HAMLET
A film review by Ed Arnold
Copyright 1991 Ed Arnold
Before giving you a review of this film, I must tell you that this review is skewed. The day before I went to Hamlet, I watched HENRY V on video. Now that's quite an adaptation to the big screen!
As with any Shakespeare play, the key to any production are the performances. Face it, the actors are working with the best material ever conceived by a man. The only way to blow it is in the performance, I guess a director could blow it, but that would be hard, most directors know that the most they can do is bring visual depth to a product rich in human depth.
Well, it's sad to say, the performances is this film are definitely not up to snuff. Gibson stinks. He does better in the action scenes, but that's not the focus, and even in those scenes he lacks the strength of projection needed for Hamlet. He never is convincing, especially when he's considering suicide. Close's performance is not much better. She plays Gertrude poorly, you never get the feeling that Gertrude is evil, just so stupid she falls from one man to another. Even when she drinks the wine and dies, her death is overdone and overblown. Granted it's easy to take control of the screen when Gibson plays Hamlet so badly.
Now on a better note, Polonius (as played by Ian Holm) and the woman who plays Ophelia are wonderful! While I've read that others thought Ophelia was unconvincing in the first part of the film, I thought she played it right on. She was shy and overpowered by the personalities around her, she was bewildered by the conflicting messages and back-biting. I think her performance became apparently stronger over time because we saw more and more of her. All in all a performance worthy of a best supporting actress nomination!
It's too bad I saw this film after watching HENRY V. That was an *incredible* performance. I hope the actor who played "Harry" will do another film with Shakespeare!
Don't go see HAMLET, wait for the video and rent it some night when you have nothing else to do. Enjoy the supporting performances, but try to live with the leads.
If you want to see Shakespeare done right rent HENRY V or HAMLET as done by Olivier.
Ed Arnold (ed@hpfcla.hp.com)
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