The Hamlet Business

I've been hungry for some Shakespeare lately so when I saw Criterion has a playlist for "Pop Shakespeare" up this month I went ahead and watched the 2000 Hamlet with Ethan Hawke. The cast was mostly good, with Kyle MacLachlan as Claudius and Bill Murray as Polonius. I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to but I'd still prefer to watch the Nichol Williamson, Laurence Olivier, or Kenneth Branagh versions (in that order). I hate it when Shakespeare plays are put in modern settings.

This one's set in the world of contemporary corporate takeovers, which recalls Kurosawa's loose adaptation of the play called The Bad Sleep Well, a far more effectively gloomy take. There were two things I really liked about the 2000 film, though. I liked how Ophelia is wearing a wire when she confronts Hamlet and I liked how the performance of Sam Shephard is allowed to carry the impact of the ghost's words to Hamlet. There's minimal makeup and optical effects, it's mostly just Sam Shephard standing there in a suit.

Somehow he made this bit particularly chilling:

But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood,

Julia Stiles plays Ophelia and the filmmakers seemed to have not had much faith in her because a lot of her lines are cut. But I liked when Hamlet discovered she was wearing a wire and was enraged by it. It was a nice way of showing the nature of Ophelia's madness, how hopeless she must feel after the incident demonstrates to Hamlet that he can't trust her even though she truly loves him. So here's some advice for young lovers--don't wear hidden microphones.

Hamlet (2000) is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1859

The boat concealed a zero deep below.
But people knew balloons were full of air.
The salvage crew disdained a bag to stow.
A level deck remained to smooth the dare.
A beastly boy would watch the wasted books.
As copper daggers gather dust, he waits.
No killer sought to tame the Devil's hooks.
The wounded climb in vain behind the Fates.
A worthy man may yet not ev'ry role befit.
A hasty word would dwell a lengthy space.
Reflections fail to stop the bullet's hit.
Implore, but don't presume, an act of grace.
The footage shows a ghost in guise of man.
The demon building housed the guts of Pan.

Thin Walls and Torment in Denmark

There is an interior, psychological quality to Hamlet that often inspires minimalist productions such as Tony Richardson's 1969 film adaptation. Like Laurence Olivier's adaptation, Richardson's features darkly lit backgrounds and minimalist sets, though Richardson employs more detailed period decor and some really pretty, effectively used tapestries. But a sense of minimalism is emphasised by the incredible number of close-up shots on actors' faces; it feels like the whole movie is close-ups. It is sometimes dizzying but the performances by Nicol Williamson, Anthony Hopkins, Roger Livesey, and Marianne Faithfull happily justify the visual scrutiny.

Actually Marianne Faithfull isn't a terribly good Ophelia--I found myself wondering if her eyebrows were paralysed. They never, ever move. But she's really sexy; for some reason she delivers all her lines like a seductress, even in her final scene when she's becoming unglued. The Wikipedia entry says Richardson focuses on the sexual aspects of the play, "to the point of strongly implying an incestuous relationship between Laertes and Ophelia," an impression I didn't get at all but Richardson does introduce Ophelia in her scene with Laertes with a wonderfully sexual low angle shot of her reclining while he leans over her.

But one of the things I really liked about this version is that the bedroom scene between Hamlet (Williamson) and Gertrude doesn't come across as sexual at all despite the fact that the actress who plays Gertrude, Judy Parfitt, was only two years older than Williamson. The idea that Hamlet wants to have sex with his mother is about as tediously commonplace as productions of Shakespeare where everyone dresses as Nazis. I really liked Williamson in this scene; he becomes plaintive and childlike and you get the sense of how much his pain is informed by the loss of his family not only through the death of his father but through treachery of his mother.

It's hard to say if I would appreciate Nicol Williamson quite so much if I hadn't grown up watching him over and over again in Excalibur but I love all his peculiar intonations and surprising emotional shifts. Anthony Hopkins was an interesting choice for Claudius--he was a year younger than Williamson but already capable of an excellently naturalistic delivery. I especially loved how he delivered the line telling Gertrude not to drink from the cup at the end--he says it just as he's turning from looking at something else and spots her putting the cup to her lips. So you hear the surprise in his voice that prompts him to show his hand abruptly but there's enough cunning in it, Hopkins' tone drawing back, that it doesn't come to more than the ambiguous, "Gertrude, do not drink," Richardson omitting the aside, "It is the poison'd cup: it is too late."

I was very pleasantly surprised to see Roger Livesey in two roles as the lead player and the grave digger. Like Charleton Heston in the Kenneth Branagh film, it seems like there's a tradition of casting the lead player with an established star from a previous generation and Livesey's refined bombast made him perfect. And it was just cool seeing Merlin doing a scene with Clive Candy from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. This version of Hamlet is available on Amazon Prime, a really nice HD edition.