HAMLET
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
Two Shakespeare plays translated to film in one year is my idea of a good year. I liked HENRY V despite the staginess and some of other cavils. Likewise, I liked HAMLET (with reservations).
Now I know the movie (and opera) world divides pretty neatly into those who like Franco Zeffirelli's work and those who abominate him and it. Likewise, the world of Shakespeare divides into purists who sanctify the full and complete received texts and those who don't mind having a bit a fun here and there and aren't above playing fast and loose with the Master.
I happen to be a bit-of-fun Zeffirellist, so don't say I didn't warn you.
Zeffirelli's HAMLET is no more Shakespeare's HAMLET than his ROMEO AND JULIET or his TRAVIATA was anybody's but his own. What I like about his work is that he understands the difference between a play and a movie. His HAMLET is absolutely, positively a movie and not a filmed play. And movies always muck about with the source material, very much as Shakespeare mucked about with his source material. Even in the titles, it doesn't say "Shakespeare's Hamlet"; it says, quite honestly, "Based on the play by William Shakespeare."
Zeffirelli has excised scenes, moved scenes around, relocated scenes. Almost every fan of Shakespeare's HAMLET will find a favorite scene missing or altered. There is even added material such as the executions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the death of Ophelia. These edits seem to me to be fully justified in the name of making a movie out of a play.
Of course, most of us will agree that Zeffirelli has a vast and dramatic visual sense, whether or not we can agree that he always uses that visual sense with the best of taste. He uses locales, sets, and costumes with exuberance and care. And it makes this movie, like his others, visual feasts. He also shoots many of his scenes en plein air, others indoors in something like available light. His camera is busy, perhaps busier than is strictly necessary or desirable, but that may be preferable to long static shots of actors declaiming (no names, please).
Another thing to like about Zeffirelli's HAMLET is the diction of the actors. They speak their parts more naturally, less hurriedly, and swallow less of the words than is the general rule with Shakespearean productions.
Without a doubt, I understand HAMLET better now that I've seen Zeffirelli's version. I've studied it in school and seen live and filmed versions, but I missed, not being a great Shakespearean scholar even in my grad school days, some basic structural details that came through loud and clear this time for the first time. Par exemple, just as the play-within-the-play mirrors the major action, so too does Laertes mirror Hamlet and his situation when he lets Claudius manipulate him into killing Hamlet but with the telling difference that Laertes never questions Claudius's honesty or motives and proceeds without scruples to do his treachery. Probably everyone else in the civilized world knew all about this; to me it came as a revelation while watching the final scene in the movie.
And there are some fine actors in this movie. I don't have the cast list in front of me so rather than bollix the actors' names as is my wont, let me just say that the Ghost, Polonius, Laertes, and Guildenstern & Rosencrantz (one of whom was almost certainly a Maloney, by the way) were all first rate; the Polonius was especially fine, in my humble opinion, balancing comedy and an underlying seriousness with great deftness and precision. And the Ghost made the most of his small role with some fine physical shtick, especially one gesture where he covers half his face by fanning it with a kind of broken wrist movement as he tells Hamlet he is forbidden to speak of the afterlife: a gem of acting.
I was almost as impressed by the acting of the "name" stars, Helena Bonham-Carter, Glenn Close, and Mel Gibson, in descending order of impressiveness. Bonham-Carter brought a knowing strength to Ophelia that I've seldom seen; her mad scene was disturbing and pathetic. Close looked marvelous and her scene with her son that ends with a hint of incest was strong and moving; it had me in tears. Gibson, a Shakespearean dark horse if ever there were one, was surprisingly good in most of his scenes with other actors; the art of the soliloquy, however, has eluded him so far. He moves well, brings a brooding energy to his part, and did not embarrass. There were times, though, when I feared his eyes would pop right out of his head, which is distracting at the least. And I have to say that he was too old for the part, at least as I envision Hamlet the young scholar-prince.
Part of Gibson's trouble with the soliloquies perhaps derives from Zeffirelli's direction. The movie has tendency to pause and almost clear its throat before launching into a famous speech; at times the quotation marks were nearly visible. I think any director has to work very hard to overcome the Barlett's-Familiar-Quotations aspect of HAMLET. Too often, I felt Zeffirelli instead of downplaying this distracting aspect was playing it up, as if he had just realized "Oh, that's were that comes from."
Overall, despite its shortcomings, I don't think you can regret going to Zeffirelli's HAMLET.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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