Gregory Doran's Hamlet

This weekend I got around to watching the new movie of Hamlet, starring David Tennant. (Thank goodness for pbs.org's video player. Love!) I watched it in two sittings, since it was three hours long. It was a very good version. Probably one of the best Hamlets I've ever seen. Why? So often Hamlet is done for the lead actor, and often he'll be quite good and the rest of the cast doesn't live up to him. Not so with this production. Without a doubt it's the finest supporting cast I've even seen in a Hamlet.

Here are my thoughts that I jotted down as I was watching:

In general I'm a fan of modern Shakespeare, and I like how this one has done that but without losing the flavor of the world of Shakespeare. They haven’t tried to make it straight realism, because Shakespeare wasn’t. So I appreciate the fact that we’ve got soliloquies to the camera.

Ophelia pulling condoms out of Laertes luggage – finally! I’m sure this is not a new choice, but I’ve never seen a production do it, and I’ve always wanted to. I saw one once where she pulled a porno mag out, but condoms fits so much better with the text.

I like how Ophelia and Laertes speak part of the borrower and lender speech, as though this is a lesson Polonius has often drilled into them. Speaking of Polonius, I really liked his performance. I hate when Polonius is played as the bumbling comic relief (I mean, he is this, but the actor shouldn't play that). This Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) was a man past his prime, painfully aware of the fact that others did not need him, and trying to hold to where he was needed - as a father to his children.

What's great about Shakespeare in general is how every time you see a play, some new line will strike you. Patrick Stewart as the Ghost of Old Hamlet:

But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.

Tennant is visibly shaken right after encountering the ghost – mentally shaken. His manner is noticeably changed, and I think this choice works very well. He is frantic, mind whirling, and it’s beautifully contrasting with the control of the final moment of the scene, when clarity comes and he sadly realizes what this all entails “O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right.”

Cameras – I was wondering how they were going to make use of these – are they Claudius’s eye, watchful on his kingdom and castle? But that wouldn’t work because then he would have seen the craziness that happened when the ghost appeared. So at first I wasn’t sure what the point of showing the scenes through the security cameras were. But then I realized that it was to establish a norm – because when Claudius was watching, the cameras would move. This was used during Hamlet’s encounter with Ophelia, and his scene with the players. It worked really well to have Hamlet to the camera moving, disconnect it and then say “Now I am alone.” The security cameras also worked really well with Claudius’s line “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” But then the conceit sort of dropped out. It seemed to be an idea that work great in a couple places, but wasn't as all-encompassing of the play as it might have been.

Text changes. The most frequently used text is the Second Quarto text from 1604. Doran moves the "To be or not to be" speech early, the location where it is in the Q1 Hamlet and the Folio. Tennant chooses to use the version of the line "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy" rather than "your philosophy." This follows the Folio reading. They've also changed the line "He's fat and scant of breath" to "He's hot and scant of breath" which is what most scholars agree it means anyway.

The Gertrude/Hamlet scene was awesome. I think Penny Downie is a fantastic Gertrude. But as much as I like Patrick Stewart as an actor, I’m not feeling his Claudius. I’m just not getting a grip on what he’s trying to do with the character.

Mariah Gale was a great Ophelia. I hate this character. Shakespeare has made her terribly underwritten. She makes no sense, and so it is virtually impossible for an actress to succeed in the role, not to mention the fact, oh yeah, there's a crazy scene. But here was the best mad scene I’ve ever seen. I’m thankful that she wasn’t dippy crazy and that she didn’t hump anything. She seemed truly unbalanced, and in a dangerous way, which is something I haven’t seen before. I like that there was anger and that Ophelia got to be strong for a moment, even if it is only because she had lost her wits. I like that this Ophelia seemed to have a reason for being there rather than just off in la la land. Ophelia’s are often naked or in nightgowns, but this is the first one where, when the clothes came off, it made sense and didn’t just feel awkward.

My main complaint with this version - the shattered mirror. Obvious. Way to obvious.

Osric was great.

Okay: the ending. I'll have to watch it again and see if what I thought was going on changes; how did you all interpret it? Did Gertrude figure out that the cup was poisons and choose to drink it anyway? Wouldn’t she then try to drink it all so none was left for Hamlet, because there seemed to be a lot left for Claudius to drink. Speaking of which… yeah, that was weird. I had accidentally read a spoiler that said something about Claudius choosing to drink the poisoned cup. So I though he was going to do exactly what he had done with the character of Macbeth – he realized how terrible he was, what a monster he had become, and chose to die. But that’s not what he did with Claudius at all. Claudius shrugs and then drinks, as if it doesn’t matter. His Claudius wasn’t nefarious, but absolutely amoral. Or at least, that’s what I got from it. As weird as this choice was in the moment, it did actually help me make more sense of the entire character. ... I think...