Many productions reduce the visiting troupe of actors to walk-ons they provide a hook for Hamlet's advice to the players, and merely suggest the performance that Hamlet hopes will startle Claudius into betraying himself. One of the surprises of this uncut "Hamlet'' is the crucial role of the play within the play. Branagh is more intimate, showing a dagger blade insinuating itself through the mesh of a confessional. When he comes upon Claudius at his prayers, and can kill him, many productions imagine Hamlet lurking behind a pillar in a chapel. When he torments Ophelia, a most private moment, we spy on them from the other side of a two-way mirror he crushes her cheek against the glass and her frightened breath clouds it. ") is delivered into a mirror, so that his own indecision is thrust back at him. Hamlet's most famous soliloquy ("To be or not to be. And he finds new ways to stage familiar scenes, renewing the material. Branagh uses rapid cuts to show others reacting to his words and meanings. In this very public arena Hamlet agonizes, and is observed. The set puts much of the action onstage (members of the court are constantly observing) and allows for intrigue (some of the mirrors are two-way, and lead to concealed chambers and corridors). The interior sets, designed by Tim Harvey and Desmond Crowe, feature a throne room surrounded by mirrored walls, overlooked by a gallery and divided by an elevated walkway. Branagh uses costumes to suggest the 19th century, and shoots his exteriors at Blenheim Castle, seat of the duke of Marlborough and Winston Churchill's childhood home. The movie's very sets emphasize the role of the throne as the center of the kingdom. By restoring the original scope of Claudius' role, Branagh emphasizes court and political intrigue instead of enclosing the material in a Freudian hothouse. Yes, he killed his brother, but regicide was not unknown in medieval times, and perhaps the old king was ripe for replacement this production shows Gertrude ( Julie Christie) as lustfully in love with Claudius. He might have made a plausible king of Denmark, had things turned out differently. Here, with lines and scenes restored, he seems more balanced and powerful. The role of Claudius ( Derek Jacobi) is especially enriched: In shorter versions, he is the scowling usurper who functions only as villain. But how does it all look to Gertrude? To Claudius? To the heartbroken Ophelia? The great benefit of this full-length version is that these other characters become more understandable. Tom Stoppard's "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" famously filtered all the action through the eyes of Hamlet's treacherous school friends.
What is intriguing about "Hamlet'' is the ambiguity of everyone's motives. In tormenting himself he drives his mother to despair, kills Polonius by accident, speeds the kingdom toward chaos and his love, Ophelia, toward madness. And then the ghost of Hamlet's father appears and says he was poisoned by Claudius What must Hamlet do? He desires the death of Claudius but lacks the impulse to act out. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
His mother, Gertrude, rushes with unseemly speed into marriage with Claudius, her husband's brother. Hamlet (Branagh), the prince of Denmark, mourns the untimely death of his father. The story provides a melodramatic stage for inner agonies. Branagh's Hamlet lacks the narcissistic intensity of Laurence Olivier's (in the 1948 Academy Award winner), but the film as a whole is better, placing Hamlet in the larger context of royal politics, and making him less a subject for pity. film since "Far and Away" in 1992, and at 238 minutes the second-longest major Hollywood production (one minute shorter than "Cleopatra"). It is the first uncut film version of Shakespeare's most challenging tragedy, the first 70-mm. version, it has a visual clarity that is breathtaking. His "Hamlet'' is long but not slow, deep but not difficult, and it vibrates with the relief of actors who have great things to say, and the right ways to say them.
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