My First Impression

Having just watched the movie, I have to say that I think it could do a lot more. I liked that it made a good attempt at modernizing the play, but in so doing, it had to modify a few details, some good, some awkward and displeasing. In some cases it did nothing where it should have done something.

Overall, I dug the setting. It maintained the overlying framework, which is most important. Everything was ported nicely, and most of the lines weren't too awkward being used in the context of the Denmark corporation setting. Cool.

However, the details are where I think it fell apart. I understand it wasn't long enough to include everything as Branagh did in his version, but damn, it should have been, because to leave anything out is sort of sacrilegious. There's so much going on in the play, every detail, every line is so important to all the different ideas, that to leave things out makes it less enjoyable. It feels like the masterpiece has been stripped down for mass consumption like so many pop songs are doing to old classics. For instance, Horatio doesn't even try to kill himself at the end. Less important, when Hamlet touches Laertes for the second time, the buzzer goes off on the electronic suit, then Laertes says that he "admits" a touch, confirming that the computerized vest was right. I know it's a trivial detail, but I'm sorry, that's funny *beep* and whoever adapted the play should have caught that. Basicaly, the main problem is the misexecution of subtle details like this, because details make the play that much more believable and intoxicating, bluring the line between the play and life as Shakespeare so often did. Porting it into a modern context is good, and very viable because all the questions raised in the play when it was written in the sixteenth are still largely unanswered. But to cut up the play like was done in this version really impedes the task.

And in translating Hamlet to this time period, one has to apply all the same ideas to this time period, and I don't think it does this as well as it could. If someone's going to transplant the play into modern times, they need to do just as elegant a job as Shakespeare did in writing it. This is the prime objective in my opinion. To simply bring it into this time period is like playing a good song on instruments different from those on which it was meant to played, doing nothing more, and expecting it to have the same impact and changing little else. Put differently, it's obvious the lines are one with their meaning and the larger ideas, but they're just as inextricable from their temporal context. Purgatory, Heaven, Hell, forgiveness, and Catholicism were huge in the period, and the original play thrives on this fact. In porting the play to film, one has to replace things, or present them so that the larger ideas are relevant to manifestations of the themes in our own time. Then it would really spook me out like the original. To match this with good direction, editing, whatever, all the other things that go into a memorable movie - that would make this one really good.

In Branagh's version, complete and unabridged, I picked up on both the things Shakespeare intended and those things he may not have intended, because it was unchanged. And Branagh really blew me away like this. What I was hoping for in Hamlet (2000) was something like Branagh's version, that contained all the details, relevant to my context on numerous levels, and that would breath new life into the play. To achieve this, language I don't think is paramount - ideas are. It would fit our context fine in modern English, albeit artful modern English, not "No Fear Shakespeare" modern English. Beowulf is still awesome in modern English because the translators have taken care in preserving the ideas present in the Old English text, as well as maintaining a certain amount of deftness with modern usage. Seamus Heaney knows how to use modern English extremely well, thus his translation into our language is good on perhaps as many levels as the original Old English text is.

Ultimately, Shakespeare deserves better than what this movie's done, but he also requires someone who knows the text well enough to preserve as many of the original ideas and subtleties as possible. Branagh did a decent job. This one left me with a glass half full - possessing something, but not quite enough. And I'll repeat, this is my first impression. If anyone has anything to say, please do. I'd like to see more going on in this movie than what I see now.