I’ve know for some time that there was a modernised movie version of Hamlet out there, starring Ethan Hawke. Yesterday, for just £9.99 I finally got my hands on a DVD copy of it, and although I haven’t yet had time to watch all of it, I have watched the first few scenes of it. So far, I’m impressed.
For starters, I wasn’t sure if they’d even kept the original Shakespeare text. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the plot but updating the script of a Shakespeare play. It happens all the time. But I wanted it to be the original script by Shakespeare, and it is.
The trouble with ‘authentic’ productions, which make it very clear that the original Hamlet lived in earlier times than ours is that although you can revive the old language and the old costumes, you can’t revive the old audience. And that means that actually even the language and the costumes have to change. The more linguistically impenetrable lines get cut, and the costumes aren’t so much genuinely ancient as ancient-looking-to-us.
I once saw a production of Hamlet in which they all wore genuine Elizabethan sticking-out trousers. It looked utterly ridiculous. Shakespeare done in merely antique looking (but in fact totally anachronistic) tight-fitting modern leather trousers can look splendid, however daft it would have looked to an Elizabethan audience.
But there is a deeper problem than mere costumes. In order to understand all the private griefs and calculations of characters in a play like Hamlet, you have to take their public power struggles seriously and to have an instinctive sense of how important and overbearing these struggles can be and how brutally they can intrude into the would-be ‘private’ lives of the characters. This Hamlet is set not in an embattled medieval kingdom, but in a modern corporation (the ‘Denmark Corporation’) threatened with a hostile takeover (by the Fortinbras Corporation, presumably). And okay, plenty is no doubt lost in translation.
But what is gained is that suddenly, for instance, the advice from Laertes to his sister Ophelia – about how Hamlet may love her, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be obliged by his family position later to dump her and marry someone more suitable, and that Ophelia could, in the meantime, be “ruined” – suddenly makes a whole lot more sense, at any rate to me.
I don’t have to work out why what Laertes says makes sense. I read the gossip columns, and I know already why Ophelia might be playing with fire.
For a young girl, from a good but not a famous family, now to be known to her friends and family as not being a virgin, and indeed to be known to have had several flings, well, that’s not a problem nowadays. But once the media get all over it, a story like this can turn very nasty.
What if Ophelia tells the media that she expects to marry Hamlet, but then he does dump her. What if ‘polite society’ then shuns her, by which I mean what if she can’t any longer expect to get a good, dignified job of the sort she was expecting. And what if, simply to make ends meet, she then sells her sad story to some other bit of the media, and they – because what can she do to stop them? – fiddle the details to make her look utterly gullible and stupid and maybe even a calculating little bitch? Suddenly ‘ruin’ isn’t such a strange idea after all. In a world of blanket media coverage of the lives of the high and mighty, and of blanket media coverage of the girls who get mixed up with them, a young woman can indeed be ‘ruined’. Think of poor Monica Lewinsky. In this Hamlet, the media are shown in full cry.
If I ever directed Hamlet, I’d smother it in electronic recording technology, and that is just what they’ve done in this version. Indeed, it was reading reviews that mentioned this that had made me so determined to catch this movie as soon as I could. This Hamlet doesn’t just talk. He sets his arguments and feelings down for posterity, on videotape. Or that’s what I’m hoping. When he says: “To be or not to be, that is the question”, he won’t just be passing the time of day; he’ll be searching for the ultimate sound-bite, to echo down the centuries and keep his name alive. (And you know what? – he did it.) Recording technology equals immortality, and Hamlet is obsessed with immortality.
I’ve already seen Hamlet seated at his personal computer, trying to make sense of the footage he’s already taken with a hand-held camera of the press conference where Uncle Claudius announced his contempt for the Fortinbras takeover challenge and his marriage to his dead brother’s wife, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet plays the footage back, and reflects on its contents. Later, I anticipate, I will see him filming himself. During those soliloquies he will be alone, but not alone, because posterity (he hopes) will be watching. (Question: will Fortinbras destroy the Hamlet tapes at the end? Probably.)
The other thing that I was hoping to see, and have not so far been disappointed by, was the treatment of the ghost, Hamlet’s father.
In an age of modern electronic imagery and trickery, ghosts suddenly make a whole lot more sense than they used to, as do all Hamlet’s anxious questions about just what sort of ghost this particular ghost was. This formidable and plot-initiating ghost, played by the formidable Sam Shepard, first makes his presence felt on a TV security screen at the reception desk, where the night shift are guarding the Denmark Corporation’s HQ. The guards chase after Hamlet senior, and observe him in full 3-D, full colour form, before he disappears in the general vicinity of a drinks machine at the end of the corridor. Well, if that can be done as a movie special effect, presumably it can be rigged up for real, so to speak. You can imagine Hamlet senior having been some kind of technical wizard, fully capable of making himself into an expert computer programme and “haunting” people with his computerised 3-D image and recorded voice after he has physically departed, and giving instructions to his son about what must have happened to him and who must have made it happen (younger brother Claudius), and posthumously organising his revenge.
And so on. I am, in short, loving it.
My point is not that all modern dress productions of ancient plays and operas are always better than ancient looking productions. Far from it. I’m just saying that this can work really well, and that in my opinion it does work here very well indeed. (I’m also very fond of Ian McKellen’s Richard III movie, which was set in 1930s England.)
Compared to what I’ve seen of this Ethan Hawke version, the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet wasn’t nearly so involving.
A final point, and one that it makes particular sense for a Brit to make here, to a readership that contains so many Americans, is that I particularly like to hear Americans speak Shakespeare in an unashamedly American accent and manner. The modern BBC-type ‘standard’ English accent, such as Marlon Brando adopted in the movie version of Julius Caesar that he was in, is a very recent contrivance. I’m not saying that Brando was wrong to do this. There were several English actors prominently involved in that movie, and it made sense for everyone concerned to talk with a modern English accent. The alternative might have been to have had Gielgud talking in an American accent, which doesn’t bear thinking about. Nevertheless, I believe that the scholarly consensus nowadays is that Shakespearian English almost certainly sounded more like modern American English than modern posh English English, of the sort that I was brought up to speak.
It helps that these particular American actors are speaking their lines so well, without a lot of stagey fuss of the sort that my pet acting hate, Lawrence Olivier, used to go in for, and without too much apologetic yanking around of the rhythm, of the sort that comes from overselling the words for fear of them otherwise not making sense. Ethan Hawke is speaking his lines especially well, to my ear.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of it. I know roughly what is going to happen, of course. But as with so much drama, what matters is the details of how the inevitable outlines of the plot are contrived. And it isn’t hurting one bit that the delightful Julia Styles is also heavily involved. She’s Ophelia. So far, very good, even though she’s said hardly a word.
Maybe I’ll add a further comment to this when I’ve seen the whole thing.
Brian, I completely agree with you. I adored the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, for all of the reasons you mentioned, but I am curious that you didn’t mention what was for me, the delightful surprise of the film: Bill Murray’s Polonius. His performance divided a lot of people but I thought he was just perfect.
Also agreed with you about the Branagh Hamlet being overrated. I much preferred the Zeffirelli version with Mel Gibson, Alan Bates, Glenn Close, Helena Bonham Carter and Ian Holm. Very authentically done, well acted, well-cut and briskly paced.
Right on – the Mel Gibson/ Glenn Close/ Helena Bonham Carter Hamlet was excellent. First time I ever saw Mr. Gibson in a capacity that prompted me to say “The man can act.” He was quite good, as was the rest of the cast.
I’m going to be crucified for this, but check out Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, with, yes, Leonardo Di Caprio. Grit your teeth, and watch it anyway.
A TV newscaster delivers the opening monologue. Pseudo-Modern setting, what looks like a decaying South American city. Chromed and bejeweled guns with engraved names like “rapier” and “broadsword”. Do not miss the drug-chemist Father Laurence, the Hispanic Nurse, or Vondie Curtis-Hall as Police Chief Prince. The deadpan UPS dispatcher has about three lines, and nearly steals the show. A minor bit of blocking nearly rewrites the entire play.
Gaudy, degenerate, wildly and happily uneven.
For balance, don’t miss Shakespeare in Love. I rent these two together, and I’m seriously thinking of buying them both.
Ugh, Ethan Hawke was the worst Hamlet I’ve ever seen, and that includes the version that ran on MST3K. I was praying he’d find the guts to kill himself. I think it’s very difficult to ruin a play by Shakespeare, but this version did it.
I collect any Shakespeare movie I can find, but I wouldn’t pay a nickel for this one.
Next Tuesday I’m off to see MacBeth set in Eastern Europe which should be, erm, interesting.
Monday 17 – Wednesday 19 March
Tabs Productions present
MACBETH
by William Shakespeare
A Play for Today
Macbeth
An exciting, innovative, bloody and entertaining reinterpretation of the ultimate story of ruthless ambition, murder and nightmare. Set within a modern day Eastern European context, whilst maintaining the traditional Shakespearean themes and language
Hey, what about a version Hamlet set in the Serengeti with lions playing the royals??
I’ll also vouch for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. Like Moulin Rouge, it was colorful and energetic. Unlike Moulin Rouge, I didn’t want to dig out my eyes with a spoon by the time it was over!
And how can we forget the Keanu Reeves Henry the 4th take off, “My own Private Idaho”, also starring a norton commando.
“Nevertheless, I believe that the scholarly consensus nowadays is that Shakespearian English almost certainly sounded more like modern American English than modern posh English English, of the sort that I was brought up to speak.”
That’s a new one to me. Do you have any pointers to somewhere I could read more about this? (Google was rather unhelpful.)
Can’t agree with the people who liked the Gibson version. The problem isn’t that Mel is a poor actor, it’s that his persona and charisma are such that he can’t possibly fit the role. The entire point of Hamnlet is that the little twit is incapable of making a decision and sticking with it. If he had done nothing everything would have been fine and if he had acted more directly everything would have turned out allright. Instead he wanders back and forth taking a muddled course that leads to ruin. Because of Gibson’s previous work as an action star, I found it impossible to watch without thinking “Jesus Christ on a pogog stick, Mel! Just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it.”
Haven’t seen the Ethan Hawke Hamlet but I do remember a BBC “Macbeth On The Estate” from a few years ago set in a scuzzy Birmingham council estate. It clicked quite naturally although Birnham wood coming to Dunsinane created a bit of a conceptual nightmare as there was nothing but concrete for miles around.
In the end they just fudged it by making it a jarring hallucination but it was a good try. Better than some other “updated” versions:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0048230
The most annoying thing about the Ethan Hawke version is that they obviously had advertising contracts from Pepsi and Blockbuster. In a couple scenes, the only thing your eye can look at is the massive Pepsi sign on the soda machine. And the “To Be” speach takes place in front of a wall with a thousand “Blockbuster” boxes on the walls. I thought the rest of it was pretty good, though.
I still like the PBS/Great Performances Kevin Kline version, but I’ve never seen it for sale anywhere, and my copy is on (ack) Betamax.
I’ve performed Shakespeare on stage in a number of different productions (no, it don’t make me the expert), and for my money nobody can touch Kenneth Branagh for putting the Bard onscreen. In fact, I’ve never seen anybody put Shakespeare on the screen worth a damn BUT Branagh, because he directs (or hires) his actors to act like people, without letting the language get in the way. I didn’t much care for the off-period costumes in Hamlet, but the acting and casting were superb.
Just my tuppence.
Colin Macdougall
I couldn’t agree with you more Colin. Branagh version of Hamlet is the only one worth seeing…and yes, I’ve seen the one with Ethan Hawke..and no, I don’t consider myself being an expert on acting/film/shakespeare…but what I do know is that Branagh’s Hamlet had a profound impact on me than any other film ever.
I think that the Ethan Hawe Hamlet was not a bad idea, but that its setting was a little too rooted in reality for some of the things in the plot to work. In particular, at the end, Hamlet and Laertes go about resolving what is essentially a corporate struggle by having a fencing match. Yes, I understand that the filmmakers were constrained by what was in the play, but what happened was they found a part of the play that couldn’t really be translated into the modern setting, and they just left it as in the play. For that reason I thought the ending just didn’t work.
I agree with some of the comments on Bill Murray above. I thought he was very good. Polonius is an interesting part: he can be played as a bufoon, or cynical, or calculating, or a loving father, or some combination of these, and I thought Murray understood this, and was able to work his usual on screen persona of deep apparent insincerity into it. (I would have loved Murray to have been nominated for some awards, too, partly because he was really good, and partly because I would have loved to have heard “And the nominees are….. Bill Murray for Hamlet,….”)
I thought that the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet worked better, partly because there was nothing in it quite as untranslateable as in Hamlet, and partly because the play was translated into a modern setting, but a rather surrealistic, dreamlike modern setting in which anything was possible. (Plus the music and art direction in that movie were just fantastic).
As for the Branagh versus Zeffirelli Hamlets, I like the Branagh version better. One reason for this is that I really applaud Branagh’s decision to film every line of the play. (It is very important to see the full four hour cut of this film. The shorter cut is not nearly as good). If you cut the play too much, Hamlet tends to look like a family squabble, whereas if you film the whole play you see all this juxtaposed with all the other things that are going on in the Danish cout, and the greater context of national politics and the larger implications of everything that is going on. Bragnagh understood this, which is why I liked his version of the play.
I didn’t really think the Zeffirelli Hamlet was bad, precisely, just insubstantial. Too much of the play is simply missing. It is the shortest cut of Hamlet I have ever seen, and the film rather lacks depth because of this.
Just as one further comment, the most enjoyable Shakespearean production I have seen on the stage in some time was the produciton of “Twelfth Night” at the Globe last year. This was an attempt to be as authentically Elizabethan as possible, right down to an all male cast. Seen this way, lots of things made much more sense to me. In response to Brian’s comments about Elizabethan costume seeming ridiculous, I got used to it very fast. I think the conclusion I come to is that a full scale no holds barred Elizabethan production is better than a half hearted one.
The movie “Strange Brew” is essentially an updated version of Hamlet. Canadian-ized.
Question:
If all those modern directors are so utterly creative and inspiring, why won’t they leave the good old Bard alone and write THEIR OWN pieces? Why do they have to rape Shakespeare and Goethe, Verdi and Wagner?
Answer:
Because all their “creativity” is second-hand: they can deform, distort and alienate what real geniuses have created, but they can’t create anything new.
Not anyone can write a Hamlet, but those who can’t would do much better to show proper respect to the one who did – that means putting on stage or on film *as closely as possible* what the original author expected to hear and to see. I’m sorry if I repeat myself, but artists performing or producing works they haven’t written themselves are but servants, executors of the author’s will. Too often they imagine themselves gods, because there are too many who worship them. An actor, and even more a director (stage manager in the older, better parlance) is but a craftsman, to follow the blueprint set up by the author, and should be honored for following that blueprint closely.