Mel Gibson (dir. Franco Zeffirelli), 1990, 2¼ hrs.
What sort of Hamlet?
Maximal.
What's missing?
As with Olivier's version, Norway is excised, and so all that political stuff; unlike Oliv, Zef doesn't salvage the final Fortinbras speech: the film ends with "Good night . . . to thy rest!" Then an overhead shot pullback.
Anyway, lots is missing, full scenes and lots of lines within scenes. Far more than anything else I've seen so far, this is a movie (w/ a movie star) first, a Shakespeare play second.
As w/ the Russian film, no I.1 Ghost scene--we start w/ an extratextual funeral scene, w/ some lines incorporated from elsewhere. Claudius's line to Laertes about his confidence in Polonius is cut, and this seems to the point, as Claudius does not, in fact, seem to have confidence in Pol, but rather seems only to humor him.
No "rogue and petty slave," no "hoist with his own petard," no "very like a whale," no lecture to the players (we see the Player King studying the lines on a page, and Hamlet walks by and confers momentarily and inaudibly), no mention of the question of Ophelia's burial in consecrated ground.
What's changed?
I had made notes about other omissions but had to revise them when lines turned up in unfamiliar contexts. "Get thee to a nunnery" is razored out of Hamlet's early-act III confrontation w/ Ophelia only to be blurted suddenly amid the dialogue between the two before the play-within-a-play. Most of the nunnery stuff is inserted there, saving the final "Get thee" until after the play, when Ham is positively giddy w/ the success of his plot. Then he reprises the line to O (who is inexplicably still at her seat in the wake of the uproar following Claudius's panicky exit), kisses her long and tonguily, then, "Farewell."
Similarly, we hear no specifics of the Claudius-Laertes plot until after an extraordinarily bland Osric broaches the bet to Ham. Then when we do hear about the plot, first it's Claudius's poisoned wine, then Laertes's anointed blade--the unkosher lack of a safety tip for the foil isn't mentioned at all, though after the fencers are injured and Gertrude poisoned, Laertes mentions the "unbated and envenomed" sword.
Besides moving lines from scene to scene, Zef also shuffles them within a scene, usually with a guessable reason. E.g., all of Gert's conversation w/ Ham in I.2 is grouped after all of Claud's so that he can leave and the mother-son interview can be private (though that means there's no court audience for "Seems? Nay, madam . . . ").
The order of "To be," the interview w/ O (or most of it), and the arrival of the Players is per Oliv, and here almost none of the dialogue w/ the Players is kept--pity, as the Player King is played by the wonderful Pete Postlethwaite. Pol's "the best actors in the world" bit comes as an intro to their performance, which substitutes thematically unrelated antic acrobatics for the dumbshow. (And oddly, Claudius, not Ophelia, complains of Ham's chatter, "You are as good as a chorus, my lord.")
As in the Russian version, we see Ham on board the ship pulling the old switcheroo, and in stark contrast to Gielgud's apparent squeamishness about Ham's petard-hoisting, Zef cuts directly from this extratextual scene to another: R&G being led to the chopping block!
What's odd?
Geez, what's not? Some of the odd (or at least unusual) is quite good: "To be" is delivered in a crypt (though one wishes Zef had trusted the viewer to get it w/out the repeated line-linked shots of a skeleton); O in her first mad scene (dark-eyed and effective Helena Bonham Carter) is openly accusatory toward Gert; the "herbs" in her second mad scene are chicken bones and straw, and she runs off into the country after, last seen alive sitting on a bridge, with a cut then to Gert's narrative of the suicide (then an overkill shot of the by-now-clichéd O-in-the-wet).
Some of it is defensible if arguable interpretation: this is the most violent Hamlet I've seen--like Gibson's Mad Max or Martin Riggs, always a hair's breadth from killing anyone long before he actually does: he slams O against a wall, kicks a stool out from under Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern?) and later assaults one or the other, and he nearly chokes Gert w/ the chain bearing her miniature of Claud before simulating rape in speaking of her in Claud's bed.
Some of it is just odd: Gert escapes Ham's assault by kissing him passionately on the mouth--Glenn Close is nine years older than Gibson and looks much closer to his age: easily the hottest Gert I've seen. The eros is there in the Oliv, of course, but here it's consistently more of the point. But OK, let's grant that even that's a legit interpretation. But what's the damn deal w/ Ham's slapstick in the swordfight? In this version each pass requires different fencing gear, and the second pass is with broadswords--Ham feigns inability to lift his, and from that point to his wounding, he's more concerned w/ getting laughs from the court than w/ his swordplay. Just weird and out of place--hey, this ain't the time, right before everyone ends up mincemeat, that we want comic relief.
Flesh?
Solid. And not only does Ham not jump in O's grave, neither does Laertes.
Ghost?
Corporeal--simply another character.
Gert-Ham eros?
Duh. An interesting difference: in each of the previous three, Gert seems to have some suspicion of the chalice when carousing to Ham, but this Gert is oblivious, even offering Ham a drink after she's had her taste.
Other people?
Claud is the too, too solid Alan Bates, relishing his role as heavy. Polonius is Ian Holm, who can't help but be Bilbo Baggins to me henceforth. He's fine, though there's little surprising, save some real heat in chiding O re Ham's tenders. O, for her part, is less obsequious than usual in acknowledging her duty to her father (in line w/ her later aggressiveness toward Gert).
This is probably the least good of the four versions I've watched so far, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not good--and golly, just its oddness ensures that it's as interesting as the others. Three petards.
No comments:
Post a Comment