Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is nothing if not an accomplishment; it was designed to be that if nothing else. One could only look at The Passion of the Christ to find such a vainglorious act of hubris in the last decade, both in terms of bridging the space between the western canon and popular culture and managing to preserve the text’s original language (this is the only Hamlet adaptation to keep the text entirely intact). It is remarkable that Branagh succeeds to the extent that he does, but in his success, he reveals the limitations of his very goal. Of his stated desire to bring Hamlet to the screen, Branagh has done exactly what he set out to do, and he does it well. Of his larger goal of creating a film language that effectively mimics that of the stage, he has revealed more about the differences between the two mediums than he has about any way that the two could be fused.
The story of Hamlet is the same here as it always been, in its original form or another. Simba/Luke Skywalker/Hamlet (Branagh) is a young Danish prince whose father has recently been killed, allowing his uncle Claudius (Derek Jacobi) to ascend to the throne of Denmark, and marry Queen Gertrude (Julie Christie), Hamlet’s mother. When his father’s ghost reveals that Claudius murdered him, Hamlet sets about both coyly manipulating the people around him, and just sort of acting insane. The film was the last film shot on 70 mm (most films are shot on 35 mm), and features as star-packed a cast as you could want. The characters of Polonius (Richard Briers), Reynaldo (Gerard Depardieu), the Player King (Charlton Heston), Marcellus (Jack Lemmon), Ophelia (Kate Winslet), Osric (Robin Williams), Gravedigger (Billy Crystal), Fortinbras (Rufus Sewell), and Laertes (Michael Maloney) were all played by actors of some renown.
In early cinema, the influence of the theater was nearly suffocating. There was usually little more to a film set than a theatrical one (and little more perspective, as the camera still acted as a fourth wall), and title cards persisted into the sound era. But as time went by, and new effects were discovered, the two mediums slowly started to develop unique identities in much the same way that painting and photography did. The problem, therefore, with preserving the entirety of Hamlet in film form is that most of the play’s signature effects (i.e. the various soliloquies) are due to its use of language, which has never been something that cinema has been an especially good outlet for. To be entirely fair to Branagh, his visual direction utilizes filmic space as energetically as any director could, given the inherently confined space he’s working in. Branagh displays a gifted eye for setting and motion (long scenes are frequently intercut with either the gathering armies of Fortinbras or historically related scenes, such as the invasion of Troy), generously framing his scenes so as to give a theater’s benefit to environment, and allowing the audience to take in the full scope of this world in a series of long shots that move between the rooms of Elsinore Castle as the characters interact with the setting in a way that theater would not permit.
The high point of his aesthetic is undoubtedly Elsinore Court, an immense room with many mirrors and a checkerboard floor that could probably not have been realized with this kind of grandeur on stage, given Branagh’s tendency to spin his camera around the action and display every corner of the room. But the court also represents Branagh’s limitations, as it is impossible to spend so much time in a single room (as the play, faithfully translated here, does) and not feel that the action is more than a little constrained. Couldn’t the conspiring happen in a different room than the fighting? Couldn’t we see any of the peasant villages that must dominate the landscape, this being 19th century Europe? The problem is that in a film, you can, but in a play, you can’t, and it decidedly shows here. The long passages of dialogue, (not to mention the sudden pausing for soliloquies, which are still about as natural as the breaking into songs in musicals) despite the energy and professionalism of the cast, simply never find that divine spark to carry the narrative across the film’s four-hour running time.
It’s all veryhandsome, of course, and never less than entertaining, but to realize the play in the way that Branagh seems to have wanted to, it would have to have provided a filmic revolution along the lines of Breathless or 2001: A Space Odyssey and by that measure the film falls short. Harsh measurement, to be sure, but by the very high standards that Branagh set for himself, it hardly seems unfair or irrelevant.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
In addition to a commemorative booklet in the packaging, the disc also contains a vintage promotional piece from the film's screening at Cannes, the original trailer, an Introduction by Kenneth Branagh (in which he recounts many of the points also covered in the collectible booklet), and a short documentary entitled To Be On Camera: A History With Hamlet. While it has all of the traditional 'making of' qualities (interviews with actors, on set footage), it is also very much a history of Hamlet on screen and in culture. There is also a feature length commentary by Branagh and Russell Jackson, MA, PhD, and editor of The Cambridge Guide to Shakespeare on Film.
"Hamlet" is on sale August 17, 2010 and is rated PG13. Drama. Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Gerard Depardieu, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Kenneth Branagh, Robin Williams, Rufus Sewell.
