Moving

After maintaining both blogs side by side for several months, I've decided to completely transfer over to the tumblr version of this blog.  All future posts will be at bardfilmreview.tumblr.com.  See you there!

David Giles' Richard II (1978)

In my opinion, Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s most undeservedly neglected plays.  It’s got all the moving tragic elements of all the great tragedies, and all of the glorious political machinations of the histories, as well as some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language.  I don’t know why it’s so overlooked, but for whatever reason, it is.  Fortunately, in the BBC’s Complete Shakespeare series, they gave it the treatment it deserves, making this an enormously effective film, despite a number of issues.  

This was by no means a visually gorgeous film; like the rest of the BBC series, it was done on a low budget.  However, what money they did have was put to good use, with the result that it looked passable.   The “outdoors” shots were all done with blatantly and poorly painted backdrops, and the indoors sets were usually tapestries with chairs in front of them, but it wasn’t nearly as bare as many of the movies in the BBC’s Complete Works series were.  As if to make up for the near-lack of sets, the costumes were well done, from Richard’s opulent gowns to Bolingbroke’s practical breeches.  Richard seemed to wear a different gown in each scene, underlining both his grandeur and his frivolity.

One major issue with the look of the film was the darkness.  Every shot was swathed in blackness, making it appear that the entire play took place during night, as if medieval England was a bizarre nocturnal culture.  I’m not quite sure if it was an intentional decision to set everything in the dark, or whether they simply didn’t have sufficient lighting.  Either way, I spent most of the movie wishing I could turn the lights on and see what was happening. 

A lot of the visual metaphor in the play was also lost in the low-budget look.  The garden imagery, so prevalent in the text, was undermined, even in the garden scene where there was little, if any, greenery.   In a play so rich in verbal imagery, it was a disappointment to see so little of that reflected in the visuals. 

Fortunately, what it lacked in visual beauty was made up for with a number of wonderful performances. 

I’ve always found Bolingbroke to be a hard part to wrap my head around, in part because his actions and his words seem so irreconcilable.  What does he want, and at what point does he decide he wants it?  What are his real opinions?  In a play so invested in different ideas of kingship, why does one of the two kings stay almost completely mute on the subject?  Why do his words and actions never match up?  How does this man who lacks the grandeur and claim of Richard as well as a clear alternative philosophy of his own manage to attract nearly every noble in the country to his cause? 

Jon Finch pulled Bolingbroke together brilliantly, making it clear what kind of man he was from the very first scene.  He was a masculine man of action, and simultaneously a canny master of doublespeak.  Moreover, he didn’t have to justify his reign or present a clear philosophy to draw nobles to his side: in contrast with Richard’s vain femininity, Henry’s straightforward masculinity was an appealing alternative, without him having to really say anything at all.  In his first scene when he returns to England, he sat down on the ground to stretch his legs, and addressed his nobles from there.  It sure wasn’t kingly, but after years of Richard’s fussiness, this lack of affectation was a powerful draw. 

Even from the first scene, it was clear that he was a very different kind of man than Mowbray.  Instead of a furious self-defense, Henry was making a very calculated political move, and though he was quite determined, he measured every word he said.  The whole first scene of the play relies on everybody on stage knowing that Henry is issuing a serious challenge on the King, but behaving as if he is not.  Finch pulled off this double meaning perfectly, paying every respect to Richard with his words and challenging his authority with every look on his face that said, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”  His disdain for Richard was almost completely subliminal, but it surfaced once, in his  “Such is the word of Kings” speech, where his ironic respect revealed his unquestionable contempt to everyone listening, without him once saying a single inappropriate word. 

Jon Finch continued the part of Bolingbroke in the Henry IV movies from this series, and he began to set the stage for that character towards the end of this movie.  As soon as the York family left the room, he threw his hands up and yelled in frustration, foreshadowing Bolingbroke’s future trials at actually running the country he had so easily won.  It was a small touch, but it did a good job of setting up the character as part of an ensuing saga rather than leaving him on solid ground at the end of Richard II. 

John Gielgud’s John of Gaunt brimmed with gravitas and wisdom, but I felt he held back too much during his confrontation with Richard.  That scene always seems like a huge breaking point for the character; it’s not that he’s only just come to think these things about Richard, it’s that until then, he hasn’t been able to say them.  Richard has destroyed everything he loves, and he has sat by and watched, but in his dying minutes, he snaps at it all pours out.  I don’t think he would have the sort of restraint that Gielgud had during that scene.  While he delivered it well, I think having a toned-down Gaunt in that scene lowered the stakes of the ensuing conflict, because the travesty of what Richard has done to England is less immediate. 

Charles Gray as the Duke of York and Mary Morris as the Duchess of Gloucester rounded out the older generation, and they both really delivered.  Gray’s York was a well-intentioned man, all hapless bluster.  He didn’t have the cause or character of his brother, Gaunt, and when he chastised Richard, he had none of Gaunt’s quiet self-assurance: he was terrified of repercussions.  Morris’s Duchess was a force to be reckoned with, and made quite an impression despite only appearing in one scene.   The three of them together gave a powerful portrait of the older generation, struggling to maintain their footing in this new world. 

The minor characters of the younger generation were weaker overall, with fewer knockout performances.  Charles Keating’s Aumerle completely faded into the background and made almost no impression at all.  Even when his life was on the line in the final scenes, he seemed almost apathetic.

 Janet Maw’s Queen took heavily after her husband, treating her ladies and the gardener with the same adolescent self-obsession that Richard treated everyone with, but she didn’t really grab my emotional attention as strongly as she needed to in order to really make an impression in two short scenes.  Her love for Richard isn’t only because her fate is tied to his, she also has a genuine love for him as a man, and her interactions with him can be very humanizing if she can manage to grab the audience’s sympathy in the few lines she is given.  Maw didn’t give a bad performance, but she also didn’t have the vital immediacy necessary for the Queen to be a truly effective character.    

Of the younger characters, only Jeremy Bulloch as Henry Percy made a strong impression.  He managed to seem every inch Hotspur for the single minute he was on screen, and I wish I could see what he could have made of the character in Henry IV Part 1. 

Of course, the most important part of Richard II is Richard himself.  It’s not one of those plays with wide focus on several characters; at the center of almost every scene, and delivering almost every major speech is Richard.  Derek Jacobi has two of the most important skills for any Richard: complete mastery of verse and wide emotional range.  Jacobi has a way of speaking verse so that it sounds natural without losing the cadence or musical quality it has.  It’s a remarkable skill, and one that is especially important for a part like Richard, who speaks entirely in verse, rhymes frequently and engages in extended poetic wordplay.  Jacobi made him sound natural without sacrificing any of the beauty of the language. 

Jacobi’s characterization of Richard showed him as vain, delusional and petulantly childish, but, and I think this is very important, not weak.  Richard isn’t inherently a weak man, as I think his behavior during the deposition scene shows.  A weak man would have handed over the crown and left at that point, but Richard insists on drawing out the ceremony, and really takes control of the scene as he does so.  It’s an “I’ll go, but I won’t go quietly!” kind of attitude, and I think Jacobi hit that right on the head, portraying Richard as a weak leader, but not a weak man. 

Richard’s childishness was also very strong in his performance, and I often found myself thinking that he was behaving awfully like a thirteen year old kid.  When Gaunt was yelling at him, he turned his back, messed with his gloves, and did all he could to not listen short of sticking his fingers in his ears.  During the scene with his friends after the banishment of Bolingbroke, he showed the unexamined cruelty that only kids of a certain age have.  They reminded me strongly of a clique of teenagers bad-mouthing a kid they don’t like, without any sense of consequences.  At times, Jacobi’s Richard was a petulant, overgrown teenager, and I thought the idea that he had never managed to progress beyond that stage of maturity made for very powerful characterization. 

While for some people the debate about the divine right of kings is interesting, I think the primary draw of this play nowadays is the psychological process that Richard undergoes.  No matter how unsympathetic he is in the beginning, he grows towards genuinely tragic stature by the end, as he develops both self-knowledge and empathy.   This is by no means an even progress, and it doesn’t happen in a straight line, but by the time of his death, he’s a very different man than he was in the beginning.  Jacobi took him through the journey very effectively, and by the end, his entire demeanor had changed.  Even from the beginning, Jacobi’s Richard wasn’t completely inhuman; before he entered the throne room in the very first scene, he turned to the side and took a deep breath, in one motion giving away his humanity and the effort required to act the part of King.  I’ve always admired Jacobi’s ability to make characters seem completely psychologically real, and his Richard showcased that ability phenomenally.  

My one complaint with his performance is that at times he went over the top with his characterization, creating more a caricature than a character.  There’s a fine line between the two, and he strayed very near it at several occasions, though I don’t think he ever entirely crossed it.  There were several moments, particularly during the deposition scene where a more toned down Richard might have been more effective. 

While I liked his delivery of the final soliloquy, I was less impressed with the way it was filmed.  It does done with frequent cuts, giving the illusion that hours or days had passed over the course of the soliloquy.  I like the idea that the self-knowledge he gains over the course of that soliloquy is something that happens gradually, over a period of time, but I found the constant cuts distracting rather than illuminating.  I wish that they had found a better way to show that passage of time instead of just cutting every few lines to a shot of him in a different position. 

While it wasn’t flawless, and the aesthetics were far from attractive, a handful of powerful performances really made this movie.  In my opinion, the BBC Complete Works series tends to shine the most in the less-loved plays, and this was no exception to that trend.  

Shakespeare's History Plays

Now that I’m finished with my month-long Hamlet spree and summer camp counseling without access to the internet, I figure it’s time to resume my blog.  Instead of just randomly reviewing as before, I’ve decided to set myself a project.  Unlike my Hamlet project, it’s not for school, and it won’t be done on a particular schedule, so reviews will come when they come, but I’m setting myself a list of movies to review that I think will work well as a set of comparisons. 

My current Shakespearean obsession is the history plays: any and all of them really, though of course, I have favorites.  For the upcoming months I’ll be reviewing a number of films based off the history plays, with a focus on those films that tie multiple of the plays together.  Instead of watching all the movies of a certain play in a row, I’ll watch each sequence of histories in a set, and comment on the individual films as well as how the series created an overall narrative. 

Unlike in my Hamlet project, I’m not aiming to be particularly thorough with my reviews; I’m not finding every single god-awful version possible just for the sake of saying I did.  I’m also not bending over backwards to get movies that are hard or rather expensive to obtain.  My goal is to get a relatively broad survey of the films of the history plays, and have a bit of fun in the process. 

The following is a rough outline of the movies I might look at, but this is subject to change at anytime and may or may not happen in this order. 

-Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles’ movie on Falstaff’s life, compiled from excerpts of both Henry IV plays and Merry Wives of Windsor.  

-Shakespeare’s An Age of Kings series, made by the BBC in 1960, covering the whole span of the eight chronological history plays, from Richard II to Richard III. 

-The BBC series from 1978-79, directed by David Giles, covering Richard II through Henry V. 

-The BBC series from 1982-3, directed by Jane Howell, covering Henry VI Part 1 through Richard III

-Dominic Dromgoole’s two parts of Henry IV, recorded live at the Globe Theater in 2011

-The BBC’s newest history series, The Hollow Crown, first broadcast this summer for the 2012 Olympic Games

-Richard Loncraine’s Richard III from 1995, starring Sir Ian McKellen

-Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Henry V

and

-Laurence Olivier’s 1955 Richard III

I already have a review of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, but I may go back to it after my project and see if my thoughts on it are any different after seeing the play done in other ways. 

I’ll probably end up watching and reviewing these in whichever order I please, but I will post the reviews in the groups that I stated above, and I’ll post an overall summary of each set that consists of multiple movies. 

Please let me know if there’s anything I’ve left off this list that I shouldn’t have! 

-Mara

Hamlet Superlatives

Longest Hamlet

No surprise here, Kenneth Branagh’s is the longest, at two hundred and forty two minutes.  Fortunately for Branagh’s film, it’s also fast paced and well done, saving it from feeling like it’s an hour or two too long.  Runner up:  Rodney Bennet’s at two hundred ten minutes. 

Shortest Hamlet

Simon Bowler’s bizarre hour and fifteen minute Hamlet: really more like a random sequence of scenes than a story, due to the extreme cuts.  If someone were watching Hamlet for the first time with this movie, they would have literally no idea what was going on. 

Best editing of the text

While Peter Brook’s was perhaps the most interesting edit of the text, there were some issues with it like the removal of Laertes from act one.  Of the plays that editing out a significant portion of text, the best editing award goes to Campbell Scott who managed to get the run time down to three hours without ever making me feel like I was missing anything. 

Sloppiest Editing of the Text

This is a close competition, with Michael Almereyda, Franco Zefirelli, Michael Mundell and Simon Bowler.  Simon Bowler’s edit is so extreme that the play didn’t really have any coherent plot, so I’m taking it out of the running because I’m not sure it qualifies as a fully-fledged Hamlet production.  Of the three remaining, the competition is fierce, but the largest number of line-flubs, errors and illogical editings goes to Michael Mundell’s Hamlet.

Best Double-Casting

In multiple Hamlets, the same actor played multiple parts.  In running for this category are Patrick Stewart as The Ghost and the Claudius in Doran’s Hamlet, Jeffrey Kisoon as the Ghost and Claudius in Brooks’ Hamlet, Bruce Myers as Polonius and the Gravedigger in Brook’s Hamlet, Byron Jennings as the Ghost and the Player King in Scott’s Hamlet, and Ryan Gage as Osric and the Player Queen in Doran’s Hamlet.  While Patrick Stewart and Jeffrey Kisoon were both excellent in both their roles, the award has to go to Byron Jennings.  The idea of double-casting the Ghost and the Player King is highly original, and he did it extremely well. 

Best Double Appearance

There were four double appearances in the sixteen Hamlets:  Eileen Herlie as Gertrude in the Olivier and Gielgud films, Patrick Stewart as Claudius in the Bennet and Doran films, Michael Maloney as Rosencrantz in the Zefirelli film and Laertes in the Branagh film, and Derek Jacobi as Hamlet in the Bennet film and Claudius in the Branagh film.  Jacobi was superlative in each film, making him the obvious winner in this category.  

Funniest Hamlet

David Tennant is a great comic actor, and he was one of the few who remembered just how funny a character Hamlet is.  He was completely hilarious in all the scenes where he just ran circles around everyone else.  Runner up: Richard Burton, especially in his scenes with Hume Cronyn. 

Prettiest Sets

There’s a lot of competition here, but ultimately, Kenneth Branagh’s Elsinore is hard to beat. 

Best Soundtrack

The award easily goes to the Kozinstev Hamlet, with a spectacular soundtrack written by Shostakovich.  Runner-Up:  The music in all of Branagh’s Shakespeare movies is excellently done, and his Hamlet is no exception. 

Worst Soundtrack

Campbell Scott’s Hamlet easily has the saddest soundtrack, since it was virtually the only weakness of the entire film.  However, it was such a massive problem that it really interrupted the movie for me.  Tied for second place are Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, where the music seemed to be desperately trying to persuade you that it was cool, and Michael Mundell’s Hamlet where it was consistently mood-inappropriate and sounded like it was from a different movie.  

Best Gertrude

Penny Downie in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet really defines Gertrude for me.  She was complex, subtle, and, most of all, excellent at establishing relationships with the characters around her.  She related with each of them in different ways, but they all felt very real and natural.  Runners-up: Judy Christie from Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and Blair Brown from Campbell Scott’s Hamlet. 

Best Polonius

This is a tough one, and there are going to be two winners here.  Hume Cronyn in John Gielgud’s Hamlet went for a funny Polonius, and it was enormously effective.  Richard Briers in Kenneth Branagh’s film went for a more powerful, sinister Polonius, and it worked just as well, though very different.  Runner-up: Roscoe Lee Browne in Campbell Scott’s Hamlet.  He played the part well, but I thought they pushed the “sinister Polonius” idea farther than it should go.  There’s sinister, then there’s evil.  It was mostly good, but occasionally went over the edge. 

Best Claudius

Without a doubt, Derek Jacobi in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.  He brought so much to the role, and created such a complex, nuanced character out of Claudius, who can sometimes come off as a slightly flat villain.  He was truly spectacular. 

Best Ophelia

There’s a lot of competition here, but it ultimately comes down to Helena Bonham-Carter and Kate Winslet.  They were both spectacular, with truly powerful mad scenes.  However, Winslet had the double advantage of a full, unadulterated text, and great actors to play off of.  While none of that is Carter’s fault, it did mean that Winslet was better able to create a full, complex character.  Kate Winslet, with Helena Bonham-Carter in a very close second. 

Best Horatio

Horatio is a character who can easily fall flat, especially in heavily cut versions of the text.  However, if given enough lines and a good actor, he can be one of the coolest characters in the play.  The best of the Horatios was Peter de Jersey in Gregory Doran’s film. He had a quiet presence throughout the film, and his friendship with Hamlet was understated but strong.  Runner up:  Nicholas Farrell in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. 

Best Laertes

While he certainly wasn’t in the best of the Hamlets, Peter Cumpsty’s Laertes was spot on, brining out sympathy without overacting, and giving the character some real personality in his short time on screen.  Runners-up: Terence Morgan in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet and Edward Bennet in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet. 

Best Osric

Ryan Gage in Gregory Doran’s film is the obvious winner in this category.  He was a perfect foil for David Tennant’s Hamlet to run circles around, but he seemed like a real person, not a cartoon character.  They had by far the funniest Osric scene.  

Best Players

The players in Branagh’s Hamlet had Charlton Heston and they were played as a group of extremely talented professionals.  Their scenes were two of the best in the entire film.  An easy win to the players in Branagh’s Hamlet, with particular praise for Heston’s Player King. 

Best Fortinbras

Ian Charleston’s Fortinbras in Rodney Bennet’s Hamlet wasn’t woven into the plot with the same detail as Rufus Sewell’s Fortinbras in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.  However, he managed to make an extremely strong impression during his brief moment in act four, and his cool, assertive takeover at the end was perfectly done.

 And some silly ones...

Most Incestuous Closet Scene

There’s really no competition here.  Mel Gibson and Glenn Close in Franco Zefirelli’s Hamlet took the incest to a whole new level.  Watch with caution. 

Sleaziest Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Jonathan Hyde and Geoffrey Bateman as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Rodney Bennet’s Hamlet practically left a trail of slime behind them everywhere they went. 

Best Time Lord in Hamlet

Four Time Lords have cropped up in the fifteen Hamlet films: Patrick Troughton, Derek Jacobi, Lalla Ward and David Tennant.  Since Troughton had about two lines as the Player King in Olivier’s Hamlet, he’s out of the running, and since Lalla Ward was a completely mediocre Ophelia in Bennet’s Hamlet, so is she.  That leaves Jacobi and Tennant, in a very hard decision.  Jacobi was in two Hamlets and Tennant was in one, but Jacobi only played a Time Lord for one episode, whereas Tennant played the Time Lord, and for three seasons.  The award goes to David Tennant. 

Worst “To be or not to be”

William Houston in Michael Mundell’s Hamlet was bad on technical aspects, and as bland as possible in acting aspects.  There were dark shadows over his face, lighting inconsistencies, a shaking camera, and constant distracting jumps to different camera angles.  That, coupled with a bland delivery makes it easily the worst.  Runner-up:  Laurence Olivier, because he managed to hit every cliché there is about that speech. 

Sexiest Hamlet

Why is this even a question?  David Tennant, obviously. 

Most Over the top Laertes

For some reason, actors playing Laertes frequently take it was a free license to chew up all the scenery, so there’s fairly heavy competition in this category.  However, the award has to go to Stepan Oleksanko in Grigori Kozinstev’s Hamlet.  Runner-up: David Robb in Rodney Bennet’s Hamlet. 

Worst Line Flub

While there’s some heavy competition between Ethan Hawke and William Houston to see who could flub the most lines, the award goes to Ethan Hawke for his dreadful mistake during “To be or not to be” where he referred to death as “The undiscovered country to whose bourn no traveller returns.” 

Most Overdone Death

In Branagh’s Hamlet, Claudius was murdered by a sword thrown from across the room that managed to completely impale him, then crushed with a falling chandelier and then force-fed poison.  It was a bit much, to say the least. 

Simon Bowler's Hamlet (2010)

I’ve seen heavily cut Hamlets before, but Simon Bowler’s is by far the most cut of them all.  It’s only an hour and fifteen minutes long.  When I saw the length, I was curious to see it to figure out how they condensed the story into that short a time.  As it turns out, they didn’t.  It wasn’t a story so much as a random series of non-sequiturs.  It hardly even contained a rough storyboard of Hamlet, and I’m sure that it would have been completely confusing to anyone who isn’t very familiar with the play.  It was very low budget and minimalist, but that wouldn’t have necessarily been an issue.  What was an issue was that it failed at telling a coherent story or forming coherent characters. 

Bowler advertised this Hamlet as the “Dogma style” Hamlet.  I won’t get into the details of Dogma style here, since my knowledge of it consists of the Wikipedia entry and nothing more.  However, the basic tenets of Dogma style seem to be minimalizing sets and props, operating on as low a budget as possible, and only using handheld cameras.  Perhaps this is a great showcase of that style of filmmaking; I’m no one to judge that.  For my purposes however, I’m judging it as an interpretation of Hamlet, and that’s where it failed. 

In accordance with Dogma style, it was shot on an empty stage with little lighting, and while that’s not necessarily condemning, it did mean that there was literally nothing to set the mood except for the actors themselves.  Unfortunately, they weren’t given the chance to. 

Almost all of the scenes that didn’t contain Hamlet were cut, as were a lot of the scenes with large numbers on stage.  As a consequence, most of the characters aside from Hamlet were not introduced until relatively late in the story.  Ophelia didn’t show up until the nunnery scene, and no dialogue was moved around to try to explain who she was at that point. Her mad scenes were cut, as were all the rest of her lines except for the nunnery scene.  Polonius was present during the Player King’s speech, but it wasn’t clear that he was anything more than a servant.  Claudius didn’t show up until after the nunnery scene, but it wasn’t apparent that he was the King until the play within a play.  Gertrude’s first appearance was that scene as well, but she didn’t have more than one line until the closet scene.  It was never apparent that Laertes was Ophelia’s brother or Polonius’ son, and he seemed more like a hired assassin than anything else.  These cuts meant that David Melville, as Hamlet, was the only actor who even had the opportunity to make an impression.  For the rest of them, the acting seemed to be slightly amateur, but it was really hard to say, since they had practically nothing to do. 

I earlier described Peter Brook’s Hamlet as almost a one-man show.  However, I hadn’t really thought about the extent to which Hamlet simply does not function as a one-man show.  This movie demonstrated just how true that is.  Without the context, none of Hamlet’s emotions or thoughts really meant much, and he seemed like a random pawn being pushed around a stage instead of a character in his own right. 

Melville’s Hamlet was unconventional in a somewhat interesting way.  He was very hyper-masculine, and has this sarcastic swagger about him.  He seemed more like a frat boy than a philosopher, but underneath that was a sensitive soul.  It could have worked very well, but for two issues.  The first was that, as I mentioned above, the story was cut beyond all recognition, removing all context and psychological complexity from the character.  The second was that while his acting was competent, it felt unpolished: more like watching a rehearsal than a finished performance.  However, I would have liked to see where he would have taken the character if he’d had a real production in which to grapple with the role. 

And that’s really all there is to say.  It could have been good, or at least interesting, but it failed to tell a coherent story or create coherent characters.  

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.