| A Melancholy Slacker |
| Introduction | 10 Things I Hate About You | Romeo + Juliet | Hamlet |
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| Hamlet |
| Starring: Ethan Hawke, Diane Venora, Bill Murray, Julia Stiles Director: Michael Almereyda Writers: William Shakespeare, Michael Almereyda Miramax |
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| The Translation |
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| Hamlet opens with the title character asking "What a piece of work is man" in a grainy black and white camera screen. Many of Hamlet's solo scenes are done this way, with him looking at himself in the handheld camera screen. In one such scene, Hamlet starts off the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy as he is on the verge of suicide. He continually repositions the gun he holds to his head, unable to decide which method of suicide is best. This is not the full soliloquy. That comes later in the action aisle of a Blockbuster Video. Almereyda sets the story in present day New York City. Claudius has just taken control of the Denmark Corporation. The "royal" family lives in the Hotel Elsinore. Hamlet is a film student, the final duel is done in fencing garb, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carry Hamlet's death sentence on a floppy disk. |
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| The Critics |
| Some critics were intrigued with Almereyda's modern translation of the film. Unfortunately, Hamlet suffered from both little marketing on the part of Miramax and coming only four years after Kenneth Branagh's revered and mammoth version of Hamlet. It received a rotten reading of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ernest Hardy of Film Dot Com said, "Almereyda is ultimately done in because the film is so visually flat, despite a few showy angles and the splicing in of video footage." Peter Brunette said that another version of Hamlet was probably unnecessary but still considered it fun, especially Bill Murray as Polonius. "The sententious, faux-fatherly know-it-all is brilliantly re-created through Murray's patented offbeat delivery and body language," he writes. Nearly all critics agreed that Ethan Hawke was the weakest link -- not up to the challenge of taking on one of Shakespeare's most difficult characters. |
| In Conclusion |
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| Hamlet was the least successful of the three movies. The weakness of the lead, and of the situation itself has something to do with this. Ethan Hawke relys more on his looks than on actual acting talent. And American corporate structure makes Claudius coming to power and marrying his sister-in-law seem the stuff of Jerry Springer episodes. The film comes in at under two hours, meaning much of the play is left on the cutting room floor. This film was not marketed to teens. It is included on the site because of the younger casting. Ethan Hawke is the first actor under 30 to play Hamlet in a film. Julia Styles at 18 is one of (if not the) youngest actresses to play Ophelia in a film. Miramax didn't put a lot of money into promoting the film and grossed only $1 million (the film cost $2 million to make). Because corporate symbols inundate the film, the film works best if it is looked at as a commentary of the over-commercialization of today's society. |