STUDIO EXEC: You want to do a Shakespeare movie? People have been performing his plays for hundreds of years. Why do you think it's time for another Hamlet? How can you bring something new to it?DIRECTOR: For hundreds of years, they've been performing his plays well. I propose to perform them very, very poorly -- to make all the comedies tragic and all the tragedies comic.
STUDIO EXEC: I like it! Here's 30 million dollars!
That's the only possible explanation I can come up with for this
latest version of Hamlet, starring, as he was introduced
at the Oscars, noted actor and novelist Ethan Hawke. I guess I
should
be thankful we haven't seen Melanie Griffith as Lady Macbeth or Andie
McDowell
as Desdemona. Yet. (This theory would also explain Titus.)
If William Shakespeare were alive today, he'd have taken out a restraining order to keep the cast of this Hamlet at least 100 yards away from any of his plays. The cast list is a virtual who's who of actors who should never be allowed to perform any script written before 1970. Ever wonder what Shakespeare would sound like if he were stoned? Steve Zahn's your man (as Guildenstern). Want to have lines from Caddyshack running through your head while watching a classic play? Have a slice of Bill Murray (as Polonius). Tired of all those Hamlets who seem to be thinking about what they're saying? You'll be glad to see Ethan Hawke.
Ethan Hawke does not make a good Hamlet. Does the word duh mean anything to you? He slouches around in grunge-wear (that look is soooo five years ago, hon) and Bono-esque fly-eye sunglasses that I guess are meant to make the girlies squeal, "He's so deeeeeep and moody and coooool!!!!" He's the most self-absorbed Hamlet I've ever seen; he doesn't seem to be mourning for his father so much as resenting that this all had to happen to him. It's more slacker ennui than existential crisis. His favorite pastime is watching videos of himself. His primary emotion is "huh?" And he doesn't seem to understand a word he's saying. It's like he learned his lines phonetically. He recites them in a monotonous drone with a smug look on his face because he thinks he's an Actor because he's being all avant garde and hip and edgy by doing Shakespeare in a non-traditional way.
Did I mention that the movie is set in present-day New York, yet retains Shakespeare's language? Thus we get Hamlet's college buddies calling him "my lord," references to the Denmark Corporation as a kingdom and its CEO as a king, and Hamlet's numerous answering machine messages to Ophelia (I am not making this up) telling her to get herself to a nunnery. We get the ghost of Hamlet's father (Sam Shepard) disappearing into a Pepsi vending machine. I'm not making that up either. Ethan Hawke delivers his "to be or not to be" soliloquy in a Blockbuster video store, strolling through the "Action" section, looking more like he should be saying, "Sister Act or Wayne's World, that is the question." (Weirdly, although the entire aisle is lined with signs reading "Action," in a ham-handed attempt at symbolism, the videos on the shelves are classics, not action movies. This is just a small example of the bizarre screw-ups and inconsistencies. At one point, Hamlet is watching a black-and-white video of James Dean... thing is, James Dean never made a black-and-white movie. Hamlet's father affects a faint Irish accent, and Hamlet has a map of Ireland on the wall of his room... so why is the corporation called Denmark? Why did the cinematographer shoot so many shots directly up Kyle MacLachlan's nostrils?)
A major problem is that the key plot points of the play don't translate well to modern times, at least not as slavishly as this movie tries to. These days, you don't have to kill a man to sleep with his wife or take over his company. A free-spirited, boho girl like Ophelia (Julia Stiles) would never show her father her love letters or allow him to put a wire on her to eavesdrop on her conversations with her boyfriend. Instead of a play, Hamlet susses out his uncle's (Kyle MacLachlan) guilt with a video collage, but all I could think as we watched it is that it would have been so much easier for him to just show Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, or even Mel Gibson's. No New Yorker would ever settle a life-and-death quarrel with a fencing match -- that's right, they actually retain the final sword fight (Tiffany thinks they could have settled things with a nice game of Uno -- when Laertes whips out a gun and shoots Hamlet, I whispered to Tiffany, "I don't know much about fencing, but I'm pretty sure that's illegal." She whispered back, "It is in Uno, too."). And I think we can all agree that no one in this day and age would name their children Hamlet, Laertes, or Gertrude.
This film almost fully lived up to my expectations of its suckiness. The only bright spot is Liev Schreiber as Laertes, the sole cast member who would acquit himself well in a traditional staging of the play. Kyle MacLachlan (Claudius) isn't too bad, but I was distracted by the obviously fake gray they sprayed on his hair. Most of the other actors follow Hawke's lead, looking pleased as punch with themselves that they're doing Shakespeare at last, not seeming to care that they're not doing it very well.
Would I recommend it? Depends on how entertained you are by making your own Mystery Science Theater-type comments. I found it highly amusing. I have to say, I've never laughed out loud at Hamlet before. And, as Stephen put it, accidentally but aptly, it's mercilessly short. For those of you who are wondering, it's a lot funnier than the hippie, avant garde version I saw in high school at the People's Light and Theater Company, where the entire stage was a mound of dirt, five separate actors played Hamlet's father's ghost simultaneously, and Hamlet said, "To be or not to be" with a nonchalance that suggested the next word out of his mouth would be "Whatever."
Perhaps now would be the time for full disclosure: I have a lot of frustration in my life right now. Ethan Hawke is bearing the brunt of it. Normally I would think this unfair, but he really does suck. He's the Vanilla Ice of Shakespeare.
Back to homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search