Hamlet [1996]

Welcome back to My Year of Shakespeare, a blog series where I complain about movies I sort-of enjoyed. This week we watched Kenneth Branagh's 1996 Hamlet, an adaptation whose stated goal was to scarcely budge from the stage-and-page unabridged version and took four hours plus an intermission to do that.

There is plenty here, both to love and to suffer through. Branagh's portrayal of Hamlet is electric, vivacious, manic. A menace to every character who would interact with him. It is a joy to watch him terrorize his way through the court. Winslet's Ophelia, also, is captivating; I believe the tragedy of her passing lands (reads? is received?) better than Hamlet's own, or at least more relatably is conveyed.

Many of the other performances are... stodgy. Stuffy. What one would expect from a BBC production of the same or earlier vintage. Derek Jacobi in particular mumbled his lines in a way that demanded I use the subtitles, which I find irksome.

The staging/sets seem impossibly lush. To be a member of Fortinbras's party would almost certainly feel like the art of the red guards after storming the castle

There are two casting choices that I found slightly curious though not bad - Billy Crystal, as the gravedigger, in a loose variation on his role from The Princess Bride and also somehow reminiscent of Keaton's Dogberry in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing; and Robin Williams of all people as the master at arms courtier for the duel with Laertes. I guess Castle Rock demanded the broad appeal cast if Branagh was going to do the unabridged version. I don't know if I'll ever not be pleased to see Robin Williams in a role; he was a mainstay of all sorts of movies I saw growing up and I took his death in 2014 pretty hard.

Can I recommend this to people? Yes but with the caveat that the movie basically grinds to a halt during the scenes where Branagh or Winslet are absent. You will feel all four hours. Make sure this is something you want to do. It will feel like freshman year English class suffering through Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet if it is not the thing you want to be doing.

Next week, we're watching 1999's Let The Devil Wear Black and also 1994's The Lion King. Thank you for playing along at home.