#FORTINBRAS HAMLET FULL#

The famous speech he gives to Laertes as his son departs for France, is really ancient wisdom even though it comes from a fool. Richard Briers as Polonius, proves that that officious fool is indeed that, and yet something more so that we can see why he was a counselor to the king. She does the mad scene with Claudius as well as I have seen it done, and of course her personal charisma and beauty embellish the production. Kate Winslet is a remarkable Ophelia, lending an unusual strength to the role (strength of character is part of what Kate Winslet brings to any role), but with the poor, sweet girl's vulnerability intact. His Claudius combines second son ambition with a Machiavellian heart, whose words go up but whose thoughts remind below, as is the way of villains everywhere.

#FORTINBRAS HAMLET FULL#

One recalls that Jacobi played Hamlet in the only other full cinematic production of the play that I know of, produced in 1980 by the BBC with Claire Bloom as Gertrude and he was an excellent Hamlet, although perhaps like Branagh something less than a massive presence. I was also very much impressed with Derek Jacobi's Claudius. He had to know the truth without doubt so that he might act in concert with it. In Branagh's production, this old quibble with Hamlet's character dissolves itself into a dew, and we realize that he was acting strongly, purposely all the while. Branagh, more than any other Hamlet, makes us understand the distracted, anguished and tortured prince, and guides us to not only an appreciation of his actions, wild and crazy as they sometimes are, but to an identification and an understanding of why (the eternal query) Hamlet is so long in assuming the name of action. He also lacks somewhat in statute (as we conceive our great heroes) nonetheless his interpretation of the great prince's torment and his singular obsession to avenge his father's murder speaks strongly to us all. Branagh himself is a wonderful Hamlet, perhaps a bit of a ham at times (as I think was Shakespeare's intent), a prince who is the friend of itinerant players. We are much removed from those times, and yet, this play, this singular achievement in theatre, still has the power to transcend mere entertainment, to fuse poetry and story, as well as the high and the low, and speak once again to a new audience twenty generations removed. He wrote for the popular audience of his time, a broad audience, it should be noted, that included kings and queens as well as knaves and beggars, and he reached them, one and all.

Shakespeare did this unconsciously, we might say. And so first the playwright seeks to engage his audience, and only then, by happenstance and indirection, to inspire and to inform. A play is to divert, to entertain, to allow us to identify with others who trials and tribulations are so like our own. Branagh's ambitious Hamlet is also one of the most accessible and entertaining, yet without the faintest hint of any dumbing down or abbreviation. How they would have bemused and delighted an Elizabethan audience. The use of flashback scenes of things implied, such as the amorous union of Ophelia and her Lord Hamlet abed, or of a vast expanse of snow darkened with distant soldiers to represent the threat of Fortinbras' army from without, and especially the vivid remembrance in the mind's eye of the new king's dastardly deed of murder most foul, helps us all to more keenly appreciate just what it is that torments Hamlet's soul. Recall that for Shakespeare-the ultimate actor's playwright who wrote with precious few stage directions-interpretation was left to the direction and the actors, an open invitation that Branagh rightly accepts. Branagh has not condensed the acts like some mass market soup, as was done in Olivier's 1948 Oscar-winning production, or in, say, Zeffirelli's 1989 Hamlet lite starring Mel Gibson (both excellent, though, within their scope), but has kept every word while directing our understanding so that even those only casually familiar with the play might follow the intent and purpose with discernment. Part of the genius of Branagh's interpretation of Hamlet is in the use of the techniques of the cinema to enhance the production.

Fortinbras hamlet