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User Reviews for: Hamlet

ZacharyWaltz
CONTAINS SPOILERS/10  2 months ago
One remembers the use of visuals. There are so many well composed and layered wide-shots that show scale, distance, and often multiple actions happening. The beauty of them is sometimes breathtaking. The showing of the play, and the confrontation at the end with Laertes are all the richer and moving with this approach. But, also, he connects scenes visually by moving to a new environment without cutting or revisiting a shot from earlier. Hamlet’s procession at the end is a meaningful montage of images. The black-and-white. The way Ophelia’s madness and suicide are portrayed is haunting.

The ghost scenes are not only eerie but exceedingly creative. The use of voice-over for the ghost’s lines is very well conceived.
All the actors do well. I think this is the best Polonius I’ve seen on screen, and also the best version of his advice to Laertes: he seems to be saying something he has collected beforehand, and he would want to say it in a hurry lest he forget it. He also would want to say it in such a way to help others remember it.

At 2 hours and 30 minutes, Olivier must omit subplots: As with other versions, the Fortinbras subplot is cut. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are omitted entirely. (He also shows his confrontation with Ophelia before the “to be or not to be” soliloquy.) Furthermore, Hamlet’s opening lines such as “a little more than kin and less than kind” are omitted, and Claudius jumps to this question, “Why do the clouds hang on you?”. Hamlet does not give his response, and this lack very much emphasizes the dreariness of melancholy, but this is a shame, since it is not balanced by Hamlet’s wit. The shame of this also is that Hamlet is not portrayed as suspicious of Claudius as he would be with those lines.

Thankfully, Hamlet’s advice to the players is included, and it is well shot.

And, what of Olivier as Hamlet? Olivier conveys Hamlet’s putting on his madness on as a rouse very convincingly such that you really believe it is a front. He is at his best in the scenes I have already praised. However, his soliloquies are done poorly. The first “O that this too too sullied flesh” is an internal voice-over dialogue. A poorly conceived scene, we watch him strut while we hear it. Not very fun. The “to be or not to be” is too slow and ponderous for my taste, though the visuals are striking. The “O what a rogue …” is cut to its famous conclusion “The plays the thing…” The “Now is the very witching hour” I simply don’t remember, and his last soliloquy is cut.
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