Hamlet [2000] + The Lion King 2 [1998]

Welcome back to My Year of Shakespeare, the blog series where I watch Shakespeare adaptations and talk about them. This week we watched Hamlet, the Ethan Hawke / Julia Stiles / Liev Schreiber / Kyle MacLachlan-starring version directed by Michael Almereyda.

The movie changes the setting of the play from Denmark to contemporary New York City, while keeping much of the dialogue unchanged a la Romeo + Juliet; unlike Romeo + Juliet, the characters give sober, restrained performances that verge on laconic (if not downright xanaxial). Hawke (as Hamlet) and Schreiber (as Laertes) feel like the only two who are psyched to be To Be-ing; Stiles, MacLachlan, Bill Murray's Polonius, Steve Zahn's Rosencrantz, they're all so low key in this, one really does have to wonder what sort of direction they were given. Also in the film, blink-and-you'll miss it cameos from Jeffrey Wright, Tim Blake Nelson, and throughout, (like so many other movies) the looming threat of Casey Affleck (here as Fortinbras).

Hawke's performance, in particular, is great; his Hamlet is frustrated, overly in his own head, and he does a terrific job at bringing the audience in along with him. Schreiber's Laertes gets to be his opposite - dynamic, active, self-sure, at the expense of being a wall for his own interiority. MacLachlan's Claudius, I do not know what they were thinking casting Kyle MacLachlan; I just cannot see him as any sort of plotting malevolence. Reactive or rageful, maybe, he's done that in other roles, but Claudius is a planner; it's a poor fit for the actor. Maybe Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel, or John Malkovich would've been a better choice?

While just as of-its-time as Let The Devil Wear Black last week, the set design in this showcases the clash of the 90s coffee shop desktop publishing aesthetic as it clashes into the y2k/frutiger aero times that are ahead of it. "Bougie" rather than "Let the Devil"'s sleazy. The result is untidy, but for people in my age cohort or older will almost certainly feel nostalgic, a perfect little time capsule.

One of the setpieces that I really enjoyed is in the header photo, Hamlet delivering the To Be or Not To Be Speech as ADR in a blockbuster trying to decide on a course of action. It is, unfortunately, slightly betrayed as movie magic when you realize that Doctor Zhivago and Marty are movies in "Action".

Adaptationally, I think it's certainly stronger than Let The Devil Wear Black; it also doesn't suffer from the sprawl of Branagh's '96 adaptation. I probably should've started here. I also really enjoy Ethan Hawke, I think he's probably in the top five or so living actors, so that could be a thumb on the scale here.

Ultimately my verdict is: inessential, but a great starting place if you're dipping a toe in on Hamlet for the first time. I didn't regret spending time watching or thinking about it. Small wins.

We also covered The Lion King 2 "Simba's Pride" this week; Lion King 2 is not a Hamlet adaptation, but ostensibly a Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, there isn't a pile of bodies at the end, so it's not exactly a direct adaptation. It was a direct to video sequel and unfortunately feels like it.

The animation looks cheaper; possibly all early digital, judging by how much they truly need to put down the smudge and airbrush tools. The blocking and framing all feel much less inspired than the first - this is a movie to satisfy the kid who wants to spend more time with the Lion King beyond the movie. Some of the action sequences are decent, better than the dialogue scenes.

The score is much more "Your Hip Aunt's Putumayo CD" than the first, either in terms of Elton John/Tim Rice songs or Hans Zimmer instrumentals. The result is inoffensive and saccharine.

While the plot does concern star-crossed lovers (or, crushes, given their ages), I think there's also some Titus Andronicus mixed in here, in the same way the first entry was stealthily Henry IV, with the antagonist Zira being sort of a Tamora expy and somehow-recurring-in-this-series actor Andy Dick's Nuka taking the Demetrius role. A wild choice to do, but it does leave the families more fully fleshed out than the parents of either child in Romeo and Juliet.

If you can think of truly nothing better to do with eighty minutes of your life, the movie is fine. I think I could've lived without seeing it — growing up, I never took the opportunity to do so, so there's no nostalgia factor to this one. We mostly watched it for this series so that in two weeks, we can watch The Lion King 1½ and not feel like we missed any of the series and also it ties in lightly. I wish they'd done a better job, but that era of Disney abhorred giving anything a real sequel (I say, implying that somehow Frozen 2 was of a better caliber than this).

Next week, we are watching 1994's Renaissance Man and 2024's Grand Theft Hamlet. The schedule for next month will post then too.

Thank you for reading along with My Year of Shakespeare.