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HAMLET
****
[Reviews] Starring Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie,
Kate Winslet and Michael Maloney. Directed and written by
Kenneth Branagh. Produced by David Barron. A Columbia release.
Drama. Rated PG-13 for some violent images and sexuality. Running
time: 242 min. Opens 12/25 NY/L.A./Tor; 1/24 expands to top 20
markets; 2/14 widens.
"There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow," says
the Danish prince Hamlet near the all exeunt end of this four-hour,
full-length version, and actor/adapter/director Kenneth Branagh
gives the words a fragilely melancholic understanding that makes it
one of the film's most finely delivered lines from a play fraught
with many famous utterances. (Among them, "To be or not to be," here
done passably, and "Alas, poor Yorich," done so perfectly--with the
aid of, believe it or not, Billy Crystal as the Gravedigger--it
might be called the platonic form of all its renderings). Toiling in
classical terrain he clearly "gets"--his best films have been
retellings of Shakespeare's "Henry V" and "Much Ado About Nothing,"
and he's played the Dane 300 times onstage (as he's put it, it's
been "in my blood over half my life")--Branagh makes that simple
sentence read like a sentencing of life and the world. Indeed, his
achievements in this sixth sound-era screen version of Shakespeare's
1602 tragedy return Branagh to the levels of that best work, which
has always been powered by an existentialism that comprehends both a
"sparrow's" rise and fall.
The story, of the prince aggrieved by the unrighteous death of
his monarch father (given a ghostly turn by Brian Blessed) and
unseemly quick remarriage of his mother, the Queen Gertrude (Julie
Christie), to his uncle Claudius (Derek Jacobi) thus become king,
begins with a consummate first shot that, in a sense, imparts the
whole tale. Shooting Panavision Super 70, the camera shows an
exterior wall engraved like a tombstone with the name Hamlet; as the
lens glides left, the stone gives way to a great frozen spread of
snow that leads to more dead stone--the castle Elsinore--falsely
given human enlivening by the yellow glow of windowlight. Something
indeed is rotten in the state of Denmark. As the account of murder,
lust, intrigue and madness proceeds, Branagh manages truly bravura
sequences, weaving together (with editor Neil Farrell) impressive
long single takes and shorter bursts of imagery; his decision to
include via flashbacks material only referenced in the play--e.g.,
Hamlet making love to Ophelia ("Jude's" Kate Winslet, excellent once
more)--also acts effectively in giving the audience visuals that
make the text come alive with even greater passion.
Like its complex lead, however, "Hamlet" is not without flaws. An
updating to a 19th-century setting, supposedly to make the politics
more historically germane yet not make the verse sound too archaic,
seems inconsequential. More problematically, in certain cameos that
might be called stunt casting, Robin Williams as the flabbergasted
Osric is more distracting than comic, and the miscast Jack Lemmon
plays his faithful Marcellus as though he's straining to keep up
with the Bardic language. As the Dane, Branagh occasionally slips
into the kind of onanistic overplaying--call it trumpet
torture--that sank "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" and "A Midwinter's
Tale." Elsewhere, Branagh makes Hamlet's complaints almost whiny--he
might have lost all his mirth, but the lad doth protest too much.
Moreover, Hamlet's grief sometimes is far too made of anger. Plus,
narrative flow and character movement aren't invariably flawless, as
in an early ghost scene (itself too full of bombastic eruption) in
which midnight becomes dawn within moments and players in hailing
distance seem to have no cognizance of each other or shared events.
In the end, though, it's unlikely that the film's probable
upscale audiences will leave the multiplex feeling defeated joy, as
"Hamlet" boasts too many rewards. Along with those noted above, they
include a topnotch supporting cast (e.g., Michael Maloney as
Ophelia's brother Laertes and Charlton Heston as the Player King),
longtime Branagh collaborator Patrick Doyle's symphonic score, and
the grand yet precise 65mm cinematography of Alex Thomson.
Experienced in the widescreen format since his work as a focus
puller on "Lawrence of Arabia," Thomson--in league with production
designer Tim Harvey, another Branagh constant--makes superb thematic
use of both the icy exteriors shot at Oxfordshire's Blenheim Palace
(standing in for Elsinore) and the mirror-laden, secret-revealing
interiors filmed at Shepperton.
Also, in a mid-December decision, production company Castle Rock
perhaps wisely reversed course in their plans to first open the
242-minute version (just one minute shy of the runtime record for a
modern Hollywood film, held by the 243-minute roadshow "Cleopatra")
in major markets and later provide exhibitors in midsized and
smaller burgs the option of booking a cut closer to two hours;
expectations now are that all stateside plays will be the
untruncated iteration, and in 70mm wherever possible. (Although that
decision means theatre operators will be able to program only one
screening nightly, audiences will have two opportunities for
concessions; an intermission divides the film's 158-minute first
section from the 84-minute conclusion.) Standing apart from
virtually all other movie fare this season, "Hamlet" makes for a
fertile promontory. -Kim Williamson
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