Works better on the screen than the other filmed stage productions - Kline's, Olivier's, Burton's. As others have said, very fast, staccato - even time-compressed - disconcerting extreme close-ups. Williamson at 31 isn't really too old for the mysterious prince, but somehow he looks it. Anthony Hopkins' Claudius seems apathetic, a choice I don't understand. Ophelia is pretty despite painfully dated 60s makeup, but she's also reduced to a 60s type of female - sort of knocked-on-the-head accepting smilingness through whatever storms go one around her. bleah! Gertrude is a 60s evil queen, sensual, but unsexed -- a la Snow White. argh! Horatio is much more out of place than Hamlet, much older, almost doddering in his scholarly spectacles. Interesting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - very intrusive. Hamlet v. combative. Soliloquies to the camera, a frank style I like better than voice-overs -- the actor never does much during voice-over soliloquies, so you're staring at an unmoving close-up for endless minutes. The style of direction is uneven, but perhaps purposed - sometimes alienating as in the quick back and forth cuts between two speakers, sometimes captivating as in the almost candid, home-video style of the camera movements in the soliloquies. Curiously even in the characters I don't like (Ophelia, Gertrude) the interpretive decisions are well made and intelligently, though the style is off-putting. I long for a meatier Claudius, but Hamlet should care more about the women anyway - but then we should have a meatier Ophelia. I wonder if Hamlet shouldn't be most sane when he seems mad and most mad when he seems deadly sane. Or when he thinks he is. Laertes a fool with mutton-chops. ugh!
Review of Hamlet
