William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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Actor: Billy Crystal, Gérard Depardieu, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Kenneth BranaghBrand: BRANAGH,KENNETH
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.20:1
Running Time: 242 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-08-14
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: C2683
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Hamlet has the kind of power, energy and excitement that movies can truly exploit,' award-winning actor/director Kenneth Branagh says. In this first-ever full-text film of William Shakespeare's greatest work, the power surges through every scene. The timeless tale of murder, corruption and revenge is reset in an opulent 19th-century world, using sprawling Blenheim Palace as Elsinore and st
DVD Reviews of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
DVD Review: Can you survive Branagh as a bleached-blond Hamlet?
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very well-directed film. The great joy of watching a Branagh-directed Shakespeare is the effort put into ensuring that the diction is as clear and natural as possible without losing the strength of the text. The cast is excellent, Derek Jacobi and Kate Winslet in particular; even cameos for which you would perhaps have doubts - such as Robin Williams, who impresses with his characterisation of Osric, and Billy Crystal as the gravedigger - work. Indeed, the repartee between Billy Crystal and Simon Russell-Beale in the graveyard scene is the funniest I have ever witnessed.
The colour and sets are spectacular, all filmed in 70mm, allowing for great richness and definition. Branagh says he wanted to escape the Gothic look of previous Hamlets, "away from the clichés of doublet and hose", so instead Elsinore becomes Blenheim in the nineteenth century. Almost everyone wears glitteringly smart military dress, for it is, after all, a time of war. It's also winter, although the effect is somewhat undermined by the lack of cold air on the breaths of the protagonists. Branagh wanted the look to be sexy and glamorous. He says he wanted, rather than a portrayal of an exact period, more an impression of period. He mentions the Austro-Hungarian Empire and claims the films "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "Mayerling" as influences.
The interior shots were made at Shepperton Studios. Here all is light and brightness, with a focus on the mirrored hall. There are some very long and impressive takes, but you become so engrossed in the action that you barely notice these. I only became aware of them when listening to the interesting commentary by Branagh and Shakespearian scholar and collaborator, Russell Jackson. It is well worth listening to, commenting as it does on both the philosophy and the practicalities behind both the original play and on the filmed production.
This film is long because it includes, more or less, the whole play. There have been some shavings; as mentioned in the commentary, Branagh has kept to the first folio and second quarto editions, so we do not see the scene of Gertrude being informed of Hamlet's return from England that is in the first quarto. The play itself, despite its length, is to some extent made worse by missing scenes, for example where Laertes is told of his father's murder and sister's madness, and draws together his mob to attack the palace. It would have been nice too to have seen how Hamlet returns to Denmark. Branagh tries to provide a detailed backdrop by, for instance, showing him making love to Ophelia, and by the use of cameos such as those of John Gielgud and Judi Dench, so perhaps I should not be too complaining.
It has an intermission between discs but the time passes quite unnoticed as you become involved in the drama, as when Laertes and Claudius conspire Hamlet's death. Indeed, I would say that Claudius is the key to this performance, and Jacobi (for once) is formidable in the role. Claudius now has time to be seen as a more well-rounded character. He is not a purely evil man, and Branagh in his commentary describes him as a "good man gone bad". This means that Hamlet is not so much the solution, but he is the problem to the play, for when he kills Polonius does not he become just as much the murderer as Claudius?
But what of Branagh's portrayal of Hamlet itself? It feels mean of me to criticise a man who has seemingly devoted half his life to the Shakespearian cause, but Branagh's Hamlet in his ravings and rantings in his soliloquies goes over the top. For me, Branagh's rages are seen as overacting, as not true. (Laertes too - played by Michael Moloney - tends to overplay his wrath, but, in a sense, he is Hamlet's mirrored self.) The worst scene in the entire play - just before the intermission - sees Hamlet raging against the universe, and set falsely against a vast winter landscape where Fortinbras's soldiers march across a plain. It is too full of hubris. If Hamlet is the Renaissance man that Branagh claims him to be, then where is his self-control, his healthy scepticism, his calm reasoning? I prefer him not to rage but to be more introverted; more moody; more in touch with his true self; cooler, calmer and more collected. Rage does not suit Hamlet, and it most certainly does not suit Branagh's hamlet.
Having said that, when Hamlet is in company, Branagh is excellent, almost faultless. He is suave, he is playful, he is comic, and he mad. But in all these scenes he is credible. His relationship with Kate Winslet as Ophelia is electric, and the interaction with his mother and uncle profoundly realistic. By the way, in this film Branagh has assumed that Gertrude does not know that the drink intended for Hamlet has been poisoned.
Some things do not work, such as Patrick Doyle's too-sweet score. The ghostly statue of Hamlet's father that is seen to move at the commencement of the play is also lacking, for he is just not scary at all. It is a wooden performance (literally?), for the camerawork here clearly does not portray the statue as great or as frightening as the film pretends him to be; the result is that the awed speeches surrounding the statue's movement are a little ridiculous, because we do not share the fear of the witnesses. On the other hand, Brian Blessed's later reprise of the role of the ghost in the woodland scene does indeed scare, with his whispered incantation and his glowingly dead eyes. It would have been, perhaps, an interesting idea in this scene to have compared Hamlet exuding cold breath from his mouth in the cold night air with the ghost's very lack of breath.
But at the end of the day, after four hours of intense drama, I felt somehow unmoved. Was it because I was numb? Or was the fault to do with the play itself? Is the ending too contrived for this post-Enlightenment viewer? Why did Shakespeare believe that his audience would be persuaded that Claudius would go to such lengths as to create a final fencing match to kill Hamlet, when he had the means to remove him more covertly, just as he had done to Hamlet's father? For me, Hamlet is a wonderful play ruined by the need for ends to be tied-up neatly at the close of the curtain. But as for this film version, there is so much wrong, and yet far more that is so right. I have yet to see a better filmed version.
Description of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
No Description Available.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 14-AUG-2007
Media Type: DVD
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