Hamlet (Ethan Hawke)

[truepenny]

So heres_luck and I watched this Hamlet last night.

Um, okay. Spoilers for this particular production. So ...


Things I loved beyond all reason
--Kyle MacLachlan (Okay, my Thing about Kyle MacLachlan began with Twin Peaks, so is fourteen years old and going strong; ergo, I'm really biased. But I do think he's fucking AMAZING as Claudius.)

Things I loved and admired
--Kyle MacLachlan's Claudius
--Diane Venora's Gertrude
--Julia Stiles's Ophelia
--The relationship portrayed between Claudius and Gertrude
--The scenes between Polonius (Bill Murray) and Ophelia
--The scene in the laundromat
--The choice to make the Ghost able to touch Hamlet
--The way they used material objects to convey Ophelia, since she has so few lines (her photographs, the box with Hamlet's letters and the rubber duck, the wire, etc.)
--Also the water imagery accompanying her
--The horrifying moment of mutual realization as Gertrude is dying and Claudius looks at her and knows (a.) she's dying, (b.) she knows she's dying, (c.) she knows what he did

Things I thought were very clever
--The Mousetrap
--The Hotel Elsinore (Although I wanted them to do much much more with it. Considering how claustrophobic Hamlet is, why were there no scenes in elevators? And there was something about the revolving door that went ping! in my head, but I'm still not sure what it was, partly because they didn't use it except for that establishing shot.)
--The use of technology, particularly the faxes and the telephone conversations between Rosencrantz & Guildenstern and Claudius & Gertrude

Things about which I was wtf?
--The Ghost's third appearance
--"Marcella" as Horatio's girlfriend

Things with which I disagreed
--The rendition of Laertes
--The eruption of the gun into a fencing match.
--The manner of Claudius's death. It's a very up-close-and-personal kind of murder, really. And Follow my mother is, I would argue, a necessary line.
--The handling of Fortinbras. Why bother with him at all if you're not going to let him come on stage at the end? Especially if you're going to leave in Hamlet's command to Horatio to tell his story.

Things I disliked
--Ethan Hawke
--the closet scene, which was deeply incoherent
--Horatio (Which is not the same as disliking the actor. I think Ethan Hawke makes a terrible Hamlet, but my problem with Horatio is the choices made by the director/screenwriter.)
--a certain degree of incoherency above and beyond that of the play in its original state.

Things I loathed
--Ethan Hawke's hat

Comments

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I loved so much of this movie (most of what you loved, I loved), and like you I loathed Ethan Hawke's performance.

My two favorite things in the movie, though, you didn't touch on -

1) The epilogue is delivered by Robert MacNeil, of the late, lamented MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, which, while not Fortinbras, is its own bit of incredibly clever maneuvering.

2) The single greatest meditation of indecision in the history of mankind is delivered in a video rental store *in the ACTION section*, with the word ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION everywhere you turn. And he doesn't see it.

:loves:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that that was Robert MacNeil. Okay, then.

And, yes, Hamlet vacillating in the action section was very clever. I was at that point being badly distracted by the actual Hamlet and his craptastic delivery of the lines, but that does not invalidate the cleverness of the staging.

[heresluck]

Huh. I didn't think he didn't see the ACTION signs -- I thought he was being self-consciously ironic. But perhaps that's me attempting to make Hawke's performance more interesting by reading intentionality and irony where there's only affectlessness.