentle, compassionate Horatio, and though he was excessively calm and stoic much of the time, he built up a strong enough presence over the course of the movie that he was fully up to the task of greeting Fortinbras alone at the end.  His attempt to drink the potion didn’t feel melodramatic in the slightest, and his quiet, overwhelmed reaction to Hamlet’s death was more effective than any amount of crying or scenery chewing.   His Horatio was fairly plain, but he felt like a fully realized, sympathetic character, and his quiet devotion to Hamlet worked wonderfully.  

Brian Murray’s Claudius was one of the best performances of the film, portraying a cold, intense and politically clever Claudius.  He was a real threat to Hamlet, and his coldness made him genuinely frightening.  His reaction at the play wasn’t his guilty conscience taking control of him, it was sudden fear that Hamlet maybe knew more than he should.  The only part of his character that seemed strange to me was his costume: they had him dressed in a military uniform, in contrast to the rest of the characters’ suits.  It seemed strange for him to be the only military man, and he played Claudius more as a coldblooded CEO type than a soldier or a general. 

Josef Sommer’s Polonius was the perfect compliment to Murray’s Claudius, playing Polonius as the perfectly buttoned up bureaucrat, formal and self-important, but not dumb.  Sometimes Polonius can be played as so much of an idiot that one wonders how he ever got, much less maintained, such a high-level position.  He meshed both the power and the tediousness into a solid character that fit extremely well into the modern day look of the film. 

The best performance, in my opinion, was Michael Cumpsty’s Laertes.  He resisted the urge to go way over the top during the fourth act, as many actors player Laertes do, and was also sympathetic enough to give the final acts a lot of emotional heft.  His reaction to Ophelia’s death was particularly wonderful.  He was a tough, masculine man, and his reaction to her death was that nobody could see him cry.  He held himself together just long enough to get away from Claudius and Gertrude.  It was well done and felt very real, without any of the staginess that plagued a lot of the rest of the performances. 

The staging of the final swordfight also worked very well, and continued with the portrayal of Laertes as a complex, sympathetic character.   By the time of the fight, he was still angry, but he’d calmed down and his rational side was beginning to take over.  He wasn’t sure that he wanted to kill Hamlet in such a backhanded way, so he fought only halfheartedly.  During the second bout, he caught Hamlet defenseless and wide open, but didn’t hit him, and immediately afterwards went to go trade in his sword for a normal one.  However, Hamlet’s taunt about Laertes not trying came at just the wrong moment.  One almost got the sense that had the fight been two hours later, Laertes wouldn’t have gone through with it, and his inner conflict over what he was about to do added extra tension and emotional weight to the last scene.  Cumpsty’s take on Laertes was one of the best parts about this movie because it felt fresh and natural. 

Unfortunately, a lot of his scenes also had Ophelia in them, and Diane Venora’s Ophelia was the one major weak link in this movie.  As Ophelia you have a fairly large license to really go over the top, especially in the mad scenes.  Her mad scenes aren’t exactly subtle, and it takes some pretty severe overacting to make them not work.  She made them not work, and even Cumpsty’s excellent Laertes couldn’t really save them.  Before her mad scenes she was less bad, but she never seemed to really come to life as a character, and he delivery of “oh what a noble mind” was stiff robotic.  It sounded very much like she was giving a speech instead of having a natural reaction to what had just happened to her. 

The only other major weak link acting-wise was the Gravedigger, who was just plain annoying.  All the other minor roles were fine: not great, but fine. 

And that was really this whole movie.  Not great, but fine.  I’d recommend it if you want to see as straight a reading of the text as possible, but if you’re looking for inspiration, this is not your Hamlet.