470 - Hamlet, UK/US, 1996. Dir. Kenneth Branagh.
In 1976 Derek Jacobi played the role of Hamlet on the stage in England.
A 15-year-old boy sat in the theatre. He had not yet decided what he wanted to do with his life. Among other things, he was considering becoming a footballer--what we would call a soccer player--or a journalist.
As he watched Jacobi play the role his body began to shake. He felt he was watching a thriller. He became transfixed by what was happening before him. He was transfixed to be transformed.
He thought about it on the way home on the train. He thought about it for days afterward.
He now knew what he wanted to do with his life.
He would be an actor.
In 1979 Derek Jacobi played the role again, this time at The Old Vic. While there he received a letter from a young man, now at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, asking if he could come and interview him.
He agreed.
The young man came to The Old Vic and was allowed into Jacobi's dressing room. They sat and talked. He asked him questions. He wanted to know everything he could about being an actor. And about this role. And about this play. He told Jacobi he wanted to play the role himself while at drama school.
But first the young man had to give a soliloquy. At RADA. Before the president himself. Sir John Gielgud.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
He says he did poorly. Quaking. From shaking to quaking. What a development. And that Sir Gielgud came up to him and gave him a fierce critique.
The next year he would perform the soliloquy before the Queen.
The young man played in Another Country in the West End. Derek Jacobi went to see it, and he recognized him as the young man who had come to interview him in his dressing room.
In 1980 Sir Gielgud was playing the Master of Trinity in the epic film Chariots of Fire, and his student, the young man, got on as an extra, in the crowd.
And by 1988, at age 27, the young man was playing Hamlet himself, for his own theatre company, one which he himself had founded.
In 1989 he directed his first movie, William Shakespeare's Henry V, in which he played King Henry V, and cast his idol Derek Jacobi as the Chorus.
By 1992, he was playing Hamlet again, at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Also in 1992 he made a radio version of Hamlet, starring himself. And Sir John Gielgud. And Derek Jacobi.
The men who were once his mentors had become his colleagues.
And his friends.
He made another Shakespeare movie, Much Ado About Nothing, in 1993, and he played Iago in Othello in 1995. Then he made a comedy about a group of churchgoers who decide to stage Hamlet at the church, A Midwinter's Tale (or In the Bleak Midwinter) in 1995. He would go on to make Love's Labour's Lost in 2000, As You Like It in 2006, and Macbeth in 2013. And the world would come to know him as Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, as a director of big-budget Hollywood movies (Thor, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), as Commander Bolton in Dunkirk (2017), and as the new Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2019).
But in 1996 this young man achieved his lifelong dream.
His obsession.
To film the complete Hamlet. Every line from the play. To the point of going to the Folios and Quartos and lifting the lines that were unique to each one of them.
With a breathtaking production. The grandest of palaces. The hall of mirrors. The most spectacular of clothes. A sweeping camera. A grand score.
Filmed in 65 mm. Printed on 70 mm.
On film that ran 6,893 meters.
In 20 reels.
With a runtime of 4 hours, 2 minutes.
And one of the most prestigious casts ever assembled.
Including Sir John Gielgud.
And Derek Jacobi.
His mentors. His friends.
This is Kenneth Branagh.
This is Hamlet.
If nothing else, you will want to watch this film for what you see on the screen. The richness. The colors. The textures. The architecture. The wardrobe. And cinematographer Alex Thomson's dazzling camera work. Swooping and sweeping. Keeping in frame. Keeping in focus. Wracking the focus from near to far without drawing attention to it. Today's cinematographers are so clumsy in their wracking. And they are proud of it. They want to draw attention to it. Ugh. Thomson works with finesse.
If nothing else, you will want to watch this film for what you hear from the speakers. Patrick Doyle's score. And the speakers speaking the speech, I pray you, trippingly from their tongues. Billy Crystal, for example, as the First Gravedigger. Do not flinch when you see his name in the credits. He knows what he is doing. And he is good. And then to see Kenneth Branagh setting up Charlton Heston and then handing the baton to him. And Charlton Heston, whom up to now you may have thought was there to fill space in a cameo of lifetime respect, then takes the baton and takes over and delivers a powerful, long, majestic narrative from the booming depths of the earth.
But beyond what you see and hear on the screen and in the speakers, you will want to see this film to see the whole story told. The whole story told. To fill in the missing pieces, and to understand it better than ever.
When was the last time you read Hamlet?
If you are like most people, you read it once or twice, maybe thrice, while you were in school. But as an adult your exposure to Shakespeare now comes only when you see it performed. So you remember the scenes you have seen performed. And you forget the ones you once read but have never seen.
You are at the mercy of those who trim the plays, who cut them down to size, who excise them.
So when you see this version, you are amazed at what else is in there. Entire scenes you forgot existed. Other scenes which prove to be longer than you remembered. Story lines. Characters. Information that helps the overall story tremendously.
More about Horatio's and Hamlet's friendship.
More about Fortinbras' attack on Denmark. Not just from Norway. But coming through Poland. And Denmark's being warned by the British.
More about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and why they are sent to their doom.
The camaraderie between Hamlet and the Player King and their acting out together, first by Hamlet and then by the Player King of Aeneas' tale to Dido of Priam and Hecuba.
Hamlet's setting up of the play of The Murder of Gonzago with The Mousetrap to trap his uncle.
The character of Reynaldo.
Claudius' entire prayer when Hamlet sneaks up on him.
Gertrude's private speech.
Ophelia's madness fully played out.
Gertrude's full description of Ophelia's drowning.
Horatio's and Hamlet's watching of the Gravedigger before the funeral ceremony.
The Priest's opinion about the ceremony.
Claudius' conspiring with Laertes to trap Hamlet.
The character of Osric and his setting up of the swordfight.
The full swordfight.
The attack by Fortinbras.
And then, Branagh does something extraordinary. He shows the stories and the flashbacks actually happening.
He shows Hamlet and Ophelia together when they were happy, as it is being described. He shows the story of Priam and Hecuba--giving Sir John Gielgud and Judi Dench their roles--as it is being told. He shows flashbacks and dreams throughout, so that they are not only spoken but also shown.
Brilliant.
And among other virtues this version shows the weight of Shakespeare's mind, philosophically and theologically. He was a great thinker, and he thought deeply about that about which he wrote.
Watch Derek Jacobi sitting in his own private confessional, in the palace, after having moved from the priest's side to the confessor's, working through profound questions of what it means to repent. Jacobi handles the language with such ease, with the facility of a lifelong speaker of it, with such a tremendous understanding of what he is saying.
O, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven. . . .
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? . . .
That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
This is one of the great films. It should be in the upper ranks of people's lists.
The following statement sums up my response to watching it: At the end of four hours, what I wanted most to do next was to start at the beginning and watch it again.
* * * * *
We have just seen Michael Maloney three times. As Rosencrantz in Hamlet (1990). As Roderigo in Othello (1995). And as Laertes in Hamlet (1996). He appeared in both Franco Zefferelli's and Kenneth Branagh's versions.
Jack Lemmon as Marcellus. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
That we would do
We should do when we would; for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
A mob coming in and shouting, "Laertes shall be king." Do you remember that?
"To be or not to be" said before a mirror. Literally talking to himself.
Oh that this too, too solid flesh . . .
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreampt of in our philosophy.
God have mercy on his soul.
And of all Christian souls. Pray God.
God by you. - Ophelia.
* * * * *
O, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it. A brother's murder.
Pray can I not.
Though inclination be as sharp as will my strong guilt defeats my strong intent.
And like a man to double busines bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin and both neglect.
What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood.
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow?
Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer but this twofold force, to be forestalled ere we come to fall or pardoned being down?
Then I'll look up.
My fault is past.
But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?
"Forgive me my foul murder"?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world, offense's gilded hand may shove by justice and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law.
But 'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling. There the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves are compelled even to the teeth and forehead of our faults to give it evidence.
What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state, O bosom black as death. O limed soul that struggling to be free art more engaged.
Help, angels.
Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees.
And heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well.
Now might I do it pat. Now he is a-praying.
And now I'll do it. And so he goes to Heaven, and so am I revenged.
That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.
And how his audit stands, who now save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of though 'tis heavy with him.
And am I then revenged to take him in the purging of his soul when he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.
* * * * *
Kenneth Branagh says--
What I wanted to do with this great cast was to let it be spoken as clearly as possible, as naturally as possible.
One of the things I wanted to do was to reserve the right for the Hamlet to be as alive and in the moment, moment to moment, during the course of this film as it possibly could be, and that had to happen. Otherwise, it was simply a dull record of what I might have done in some other medium. I didn't want that. I wanted to react in the moment to what these other actors were doing and surprising me with, and let Hamlet play you. Let the part play you.
* * * * *
Process 1 - Arri 765.
Camera 1 - Arriflex 765. Zeiss 765 lenses.
Process 2 - Panavision Super 70.
Camera 2 - Panavision Panaflex System 65 Studio. Panavision System 65 Lenses.
Aspect Ratio - 2.20:1 on 70 mm prints. 2.39:1 on 35 mm prints.
Technicolor.
Sound Mix - 70 mm 6-track on 70 mm prints. Dolby Digital on 35 mm prints.
Richard Attenborough. David Blair. Brian Blessed. Kenneth Branagh. Richard Briers. Julie Christie. Billy Crystal. Judi Dench. Gerard Depardieu. Nicholas Farrell. John Gielgud. Rosemary Harris. Charlton Heston. Derek Jacobi. Rowena King. Jack Lemmon. Ian McElhinney. Michael Maloney. Rufus Sewell. Timothy Spall. Robin Williams. Kate Winslet.
Epic.
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