Hamlet (2009)

PG, which is kind of weird.  I can't really fight against it, but it just feels R.  At its core, Hamlet is a dark storyline.  This RSC version isn't exactly shying away from some of the more upsetting content.  There's murder, revenge, suicide, drinking, and a bit more sexuality than other versions of Hamlet.  Maybe it's because we tend to give Shakespeare a pass, coupled with the fact that it's not like there's gore on screen.

DIRECTOR:  Gregory Doran

My Doctor Who club is on its last legs.  The kids I started it with during Covid are all graduating.  They're kind of over it.  But you should know that I teach both Much Ado about Nothing and Hamlet in my World Literature II class.  Because I have a bunch of sorta-Whovians in that class, I show them the Much Ado with David Tennant and Catherine Tate.  Well, they kind of enjoyed that one.  But one of the reoccuring comments about it was about how much they loved David Tennant as Benedick.  This was not an accident.  I am a master manipulator.  (Exhibit A, for the prosecution.) Well, I normally teach the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, just because it's so complete.  But I know that by the time we get to Hamlet, there's a little bit of burnout to Shakespeare.  So I thought I would change things up.  If they liked David Tennant in Much Ado, they'll probably like him again in Hamlet.

I didn't end up showing David Tennant's version.  I started watching it and, between the cuts and the rearrangements, I thought it proved to be a bit too much. The students follow along in their plays and this version from the RSC is a bit all over the place.  But even more than that, it really tries too hard.  I'm going to gripe a bit.  It's not all bad.  David Tennant does something marvelous with the role that I haven't seen from other Hamlets and I absolutely adore it.  But my English teacher from senior year of high school called me Hamlet Boy because of my devotion to this play.  I invested a lot in this show.  I really, really like it.  I'm not a "First Folio" guy or anything.  I'm just a dude who really likes Hamlet.  Maybe that makes the work too precious to me, but there are choices in this version that are incredibly frustrating.  

I want to talk about Tennant first as Hamlet.  One of the key ideas behind Hamlet is that we have to question what is madness and what isn't madness.  Often, I tend to lean towards the notion that Hamlet isn't mad in exercising control over the events of the story ("hawk and a handsaw"), but mad in his understanding of morality.  The events of the ghost (which I really want to be part of madness, but I can't get past the idea that other people can testify to the ghost's presence) have skewed him into a fever of revenge.  That revenge corrupts more than makes him mad, but I get that there's a wealth to debate about Hamlet's mental state.  Most actors tend to play it in line with what I'm saying.  Kenneth Branagh, Lawrence Olivia, and Ethan Hawke seem to be quite in control of their faculties, especially when no one else is around. David Tennant might be the first Hamlet who embraces the notion of sheer lunacy regarding the whole thing.  As such, some of those lines really hit differently.  While I probably wouldn't make the same choices, Tennant's choices give validity to a version that might be considered simply the TV movie version of the play.

The bigger problem I have is that the movie really tries to be the version that's different from the others.  The theater community tends to be a little navel gazy when it comes to what makes amazing art.  This is incredibly reductive and I apologize for lumping in all theatre artists into this category, but there's such a need to be different that we forget that our job is to service the needs of the play and the audience. I know that there are probably Shakespeare purists who think that every show must be set during the Elizabethan era or whatever era the show was intended.  But I agree with most directors and producers of Shakespeare that many of the themes are so universal that these stories are easily transposed to other eras.  But one of the things about dumping the show in another era, like modern day, is that we have to not make that the point of the show. Goodness gracious me, the constant reminders that surveillance cameras exist in Elsinore almost became more important that certain plot points. Honestly, this version gives more attention to the notion of the camera than the death of Polonius.  

I'm literally listening to the score of Picard season three right now.  I often listen to Star Trek music.  This should surprise no one.  The reason that I bring this up is because, for the first time in my life, I question something that they do with Sir Patrick Stewart.  I think that Patrick Stewart does a fine job with Claudius.  This is such an annoying fanboy thing to say, but I have to say that I love Derek Jacobi's Claudius more.  Part of that is that I don't know if this version of Hamlet gives Stewart much to do besides be a spectator at his own downfall.  I need to get something concrete and annoying about Stewart's Claudius out first before I go into anything else.  I'm sure that this isn't the first time that the actor playing Claudius also played the Ghost of King Hamlet.  It's a very Frankenstein and his monster thing. I get it.  I just find it weird that sometimes the text doesn't really make sense.  Thank God that Tennant is playing Hamlet with an overwhemling amount of madness because it allows certain lines to make sense when they otherwise wouldn't.

Let me be explicit.  There are many instances where Hamlet refers to the fact that his father looked very different to Claudius.  He's insensed at Gertrude for downgrading in her new marriage and forces her to look at the two contrasting images of these men.  When Patrick Stewart plays both, it's a bit...confusing?  I noticed that we don't actually look at those photos.  It seemed like the movie wanted to power through those lines so that we wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but the speech comes across and disjointed and kind of silly.  Also, I don't see...why.  The logical version is that they're brothers, but it is also incredibly distracting.  When you do that double-casting thing that we're seeing here, there should be a mirroring.  After all, the movie really does play up the mirror imagery, especially the shattered glass.  But Claudius and King Hamlet aren't exactly mirrors of each other.  We don't see any kind of deeper meaning behind it.  Gertrude views them as different people.  There is no connection between the two that is explicit.  If there was a change in performance, I'd say it would work.  

I almost feel bad for Stewart, who doesn't do a darned thing wrong in this.  But the way that this version is formatted is that Claudius is almost undefined in his evil. I always like Claudius as a villain because he's kind of repentant.  If he could do it all over, he wouldn't.  But he's also a man who believes in self-preservation.  We see his evil come out in his moments of desperation.  But the movie is so incredibly focused on Hamlet that we never really give moments for Stewart to breathe into the character. It always feels like those scenes are rushed.  Claudius almost becomes a tool of exposition more than a proper character.  I love that Hamlet and Claudius are meant to be an unstoppable force versus an immovable object and that's just not the case here.  Hamlet keeps hammering and hammering and Claudius just reacts.  Part of that comes from the fact that the scenes are moved around to give Hamlet scene after scene together.  Claudius becomes a bit of an afterthought.

I mean, I didn't hate the movie by any frame of the imagination.  It's actually one of the better Hamlets out there.  I am subject to that thing happens to lots of other people.  "It's not the version I like."  I really love the 1996 version.  It's the version that made me fall in love with the play.  I watch it so often.  But as an alternative, smaller-budget version, it does a lot right.  Mostly, David Tennant as Hamlet.  Sure, I could go with out the ab-shirt that is meant to reflect modern society. But his scenes work because he's doing something that is both new and WORKS with the text.  He never really goes against the text.  If anything, listening to him speak, I find elements that were meant to be emphasized compared to the more stuff and controlled Hamlets out there.  Like, there's a good chance I'm going to watch this one again.  It's an hour shorter and has some really good bits in it.  It's just that...stop trying so hard.  You have a good show in there with great performers.  But constantly reminding us that "things are a little different here" is just hurting the stuff that really works.