Campbell Scott delivers one of the
most stone-dead withering looks in years in the new film that he and
Eric Simonson have made of Hamlet. Seated at a formal dinner
across from mother Gertrude (Blair Brown) and
former-uncle-now-stepfather Claudius (Jamey Sheridan, who brings a
decidedly virile tone to the role), he wears his mourning band for
his own departed father not on his arm but straight across his brow,
like a headband, and you can tell that, from the start of the story,
he's boiling over with feelings of resentment and disdain until he's
ready to burst,
That doesn't come until later, when
he meets the ghost of his dead father, who makes Hamlet relive what
he experienced during his murder. After that, emotional
reverberations begin to increasingly sound in his head, like echoes
bouncing off of mountainsides: he walks about Elsinore barefoot and
wearing an undone vest, abstract in countenance and with the
red-rimmed eyes of a tortured insomniac. When he attempts to
convince Rosencrantz (Michael Imperioli) and Guildenstern (Marcus
Giamatti) that he's not really mad -- "I am but mad
north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a
handsaw."-- we
know that he's absolutely wrong: to borrow a phrase from Anne
Robinson, this Hamlet is definitely "a few fries short of a
Happy Meal".
Scott and Simonson have filmed
their "Hamlet" (which will be showing at New York's Film
Forum, starting August 17) in and around a magnificent country house
in Nassau County, New York, and with the characters attired in the
formal tailcoats and gowns of the "fin-de-siecle" period
at the start of the twentieth century. Scott's performance is
sometimes too literal -- he carves directly into his arm with a
piece of glass while contemplating mortality, and at one point is
pinned to the floor under a huge framed portrait of Claudius --
while at other times he deftly parries with self-mockery and
mercurial changes of mood.
The most notable piece of staging
is in the way the character of Polonius, Claudius' Lord Chamberlain,
is presented, a loquaciously-written part that is usually played
pedantically or as a simple fool. With Roscoe Lee Browne in the
role, performing with the ease and confidence of a master, Polonius'
penchant for words is used to make him a fuller, richer character,
generously mannered, artful, diplomatic, and in the utmost the
"noble heart" that the other characters regard him to be.
Lisa Gay Hamilton's casting as
Ophelia is a bit of a surprise, not just because it's the first time
I've seen an African-American actress playing the part, but because
her dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty is in direct contrast to all the
lilting, fair Ophelias that one commonly expects to see, their looks
and manner setting them up to already become the tragic victim. (In
Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film, his Hamlet not only verbally abused
Kate Winslet's Ophelia, he thrashed and bashed her and mashed her
face against the woodwork.) Hamilton's casting, and performance,
brings out something unexpected, which is Ophelia's strength in
character -- she never entirely turns against Hamlet, no matter how
much he rebukes her, and there is a tangible, sharp sense of loss in
their scenes together, of a romance that might have been -- but when
Ophelia herself begins to go on the downward spiral, her madness in
this film comes across more as an act of defiance than as a defeat
(she seems too angry at what happened to become overwhelmed by
remorse), making it hard to believe that she would go so quickly and
easily to her end. (The scene describing Ophelia's death is the one
really noticeable cut that has been made by Scott and Simonson in
the original text.)
Scott's Hamlet is shocked back into
his senses after seeing, unalloyed and with his own eyes, the
consequences of his out-of-joint actions, and while he doesn't
backpedal on what his character has done, he emerges in the final
scenes as a man who has come to terms with himself, unafraid to face
the future.
While the film comes in at just
under three hours, it is always dynamic and moves along at a clip
without ever sacrificing any of the integrity of Shakespeare's
words. The filmmakers and performers have staked out their own way
in finding what's true and meaningful in the drama, and as a result
both the story and the film work extremely well as a result of it,
as do many of the performances. (John Benjamin Hickey, for one,
makes probably the best Horatio that I can recall seeing.)
Review by Gregory Avery · Nitrate Online
