Themes: Haunted By the Past, Out For Revenge, Star-Crossed Lovers
Main Cast: Mel Gibson, Glenn Close, Alan Bates, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm
Release Year: 1990
Country: US/UK/ES/FR
Run Time: 135 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Franco Zeffirelli directs his third Shakespeare adaptation (after Romeo and Juliet and Otello) with this film version of the tragedy Hamlet. The titular prince of Denmark (Mel Gibson), returns home to his family's castle of Elsinore after years of attending school in Germany to find out his father has died and his uncle Claudius (Alan Bates) is the new king. To make matters worse, Claudius has married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude (Glenn Close), whom he has unusually strong feelings for. Hamlet is visited by his father's ghost (Paul Scofield), who asks him to seek revenge for his murder. In order to find out who the real killer is, Hamlet stages a theatrical scene resembling his father's death. Claudius is upset by the production and leaves to arrange for Hamlet's murder. In the ensuing confusion, Hamlet accidentally kills Polonious (Ian Holm) instead of Claudius; Hamlet's lover, Ophelia (Helena Bonham Carter), goes mad and commits suicide; and eventually Hamlet and Claudius both meet their fate. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
Frequent Shakespeare interpreter Franco Zeffirelli gives Hamlet a go with this gritty and unglamorous version, starring Hollywood actors like Mel Gibson and Glenn Close. Gibson may have struck some viewers as quite the wrong choice, destined to be overmatched, but he displays surprising subtlety and range, not to mention wearing the cropped hair and scraggly beard to good effect. The actor's playful flickers of madness (his calling card in the Lethal Weapon movies) translate quite well to the scenes in which Hamlet gleefully toys with those he's trying to confuse. Close and Helena Bonham Carter are effective in the smaller roles of his female tormentors, with Carter offering a particularly touching breakdown scene. Ian Holm is also a scatterbrained standout as Polonius. As he has done in his other adaptations of the Bard, Zeffirelli (the first to filmmaker to cast actual teenagers as Romeo and Juliet in 1968) aims for accuracy in his production design, forgoing the anachronisms some directors use to amplify themes. Hence, the dank Danish castle feels like the genuine article, purposely lacking in grandeur. But the director continues to betray Shakespeare in familiar ways, too; not only does he truncate the text, but he even commits the cardinal sin of blending several scenes, which is usually avoided. It's decisions like this that rob the film of some depth and emotional resonance, not to mention scholarly respect. In fact, this Hamlet was likely an important motivator for Kenneth Branagh in his decision to film an elaborately unabridged, four-hour version of the play six years later. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Vincenzo Cerami - Art Director, Michael Lamont - Art Director, Alan Tomkins - Art Director, James Morahan - Art Director, Maurizio Millenotti - Costume Designer, Franco Zeffirelli - Director, Richard Marden - Editor, Ennio Morricone - Composer (Music Score), Dante Ferretti - Production Designer, David Watkin - Cinematographer, Dyson Lovell - Producer, Bruce Davey - Producer, Francesca Lo Schiavo - Set Designer, Christopher de Vore - Screenwriter, Franco Zeffirelli - Screenwriter, Robin Clarke - Music Editor, William Shakespeare - Play Author
The cast includes three actors — Scofield, Bates, and Holm — who had themselves played Hamlet on stage or film. It also features two actors — Stephen Dillane and Michael Maloney — who went on to play Hamlet onstage.
Film scholar Deborah Cartmell has suggested that Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films are appealing because they are "sensual rather than cerebral", an approach by which he aims to make Shakespeare "even more popular". To this end, he cast Gibson — then famous for the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon films — in the title role. Cartmell also notes that the text is drastically cut, but with the effect of enhancing the roles of the women.
J. Lawrence Guntner has suggested that Zeffirelli's cinematography borrows heavily from the action film genre that made Gibson famous, noting that its average shot length is less than six seconds. In casting Gibson, the director has been said to have made the star's reputation part of the performance, encouraging the audience "to see the Gibson that they have come to expect from his other films" Indeed, Gibson was cast after Zeffirelli watched his character, Martin Riggs, contemplate suicide in Lethal Weapon. [1] The fight between Hamlet and Laertes is an example of using Gibson's experience in action movies; the whole fight depicts Hamlet not as the dark and brooding character found in Shakespeare's text, but as a cocky fighter much like many of Gibson's previous roles.
Guntner has written that the casting of Close as Hamlet's mother (only nine years older than Gibson, and then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in Fatal Attraction) highlights the incest theme, leaving "little to our post-Freudian imagination" and Cartmell notes that Close and Gibson simulate sex in the closet scene, and "she dies after sexually suggestive jerking movements, with Hamlet positioned on top of her, his face covered with sweat".
