Tanya D. Marsh
April 9, 2000
"What a piece of work is man," the depressed Prince of Denmark muses.
My thought exactly as I departed the theatre following a screening of Michael Almereyda’s new adaptation of Hamlet, set in New York City in the year 2000.
Just four years ago we were treated to a lush, invigorating completeHamlet by the modern master of Shakespearean cinema, Kenneth Branagh.
What did Ethan Hawke and company think could be added by cutting out half of the play, moving the story across the Atlantic and throwing in a few hip, young American actors?
I’m afraid the answer is that Hollywood thinks America is too stupid and cynical for a traditional adaptation of Shakespeare.
No, we need rapid fire editing, jarring camera angles and a greasy-haired Gen-Xer in the lead before we will be coerced into sitting through what is (in my humble opinion) the greatest play ever written in the English language.
God help us if the studios are right and if Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet is the future of Shakespeare in American cinema.
I may be slightly overreacting, but I am angry because I believe that in their attempt to be ultra-modern, they ripped the heart out of Hamlet.
The most famous soliloquy, Hamlet’s "to be or not to be" consideration of suicide, takes place in a Blockbuster.
A BLOCKBUSTER.
In fact the words "to be or not to be" are replayed by Ethan Hawke’s ragtag Hamlet on a digital video camera like an old outtake of Max Headroom.
The play to catch the conscience of the king?
We don’t need no stinking Player King in the millenial version of Hamlet – our spoiled little prince will simply whip up a home movie to compel his uncle’s confession.
There are several moments in the film where the difficulties of adapting a play written in the early 1600s to Manhattan in the year 2000 become apparent.
In the sword fight between Laertes and Hamlet, for instance, Hamlet is supposed to be pricked with Laertes’ poisoned sabre and then Laertes is mistakenly cut and exposed to the same poison.
In the hip version, Hamlet and Laertes begin with a fencing match, but after Gertrude abruptly (and knowingly) drinks from the poisoned cup, Laertes shoots Hamlet, somehow shoots himself and then Hamlet shoots the king (who is actually not a king but the President of the Denmark Corporation).
The death scene is written as a long affair as all involved die agonizing deaths from all the poison and there are many wonderful little speeches as they all die.
In Branagh’s full version, the scene takes at least twenty minutes.
I suppose they decided that Americans don’t have long enough attention spans for the original, so the Michael Almereyda’s version kills all the main players in about five minutes.
I must interrupt my diatribe for a moment to point out the only redeeming quality in the entire movie was Liev Schreiber’s performance as Laertes.
I thought Kyle MacLachlan (he’ll always be Agent Cooper to me) was fine and Sam Shepard was an interesting choice for the ghost, but Schreiber was clearly the most talented actor in the entire bunch.
I would like to see him in a competent production of one of the Bard’s works.
I am not such a purist that I frown upon all adaptations which take place in the modern day.
I had the privilege of seeing Ralph Fiennes perform as Hamlet on Broadway in the mid-1990s in a version which took place in the Victorian Era, with all dressed in long swooping black coats.
I traveled 1000 miles to see that play, and it was well worth the effort.
But the Broadway production never allowed the setting to overshadow the language, instead, it allowed the staging and the play to inform one another and enrich the complete experience.
In the same way, Baz Luhrmann’s energetic adaptation of Romeo + Juliet in 1996 with Claire Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio was inspired because the change from early modern Venice to post-modern VeniceBeach added a layer of complexity to the story which made it all the more intriguing and entertaining.
If only this new version of Hamlet had done the same.
Instead, the language is subservient to the setting and when the great speeches are stripped away, we are left only with a simple story of incest and murder, of suicide and loyalty.
A titillating story to be sure, one worthy of at least two episodes of Jerry Springer, but not a vehicle for better understanding the human spirit.
Good night, sweet prince. You deserved so much better.
Hamlet Y2K: Shakespeare Goes GenX
Dusan Stojkovic
May 3, 2000
I really, really wanted to dislike the latest version of Shakespeare's Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke. And dislike it I did, but not as passionately as expected.
Anything "starring Ethan Hawke" sounds off warning bells of empty Gen X drivel in my Gen Y (or shall we say Whine?) ears. Just thinking back to "Before Sunrise" with Julie Delpy is a sure cure for insomnia: two strangers from different cultures spend hours on a train talking about nothing at all and, click!, love blooms. The constrained American take on all things European in that movie gives Mentos commercials a certain documentary quality in comparison.
And Hawke does not disappoint in turning in a disappointing Danish prince, disaffectedly reciting, for example, the "to-be-or-not-to-be" soliloquy in a Blockbuster store.
But apart from the complete misreading and trivialization of that most famous part of Hamlet, Michael Almereyda directs a fairly sly interpretation of the play set in modern-day New York but retaining the Elizabethan lingo. Hand-held cams, answering machines, and computer technology is immersed rather nicely into the text, bringing new life to the text and helping truncate it into a time frame the audience's attention span can digest. Of course, Shakespearean hyper-purists like Tanya Marsh are bound to be affronted by the extensive cuts in the Bard's holy utterances and will probably have to detoxify their souls by watching Branagh's Hamlet at least twice right after seeing this version. But the play's the thing, and thing in this case is simply too long, the cuts well warranted and well executed with the help of modern gadgetry.
Technical savvy notwithstanding, though, this version of Hamlet ultimately fails because it fails to convey any sort of meaningful message, let alone social commentary. To be sure, there are shots at modern-day commercialism, but nothing nearly as moving as, say, the recent poignant satire of American Psycho.
The stand-out cast member was Liev Schreiber who shined as a very convincing Laertes, more than making up for his unimaginative performance as friendly Canuck hippie No.2 in "The Hurricane." Schreiber has obviously done Shakespeare on the stage and virtuously extends that experience to the celluloid.Bill Murray is also fairly good as the sappy Polonius and Kyle MacLachlan effectively subdued as ever in the role of Claudius. The remainder of the cast was not very memorable, with the exception of Julia Stiles's despicable rendition of Ophelia: her lines were basically read with complete emotional detachment posing as something more. This is not the first time the 19-year-old actress has been bad; previously she starred in the unintentionally hilarious NBC television miniseries "The '60s."
And because of its lethal lack of purpose, this version of Hamlet will perish from collective pop-culture memory as quickly as that mini-series, if not sooner.
Hamlet (2000)
A film review by Max Messier - Copyright © 2000 filmcritic.com
A new school of acting should be constructed based on the method of Ethan Hawke. I am the first to admit that I enjoy Ethan Hawke in almost anything he does. The reason I like him so much is because he brings the essence of the brooding soul to the screen so well. Hawke plays Tortured Guy so perfectly they should give an award at the Oscars every year and call it the “E. Hawke Award for Best Brooding Performance of the Year”. As a natural-born brooder, the character of Hamlet perfectly suits Hawke because the role has always been given to older guys looking to validate their dramatic acting chops. Hawke’s Hamlet is the Generation X Hamlet. A Hamlet that uses his “discontent” with the world as a razor against the neck of reality.
This updated 20th century Hamlet is brought to vivid realism by independent director Michael Almereyda. Almereyda places the play in the year 2000, creating the state of Denmark as a huge conglomerate, the slain king a CEO, and Hamlet as a digital video maker. This interpretation sounds almost like it's going to be as much fun as a ten-car pileup on the expressway; you want to turn your head away from in disgust but are strangely curious about what happened.
The surprise is that this is one of the best versions of Hamlet. Almereyda has studied every film and stage version of the play, and his history lessons have paid off. He creates a stark, unflinching vision of a dangerous world where trust is a lost commodity and betrayal is weapon.
Hawke carries the vehicle well with his unflinching performance of a haunted man pushed to the brink, finding solace among the haunting visions of dead souls and images he captures with his camera. The supporting cast of Kyle Machlachan, Julia Stiles, Diane Venora, Bill Murray-- doing a damn good job with the dialogue -- and Sam Shepard are surprising in their ability to convey the motivations of the characters. Almereyda does an incredible job of taking the text and rearranging the structure to capture a better essence of Hamlet as it exists in the 21st century. The most enjoyable scene is when Hamlet recites the “To Be or Not to Be” while he is walking up and down the aisles of a Blockbuster Video. The imagery of the enormity of the aisles and the sense of Hamlet lost within a world of escapism is haunting and strangely unnerving. Julia Stiles equally provides a quiet reserve to the character of Ophelia and her muted voice speaks strongly in scenes as others determine her fate for her.
Michael Almeryda’s Hamlet is dangerous and sharp-edged. It retains a clear hold of the text and doesn't try to dress up the scenes with numerous cuts and flashy imagery. The actors smoothly roll through the acts and do not drag things down with dramatic flair. Speakerphones, video, digital still photos, laptops, and cell phones are used as not only showpieces, but also as valid devices to communicate the play’s text. If more classic plays can be updated with such brilliance, maybe more people will put down their Backstreet Boys biographies and pick a Hemingway novel or a Shakespearean play and start to understand the world around us.