Main Cast: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, Iain Glen, Joanna Roth
Release Year: 1990
Country: UK
Run Time: 118 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Much as he would later do with Shakespeare in Love (1998), writer Tom Stoppard delivered a tale of Shakespearean origin from a skewed and unexpected perspective. In this case, it's the perspective of two relatively minor characters from Hamlet, Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth), courtiers who, in the original play, were dispatched offstage before the narrative's conclusion. In Stoppard's script (which he also directed), the two supporting players take center stage as the events unfold in Elsinore Castle. Unable to determine the source of the prince's tortured despair, the duo ponders the question of fate as their predetermined roles are played out. Meanwhile, they dabble in a little verbal tennis and some ill-advised science experiments, and endure the puzzling attentions of mysterious wandering thespians led by (Richard Dreyfuss). Ordered to accompany Hamlet (Iain Glen) to England, the pair learn that the letter they carry instructs that nation's king to decapitate their mentally unbalanced and irksome charge, a revelation that Hamlet overhears. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Review
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is Tom Stoppard's film adaptation of his 1968 Tony Award-winning play of the same name. Stoppard has long been a respected name in the theater (he was knighted for his work in 1997), but he is probably best known to film audiences for Shakespeare in Love, a film which earned him an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Like that film, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead takes Shakespeare and turns him on his head, but the script has more in common with Samuel Beckett and the absurdist tradition that with the Bard. That having been said, the overall plot of this laugh-out-loud film is almost secondary to the character's relationships with each other and the events around them. Gary Oldman plays the dim Rosencrantz and Tim Roth is the gentle Guildenstern (or is it the other way around?): two characters displaced from the play Hamlet who have no idea who they are or why they were sent for. Trying to watch them figure it out is the hysterical joke that the film spins around. Oldman and Roth are extremely deft with the difficult dialogue as they literally volley in a game of verbal tennis. Richard Dreyfuss has a more grounded role but is equally fun. As the Player, he tries to clue the heroes in to their destiny while at the same time pushing them toward it. Ultimately, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reach their pre-written demise off-stage, true to the tragic play from which they tried to escape. Even if you only have a passing knowledge of Shakespeare's work, the script stands on its own as a humorous study of fiction versus reality. ~ Scott Engel, All Movie Guide
Donald Sumpter - Claudius; Joanna Miles - Gertrude; Ljubo Zecevic - Osric; Ian Richardson - Polonius; Sven Medvesck - Laertes; Vili Matula - Horatio; John Burgess - English Ambassador; Livio Badurina - Tragedian; Tomislav Maretic - Tragedian; Mare Mlacnik - Tragedian; Srdjan Soric - Tragedian; Mladen Vasary - Tragedian; Zeljko Vukmirica - Tragedian; Branko Zavrsan - Tragedian
Credit
Ivo Husnjak - Art Director, Doreen Jones - Casting, Iris Merlis - Co-producer, Patrick Whitley - Co-producer, Andreane Neofitou - Costume Designer, Bill Westley - First Assistant Director, Tom Stoppard - Director, Nicolas Gaster - Editor, Thomas J. Rizzo - Executive Producer, Louise Stephens - Executive Producer, Stanley Myers - Composer (Music Score), Vaughan Edwards - Production Designer, Peter Biziou - Cinematographer, Emanuel Azenberg - Producer, Michael Brandman - Producer, Tom Stoppard - Screenwriter, Tom Stoppard - Play Author
The film stars Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz and Tim Roth as Guildenstern, although a running theme throughout has many characters, themselves included, uncertain as to which is which. It also features Richard Dreyfuss as the leading player, Iain Glen as Prince Hamlet, Joanna Miles as Gertrude and Donald Sumpter as King Claudius. The film was shot in various locations around Yugoslavia. This was Stoppard's debut as a film director, and to date it remains his only film directorial credit.
Guildenstern, observant, sharp-witted and gifted for word-puns, and his mate Rosencrantz, slower and often caught in words, even switching their own names, make a long journey on horseback, contemplating fate, memory and language while their flipping of coins produces heads over a hundred times in a row. Then they meet a traveling theater troupe, which offers for a few coins to let them watch a play, participate as guest actor or in a 'private rape enactment'. Then the magic of the theater transports them to the grand palace Elsinore, where the hospitable Danish royal couple kindly asks them to stay a while and help find out and hopefully cure the gloomy, confused state of prince Hamlet, whose Shakespearean drama the court is living through, yet the title heroes remain largely occupied with the futile hazards of daily life. Soon the very same theater troupe arrives to play at court, as part of the Bard's tragedy, whose leader simultaneously forbids them to stop watching their real play on the road which can't exist without an audience and explains some of the plot and logic of conventional rules of plot-staging and -writing, till their own real fate is settled.
Themes
Physics
The play contains a series of amusing missed discoveries of physical principles, at least in the uncut film version. Examples include where Rosencrantz plays with a series of clay jugs hung from the ceiling and discovers that bouncing the end jug into the next one causes the jug at the opposite end to bounce (just as in the "executive toy" (Newton's Cradle) consisting of silver-colored ball bearings suspended by nylon threads). But when he demonstrates this intriguing device to Guildenstern, he draws the end jug back too far and it merely breaks, spilling its contents. Other examples include almost discovering the ancient Greek principle of steam power (the Hero or Heronas archetype of steam blowing against a pinwheel), a scientific experiment in which a ball falls far more quickly than a feather, almost discovering one or more of the laws of gravity when one character is accidentally hit on the head by a falling apple (erroneously supposed to have happened to Newton when a child), and almost having a Eureka moment in the bath when one character notices that a toy boat moves up when he displaces water in the tub. (Instead, he is distracted by the naked backside of a woman, which turns out to be that of a man.)
Reception
Critical reaction for the film tended towards the positive, with an overall rating of 69% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.[1] A common criticism in negative reviews was that the material is more suited to the stage than to the screen; examples include Vincent Canby's review, in which he says, "[Stoppard] delights in sounds and meanings, in puns, in flights of words that soar and swoop as if in visual display. On the stage, this sort of thing can be great fun… In the more realistic medium of film, so many words can numb the eardrums and weigh upon the eyelids like old coins. This is the effect of 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'".[2] Similarly, Roger Ebert states that "the problem is that this material was never meant to be a film, and can hardly work as a film."[3]
The pieces of paper blowing around in the movie, including the scrap with which Rosencrantz makes a paper airplane, are actually the script of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Of course, the title duo never notice this.
The opening song at the beginning of the movie is Pink Floyd's "Seamus" (Meddle, 1971). Technicality: The film's version of the song is "Mademoiselle Nobs" sans vocals.
The "ping" noise heard during the bathhouse scene is taken from the Pink Floyd song, "Echoes", also from Meddle.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is a 2009 American independent film written and directed by Jordan Galland. The film's title refers to a fictitious play-within-the-movie, which is a comic reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its aftermath.[5]
