Hamlet (1990)

"Well.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy--
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
I must be cruel only to be kind;
Hold, as t'were, the mirror up to nature.
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger." -Tom Stoppard, The Fifteen Minute Hamlet

There is a noble kind of simplicity to Tom Stoppard's fifteen minute condensation of Hamlet, a clinical efficiency as surgical and as satisfying as picking a chicken clean to the bone- it is an entertaining blasphemy, chiding us gently for being entertained by it. Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet is not quite so sparse as Stoppard's -amounting to about half the length of Branagh's ambitious 1996 effort- but shows scarcely so much as a tenth of its discrimination, scissors slashing and red ink spilling in a slapdash slaughterhouse to match even the play's closing scene. Purists will be deeply frustrated by the inexcuseably poor editing of the text exhibited here -every other line or scene is here a gaping void into which one's remembrance of the play stumbles and falls- but the piece has evidently been manufactured for the purposes of simple understanding of plot. There is no enjoyment to be derived from the perforated poetry or perfunctory performances- this Hamlet is a story, a story of kings and brothers and murdered fathers which is treated more compellingly in The Lion King than it is here. But perhaps purists who purchase a Hamlet which boasts Mel Gibson in the lead role deserve all that they get.

Ironically, Gibson's Hamlet is actually a fairly decent effort, a competent enough procession of the trappings and the suits of woe without any particularly pressing suggestion of that which lies within and passeth show. He is, for the most part, a little subdued, lacking any real screen presence and displaying what seems more like childish confusion and petulant rage than brooding melancholy, but his delivery is comfortable if lacking in nuance. Helena Bonham-Carter makes a suitably frail Ophelia, and the always-impressive Ian Holm excels as Polonius, but the vast majority of the rest of the cast are forced to sit back and watch as their roles are vaporised into dust by Zeffirelli and De Vore's intolerably poor 'editing'. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are reduced to a side-show -apparently not important enough to retain even a fraction their lines, but significant enough for their hitherto unseen deaths to intrude upon the closing scenes at Elsinore- Horatio and Laertes become bit-parts, and only the royal triumvirate of Claudius, Gertrude and the Ghost put up a spirited defence against the ruthless assimilation of their lines into the cutting floor pedal bin. Alan Bates (Claudius) and Glenn Close (Gertrude) do little to impress, but Paul Scofield makes an absolutely ludicrous Ghost, a whining sniveller more akin to a sickly grandfather calling for his pipe and slippers than a hyperion-King returned from the dead to avenge himself upon his murdering, incestuous brother. The casting is unimpressive, the performances scarcely less so.

Perhaps the most important thing that has been lost by Zeffirelli's movie is the network of relationships which holds Hamlet together. Shakespeare's Elsinore is a real court with real intrigues and real relationships- but Zeffirelli's Elsinore is simply a collection of discrete 'characters' bound to the same locale, never interacting with each other but merely bouncing off each other like snooker balls. Is Hamlet Ophelia's lover? Gertrude's son? Claudius' foe? Horatio's friend? The Ghost's avenger? We know these things because we are TOLD them, not because we ever see any evidence of them. Zeffirelli's Hamlet is neither an understanding of the play nor an interpretation of the play, merely a presentation of the play- it is to Shakespeare as the dumb show is to The Murder of Gonzago, a more-or-less comprehensible gloss whose only virtue can be to ground the inexperienced in the storyline, if not the intricacies, of Hamlet.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.