As a disclaimer going in, I should say that Hamlet is by far not my favorite of Shakespeare's plays. I read it in its entirety and saw the Kenneth Branaugh version in high school. I was not particularly impressed then, though I had an out-there theory that Gertrude actually murdered Ophelia.
In any case, this version is a classic because the legendary Laurence Olivier stars in the title role. If you start to google his name, the next word suggestion that comes up is 'Hamlet.' We'd previously seen him as the male lead in Hitchcock's Rebecca, where I have to say his performance was much more sympathetic and compelling.
Hamlet is the gold standard of Shakespearean male roles, the one every classically trained actor aspires to. In this case, however, the entire thing was kind of like a game of golf: likely far more interesting to participate in than it was to watch. Hamlet is supposed to be one of Shakespeare's most complex characters, but everything about the Olivier version of him, and for that matter the play itself, is treated with absolute straightforwardness in this adaptation. Every line is pronounced with solemnity and gravitas, as if all the actors are metaphorically bowing before the genius that created this masterwork and not really thinking about the material beyond that. This is especially evident in the first half, when there is absolutely no emotion at all in any delivery and all the actors sort of gaze out into the middle distance as they speak rather than look at each other. Things get more interesting after Ophelia dies; Olivier finally seems to realize his character is supposed to be tormented occasionally rather than perpetually serene (you can't really tell the difference in the early scenes where he's supposed to be pretending to be mad and him the rest of the time), and the rest of the cast take their cue from him and occasionally give us a facial twitch.
The thing about dramatic tragedies, and Shakespeare understood this given the script he wrote, is that the interest for the audience is watching the train wreck. It's about deeply flawed people bouncing off each other, unable to overcome their flaws, until they're eventually destroyed by them. This movie is so obsessed with the awesomeness of Shakespeare as a writer that it forgot that the lines the actors are speaking are either conversations or inner monologue, not Pronouncements From on High. The characters are archetypes without any kind of subtlety or life given to them by the performance, nor is there any indication that anything the characters say might be anything other than unvarnished truth about how they feel; the important thing is just the words. It's a different way of looking at Shakespeare, the culmination of centuries of blind worship, and as a 21st century viewer used to adaptations of his works that have pulled him off his altar and given him back to the people, as it were, I found this painfully straightforward version dull and off-putting.
As a sidenote, the camerawork in this movie is occasionally bizarre to the point of being distracting. There's a scene where Claudius is plotting with Laertes (why do all these supposedly Danish people have Latin names, Mr. Shakespeare?) and the camera pans in and out on them slowly up a staircase for no apparent reason.
In conclusion, I will leave you with my favorite adaptation of Hamlet. I had to watch this again as a consolation for sitting through this snoozefest, because god. *Someone* should find humor in all of this. The funniest thing that happens in the Olivier version is that Peter Cushing (aka Grand Moff Tarkin) takes a random pratfall at one point.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)--Hamlet
Watched: March 13, 2018
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