KENNETH BRANAGH HAMLET FULL
Hamlet makes a speech reaffirming his zeal for revenge, above a field full of battle-ready Norwegians in the distance. His Hamlet is not moping and melancholy, but rather a clever and witty theater buff.īut Branagh foreshadows difficulties he will have with the film's conclusion through the clumsy manner in which he fades to intermission.
Shifting the blame for Hamlet's sanguinary campaign of vengeance to the execution of King Hamlet's behest allows Branagh to play one of the more sane versions of the Dane seen in the last 20 years. But King Hamlet's unfortunate run-in with Bausch and Lomb makes little sense and loses its effect when the living King Hamlet appears during one of the many flashback montages later on-wearing the same lenses and looking just as ethereal and possessed as he did when dead.īranagh's spooky portrayal of King Hamlet commanding his son underlines his opinion that it is mainly the ghost who motivates the play's ensuing violence. When the dead King Hamlet himself finally does appear, he wears pale blue contact lenses, which make him look more frightening than the smoke would suggest. Hamlet runs, panting, through a forest of wind-bent trees, while smoke bellows out of the ground seemingly due to talkative dry ice-the disembodied voice of King Hamlet. Perhaps attempting to prove his knowledge of Saxo Grammaticus, one of Shakespeare's main sources for Hamlet, in which Hamlet Senior is more a demon than a shade, Branagh plays up Hamlet's first meeting with his father after his death like a campy horror film. Unable to decide if he wants to scare us into being enthralled by the film, or present us with visual candy, Branagh falls short on special effects, particularly with those for the ghost of King Hamlet. Branagh seems to be going for much more than an Oscar here. Not only does Branagh seem to wish desperately that he be immediately lauded as sex symbol of the decade, but he also employs some heavy-handed Christ imagery when he is carried out after Fortinbras' coronation. Later, Branagh's vest is removed to uncover a skin-tight tank top, revealing, of course, Branagh's chest hair. Nevertheless, Hamlet often also dons a white poet shirt, baggy enough to shift the audience's focus in several lengthy scenes to Branagh's chest hair.Įven in the final fencing scene between Laertes and Hamlet, a fencing vest is worn featuring fake pecs and six-packs that would make Batman jealous. Hamlet, played by Branagh himself, wears black throughout, coupled with a lengthy trench-coat and cape for dramatic effect - a trick already employed in his not-so-classic redux of Frankenstein. When Branagh does use the period costumes to some effect, his motivation is questionable and questionably hairy. But to the audience's consternation, the period so over-emphasized early on plays a minor or non-existent role later in the movie's action. Here Bismarck-style hats poised atop the head of an improbably cast Marcellus steal a scene intended to prepare the audience for the play's mood of ranting and revenge.
As all Hamlet-o-philes know, the story begins with the sighting of King Hamlet's ghost by Horatio (Nicholas Ferrell), Marcellus (Jack Lemmon '47) and Barnardo (Ian McElhinney). But this masterpiece, which Branagh directed, starred in and "wrote" himself, is often shot through with several glaring inconsistencies that take away from the power of the melodrama he has obviously worked hard to create.īranagh sets the play in a pre-World-War-I era, apparently for no reason other than novelty. Kenneth Branagh set out on an audacious path when he decided to make his own film version of Hamlet, and the result is a film that is overall well-crafted and compelling.