To Act Or Not To Act

Pure genius film 10/10

The best Shakespeare-inspired film I've ever watched, and not to brag but I'm able to safely brag, I've watched them all

Just re-watched the film and re-read Hamlet

These are the rambling notes, observations I took from play and film, and I know I'm omitting a wellspring of stuff because all my focus has been on Hamlet

Hamlet is key to the film, Jean-Louis Trintignant portrayed Hamlet on stage in the 1950's (and again in the 1970's), nearly two decades before he wrote and directed this film, and the finale scene of Hamlet is staged in the film (one night performance only....because everybody dies....)

The finale scene in Hamlet is re-enacted in the film at the hauntingly beautiful ancient Roman theatre of Orange, France, a UNESCO historical site, ruins of civilization, ruins of an empire, ruins of eternal ideals (like Justice), symbolizing Pax Romana and Roman Law and Justice, the ruins of the theatre built by the founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus (Octavian)

A scene from an Elizabethan-era play - one of the most famous and influential plays of all time - encapsulating the complexity of revenge and law and justice, it successes and its failures, is played out on an antiquarian Roman stage with Roman costuming against an ancient Roman backdrop all signifying that moment in time when Antiquity fought to open the door to Enlightenment, reminding us that concepts like vengeance, law, justice, and all the moral issues involved, are ancient, timeless, and eternal, they are the struggles of life and they are played out ad infinitum

Recalling Emperor Augustus also recalls all the internal drama and conspiracies and intrigues and rampant murders and unproven innuendos within his family and within every emperor's family and within the Roman oligarchic as well as within the constitutional monarchy he instituted, all of it mirroring the familial and political intrigues and innuendos of Hamlet (Hamlet hot for mother? Augustus poisoned? Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Incest between the imperial sheets?)

Augustus replaced the oligarchic rule of the Roman Republic with a constitutional monarchy yet human folly and blood lust remained intact

Both the film and play feature a play within a play, and the play within the play is the key to the play

Hamlet returns home and must take action within and against his kingdom, within and against his own family

About 374 years later, Rousseau leaves home and must take action against the world, specifically against the members of the legal justice system whom found his son guilty and capitally punished him

To act or not to act = Hamlet = Hamlet the son = to take action against uncle or not to take action against uncle, for murdering innocent father (beloved father whom everybody loved, loved so much drove king's brother into an envious jealous rage....)

To act or not to act = Jean Rousseau the father (film protagonist) = to take action against the judges and jury or not to take action against the judges and jury for hanging guilty son (son rightfully convicted of murder....)

Nietzsche = the Eternal Recurrence of the same; killing people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong is an endless cycle; "Justice" breeds vengeance breeds Justice etc

Jean Rousseau = "Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says try and tickle me", from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

Jean Rousseau the father is sly and remorseless and cold, his two flashbacks with his son indicate his son was also sly and remorseless and cold, his son a chip off the old block.

Based on descriptions of Hamlet's father and the speech of his father's Ghost, and based on Hamlet's own speeches, his methodical internal and external investigation of his father's death and the aftermath, his passion for studying and for theatre, his passion for truth and ethical justice, and the respect towards his intellect that everybody (Claudius included) confers towards him, we know Hamlet-the-son was a chip off the old block.

Opening scene of film - juror-in-the-car demands the car be dropped, drop the car! drop the car! Can almost be construed as "drop the vendetta!", "drop the issue!", "drop the matter!", a plea to Jean Rousseau to drop his vendetta to wipe out judges and jury for wiping out his son, hilarious, Rousseau obeys and drops the car, killing the juror, a hilarious double entendre

Opening music - royal fanfare and grand overtures for Rousseau

Hamlet's father was described in grandiose overtures and royal fanfare (majestical, mighty Julius Caesar, Mars, Jove, Hyperion, Mercury, etc)

Play opens at 12 am, cold, dark, waste of night, dead of night, haunted by the ghost of Hamlet's father seeking Justice

Film opens at 6pm, sunny, golden hues, russet-mantled countryside, with a full-bodied Rousseau determinedly motorcycling to his revenge; sun and gold and russet evoke idea of Eternal Justice, the Eternal Recurrence of Justice

Jean-Jacques Rousseau the intellectual, philosopher, writer, wrote "Reveries of a Solitary Walker", Rousseau writing that his walks were "a letting go" because he no longer felt a need to be anyone. During his crepuscular walks, [paraphrased from Reveries], forgotten memories would come floating up to the elderly Rousseau like aquatic flowers, differing only in their shifting colours and shapes.

The beginning of Rousseau-the-character's motorcycle journey unfolds like a reverie (but of man determined to carry out a vendetta, a man with an agenda, a man boiling in emotions, as opposed to a man who lets himself coalsce into a meditative state and allows his persona to melt away into the natural elements, like philosopher/writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau), the character of Rousseau "lets himself go" by surrendering to his vendetta and becoming a killer, becoming Vengeance, becoming Death, which is a pun and double entendre of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "letting go" of the persona and allowing oneself's mind heart soul spirit to melt away

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's memories encapsulate his Ethos

Rousseau's memories encapsulate his Ethos

Both their Ethos are opposite of each other

Play and film feature flashbacks and cyclical foreshadowing

Rousseau - baker, bread, providing atavistic eternal sustenance, bread is for all time

Hamlet's father, King, provided atavistic eternal sustenance, law is for all time; law/country/govournment is for all time

Hamlet-the-son idolizes father but "fails" to kill murderer of father

Rousseau-the-father does not care for his bratty son but launches a vendetta to wipe out judges and jury

Foils of each other

Hospital in background - perhaps a reference to Hamlet's madness

Road sign - "Mort aux cons" = death to idiots, which is precisely what we witness

Play - Hamlet says, "I have shot mine arrow o'er the house. And hurt my brother."

Film - Rousseau shoots his crossbow and arrow, killing actor playing Claudius (who is already playing dead)

Rousseau reacts the way many people expected Hamlet to react

Rousseau carries around a picture of his son, Hamlet has his father's ghost haunting him

Rousseau draped from head to toe in black, just like Hamlet-the-son (mourning clothes)

Timer in the chicken coop reflection of timer in Hamlet-the-son, both timers go off at the end - coop blown up, Kingdomship metaphorically blown up during finale duel that wipes out Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude

Both timers trigger a series of blow-up events building up to their respective finale blow-outs

Hamlet's timer is triggered the moment Horatio informs him his father's ghost is haunting the castle grounds

And Hamlet in turn triggers the triggers of Polonius and Claudius, whom self-destruct on their own proverbial poisonous swords

Rousseau takes mother with him, she guides and directs him - no mother issues for him!

Hamlet has massive mother issues, Hamlet's mother is a driving force behind his choice to not blindly lash out and kill his uncle in retaliation for murdering his father, his mother "held him back" in the sense that 1) she raised him to be an intellectual and lover of the arts and humanities, which is why he does not immediately resort to violence, it is why he thinks everything through to the bone before deciding anything, and decides to catch the conscious of Claudius first and foremost, because Hamlet equates Justice to guilt-tripping the guilty and 2) her conduct after her Husband-the-King's murder forced him to step back and think things through thoroughly because he knew if he killed Claudius out of vengeance he would also have to kill his mother as well since in his eyes she was equally treacherous, and the treachery itself shocked him to the bone

Note I'm of the school of thought that absolutely and categorically and unwaveringly believes Hamlet did not fail to act, that Hamlet did not go mad, that Hamlet reacted exactly as he should have, and that his form of "justice" was and is the one and only effective form of justice that exists, and based on this film it appears Jean-Louis Trintignant subscribes to the same school of thought, hence the reason why Rousseau is the exact equal-but-opposite of [my viewpoint of] Hamlet

Rousseau is the complete opposite of Hamlet - vengeance is his, the guilty must die

It's implied Rousseau's mother helped organize the vendetta, and she gets snippy when they are sidetracked - she wants vengeance for the death of her grandson (an annoying pratty child that only a mother could love...), unlike Gertrude, who married the murderer of her husband (revered as a Greco-Roman G-d) right after feasting on her husband's funeral baked meats

Mona Lisa in the film (cover of candy box), the face only a mother could love, just like Rousseau's son; Mona Lisa, everybody has tried to unlock the mystery of the Mona Lisa painting, just as everybody has tried to unlock the mystery of Hamlet's "inability" to "act" (refusal to immediately kill Claudius for murdering father)

Film - gravestone inscription translated - "The weak and the strong are equal before death", paralleling Hamlet's famous conversation with the Gravedigger Clown (Act 5 Scene 1), and paralleling the finale in which the four principal characters, two pure-hearted and two treacherous, are lying dead in a heap together on stage

Rousseau's trap-a-thon traps himself just as Hamlet's trap traps himself

Play - "poison overcrows my spirit" - Rousseau's vengeance is a poison that overcrows his spirit

Play - vain blows are malicious mockery, just as Rousseau's vain blows are a malicious mockery

Play - words, words, words

Film - minimal dialogue

Play - words, words, words; Hamlet says, "suit the action to the word"

Film - wife in lavender dress with candy box (with a Mona Lisa on the lid....), opens box and car blows up, killing her juror husband: play parallel = Hamlet gives Ophelia the gift of severing their relationship (to protect and save her) and the gift backfires, resulting in the killing of Polonius

Film - wife in lavender ashes-of-roses coloured dress with candy box, opens box and car blows up, killing her juror husband: play parallel = Hamlet's trap to exact justice against the guilty backfires by killing the innocent (Ophelia, Laertes)

Film - Rousseau's precise liquidation checklist that suits word to deed, he even changes two words to accurately reflect manner of death because what he planned was slightly altered

Film - Rousseau mistakes the identity of one man and almost kills him, saves him, then tries killing the other (it's not clear if the other one dies, the police arrive and intervene but it's not clear if the other one dies); both men are referred to as brothers by Rousseau, they unwittingly walk to their deaths (but one is saved, and the other may or may not have been saved) (Jean-Louis Trintignant clearly influenced by Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead")

Play - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are interchangeable, Hamlet intentionally misidentifies them, Claudius and Gertrude unintentionally misidentifies them, and Ros and Guil even misidentify themselves, they're like brothers, and they walk to their deaths (or perhaps not....we're all unwittingly walking towards our deaths....)

Film - Rousseau catches one of the jurors prayfully engaged in squatting exercises by a pool, pool = water = ablution, in play, Claudius feverishly prays, "Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow?", in the film Trintignant gives us what looks like an Olympic-sized swimming pool

Play - Hamlet catches Claudius squatting on his knees in feverish prayer

Film - Rousseau chases the praying swimmer juror through halls

Play - Hamlet encounters Ophelia in a hall and engages in a verbal chase with her, his intent to chase her out of the kingdom and to a nunnery for her protection, to extricate her from what he knows is a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that involves exploiting her to get to destroy him

Film - the cat-and-mouse chase with the swimmer involves two other people, Rousseau takes care to strictly kill the swimmer-juror and only the swimmer-juror

Film - the cat-and-mouse chase with the swimmer-juror = juror hides in closet, like Polonius hiding behind curtain

Play - the cat-and-mouse chase involving Hamlet and Ophelia culminates on two events, first when Hamlet intentionally spurns innocent victim Ophelia, and secondly when he intentionally kills Polonius (instead of his treacherous mother, instead of his treacherous uncle), two events that drive her to suicide; Polonius and Ophelia, two innocent victims, wiped out, while the guilty parties are left alone with their consciousness

(Polonius - for all intents and purposes, Polonius is as much an innocent victim as Ophelia, he has to play along with Claudius or face exile or death, but there are clear hints that Polonius supports Hamlet despite his machinations against Hamlet)

Hamlet kills one innocent person and unintentionally drives another innocent person to death, and his trap to trap the conscious of Claudius results in killing innocent Laertes and his mother whom he did not want killed. Not to mention his trap cost the entire Kingdom, something which would effect each and every subject of Denmark

Rousseau strictly kills the judges and jurors and takes great care to protect the innocent, albeit there are police guards assigned to protect the judges who are [likely] killed when the elevator snapped and dropped. Rousseau did know the judges would be assigned guards: he thought his vendetta would be finished before the police figured out what was going on, but he was obstructed multiple times, which gave the police time to figure out what was going on and assign protection to the judges

Play - Claudius watches Mousetrap play, watching his own deeds played out

Film - The Hunter's Theme (Rousseau's Theme) plays on the truck radio, and the announcer announces the Theme is from the film soundtrack "A Full Day's Work" (Une Journee Bien Remplie), the man driving the truck (and listening gravely to the radio) is the eighth juror who is doomed to die and knows he's doomed to die

Film - elevator dropped, killing the judges, the quickness with which the elevator suddenly snaps and drops reminds me of the command of the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland - off with their heads!, which reminds me of the presumptive beheading of Ros and Guil (or not, or not....)

Hamlet does not react to his father the king's murder and his mother's immediate wedding to the king's brother the way people expect him to react, but his "inaction" is the "proper" course of action because his "inaction" is a period of intense mourning coupled with deep introspection and careful investigation which eventually results in him trapping the conscious of the new king, a trapping that ultimately traps Hamlet as well, a trapping that ironically exacts deadly justice from all the principal characters who never meant Hamlet any harm and were in bewilderment towards Hamlet's lack of action and were subtly in support of Hamlet tossing Claudius.

Jean Rousseau does not react to his son's "rightful" capital punishment the way people expect him to react. Instead of weeping and wailing like 99.999999% of parents do, Rousseau executed the execution of the judges and jurors the moment his son was executed, it's implied he already had a plan in place to get revenge if his son was found guilty and capitally punished

Film ending - Justice is Recurring and Eternal (Rousseau's parents holding his picture and taking down notes about jurors....)

Play ending - Justice is Recurring and Eternal (because Fortibras' son seizes Hamlet's kingdom in retaliation for Hamlet-the-father killing his father)