HAMLET

This week has been a week of Shakespearean pondering of life and death accompanied by some revenge! Lots of revenge! As part of my commitment to seeing all the Oscar-winning Best Pictures this year, it was time to take on Hamlet. The play has been turned into a motion picture on numerous occasions, but only one version has been awarded the Best Picture Oscar, and that was in 1949. This movie stars Sir Laurence Olivier in the titular role.

Previously I’ve tried not to do any research on the films I’ve been watching, instead trying to let them stand on their own merit by today’s standards. That said, I was aware that this particular version of Hamlet was drastically edited by Olivier, who also directed the film. On top of that, I had never invested in any type of education of William Shakespeare and his seminal works. So before viewing this one, I reached out to a college friend who is a Shakespearean actor and scholar. I am so appreciative of having this extra insight into both the author himself and the possible motivations for the original play’s themes. In fact, I was so intrigued by his insight and recommendations that I found myself believing the best way to fairly assess this movie, would be by immediately viewing an alternative version of the story in its unedited entirety. So, in the case of Hamlet, I also took in the more recent 1996 version directed by, and starring, Kenneth Branagh.

The two were both a great experience, and I’m really glad that I viewed them in the order I did. The newer certainly filled in several gaps in the relationships of all the supporting characters that I felt unsure about in the first. And while I understand how purists would be upset over the cutting of characters and dialogue from the Olivier version, it was still a fantastic movie. And really, haven’t movie producers been editing source material since motion pictures began? I particularly loved the camera work and the way that the castle, though expansive, seemed like a stage. Additionally, the tiny cast with an absence of extras, also lent to feeling like I was watching a play and a movie at the same time. With the Olivier version, Hamlet’s feigning of madness was evident, whereas with the Branagh version, I felt it was left a little more in the viewer’s interpretation as to whether it was an act or not. I also found that in the Olivier version, the relationship between Hamlet and his mother was almost one with an incestuous overtone, with Hamlet being not only angry about his new stepfather Claudius... but jealous of him as well. Also, did Gertrude know the wine was poisoned? In Olivier’s version, I felt she did, and made a sacrifice, but in the Branagh version, I found her to be an unwitting victim. I could go on and on, but I won’t! I’m just excited to find that my lifelong intimidation of “The Bard” has been squelched, and I’m excited to pursue his works further.

One of my favorite (of many) quotes… ”We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that's the end. [..] A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” Our very existences... downplayed to their core. Somber, yet so eloquently precise.