4 stunning-adaptations-of-Shakespeare’s-finest out of 4
My name is Sameer Chhabra and I was, in a completely unofficial capacity, The Ontarion’s chief film critic.
I began this column—“The Weekly Scene”—in January 2014, under the guidance of former Arts and Culture Editor Emily Jones. Since then, I’ve reviewed exactly 78 films almost every single week—taking few, but notable hiatuses.
This review—my proverbial curtain call—is ostensibly the last movie I will ever review for The Ontarion. This is a review of my favourite film: Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 adaptation of Hamlet.
As I close my eyes and head to sleep—perchance to dream once again of The Ontarion—I wish the readers of this august and famous newspaper a good night. May flights of angels sing thee all to thy rest.
There is no other film—perhaps no other performance—that more perfectly encapsulates Kenneth Branagh’s artistic vision than his 1996 opus Hamlet.Over the course of approximately 4,000 lines of speech and clocking in at 242 glorious minutes—the approximate runtime of Shakespeare’s play—Branagh captures the attention of his audience, and convinces us that we are witnessing the finest adaptation of any of Shakespeare’s collected works.
Hamlet, therefore, is that rare film that not only transmutes the Bard’s work into an artifact of the modern age, but also proves that the scrawl from Avon is perhaps the finest collection of literature gifted to the English language.
Suffice it to say, of all the films in all the collections in all the world, Branagh’s Hamlet walked into my heart and nestled there, warmed by the very veins in my chest.
To say that the film’s acting is superb is to undermine the very nature of the acting on display. Featuring an ensemble cast of actors from Britain, France, and America, Hamlet’s leading role is played by Branagh himself—who also directed and cobbled together the screenplay from bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s First and Second Folios.
Theatre legend Derek Jacobi plays the vile and villainous Claudius, Julie Christie rules as Queen Gertrude, a young Kate Winslet—in only the fifth cinematic role of her career—plays the mistreated and dismissed Ophelia, while Branagh collaborator Richard Briers plays the conniving and ruinous Polonius.
The cast blends seamlessly together, working in the manner of a single unit trained for a single purpose. Together, they chew scenery, they spit dialogue, they plan their meticulously overwrought conspiracies, and bring about the kind of immorality and damnation and tragedy only the Bard himself could conceive.
I must, however, dismiss the film’s thespian and literary pedigree, because there is little more that needs to be said. This is Shakespeare, people, and the cast are all very much Shakespeare people.
Where the film truly succeeds—where Branagh strips the cloak of actor and dons the mantle of director—is in the film’s production and overall visual aesthetic.Wikipedia will attest that Hamlet was the last major release to be entirely filmed on 70mm film until 2012. Hamlet was shot by cinematographer Alex Thompson utilizing the Panavision Super 70 film system, and I can attest that every single frame of this film is a painting come to life.
Of course, the great beauty of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is that it is a narrative that withstands both the tests of time and space. That is to say, Hamlet can be staged in a space no larger than an undergraduate dorm room, which means that directors need not concern themselves with matters of sets, props, costumes, visuals, lighting, or even scenery.
Branagh’s Hamlet, however, is a visual masterpiece and exacting attention is paid to sets, props, costumes, visuals, lighting, and scenery. Take the very presence of Hamlet himself. Clad in a slim-fitting black ensemble, Hamlet skulks and broods throughout each scene, clashing with the 19th century sets and decoration and contrasting with the film’s eloquently colourful visual vocabulary.
Indeed, for a film based on a play so thematically tragic, Alex Thompson’s colourful cinematography—as well as the choice to portray Elsinore Castle as a jovial, upbeat setting—is novel yet manipulative. When Hamlet walks into a room, for instance, the audience’s eyes are immediately drawn to his presence. As a result of the decision to scan Hamlet darkly, the character becomes a literal black mark on the entire film, forcing the audience to pay attention to his every manic move.
What then of the film’s directing—inarguably Branagh’s most important role and the mantle on which the film’s merits perch?
Suffice it to say, Branagh brings his commanding talents to each scene. Earlier, I said that Hamlet could be staged in a dorm room and it could still be good. The choice to adapt Shakespeare to film, therefore, is often the first point of contention among scholars.
Make no mistake, outside of the Globe Theatre—outside of the hallowed stages of Stratford—there is perhaps no better adaptation of Hamlet. Branagh, capitalizing on his intricate understanding of the finer machinations of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, utilizes modern filmic techniques and ascribes personality to each edit, transition, pan, and tilt. When Hamlet is manic, so too is the film’s editing. When Hamlet is contemplative, so too is the film’s camera. During Hamlet’s most popular monologue, Branagh eschews all sense of theatricality and cinematic flair, instead slowly dollying into the scene of a psychologically tortured character contemplating suicide into a mirror.
In summation, Branagh’s Hamlet is the stuff of dramatic dreams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd74Gniz-A
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures.