“The Mirror Up to Nature”: Hamlet (2009)

Own it on DVD/Blu-ray on May 4th!

Watch it on PBS on April 28th!

Check out the official site!

Synopsis: David Tennant (Doctor Who) and Patrick Stewart (X-Men, Star Trek: The Next Generation) star in this critically acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s masterpiece from Britain’s renowned Royal Shakespeare Company.  No recent stage production in Britain has attracted the excitement and nearly unanimous critical praise as this Hamlet.  Tennant’s interpretation was recognized as defining the role for a generation, and Stewart’s complex Claudius won the Olivier award, Britain’s highest stage honor.  In this specially-shot screen version, filmed on location rather than in the theater, Tennant and Stewart reprise their roles.  Dynamic, exciting and contemporary, it breathes new life into Shakespeare’s greatest play.

Review: Hamlet has been one of my favorite plays since childhood.  When I was very young, my grandfather would read me the story.  When I was in middle school, I became obsessed with Kenneth Branagh’s film version.  I even wrote my Masters thesis on the play (and how aspects of Hamlet, the character, manifest among a number of the characters of the rock musical, Hair).  Imagine my excitement, then, two years back or so, when I read that two men who I consider to be among the greatest actors living today, David Tennant and Patrick Stewart would be starring in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet and my dismay at realizing that I had next to no chance of actually seeing it.  Even if the living-in-America aspect weren’t the largest hurdle, the difficulty of actually getting a ticket before they sold out, was. I practically prayed to the gods of theatre that the production–which received phenomenal acclaim–would be filmed so that I (and other fans across the globe) could have a chance to see it.

Thankfully, my prayers were answered, and the production has been preserved in a gorgeously shot version that reunites the entire cast of the stage play, filmed on location.  Airing on PBS on Wednesday, April 28th, and available on DVD from BBC America beginning on May 4th, this very well may be the definitive film Hamlet, flawlessly uniting the dramatic, heightened atmosphere of Shakespeare on stage with the kineticism of a movie, and presenting at its heart what are perhaps the greatest interpretations of these timeless characters that I have ever seen. David Tennant is really the perfect Hamlet, infusing him with the manic, childlike energy, along with the seemingly contradictory world-weariness of his most well-known character, the Tenth Doctor.  While it is easy to see the parallels between the characters, however, Tennant doesn’t simply recreate the Doctor as Hamlet.  His Hamlet can be even more dangerously unhinged than the Doctor, as well as even calmer at times, not to mention tragically beset by philosophical conundrums that weigh down his soul.  There is a spontaneity to his performance–freewheeling in his mad scenes, down-to-earth and honest in his soliloquies–that seems to bely the fact that he is speaking world-famous lines written hundreds of years ago.  The words seem to come directly from his soul.

Never before have I seen a Hamlet whose manic disposition so flawlessly links him to Yorick, the jester, as if he were possessed by the latter’s spirit, nor one whose grief was so human and sincere.  The production also teasingly winks at Tennant’s most famous persona.  When the film begins, he wears a suit and his hair is slicked down, looking as if he stepped out of a film from the 1950s.  As soon as the madness first begins to take hold of him, he immediately musses up his hair, twisting and shaping it into the crazy, standing-up-straight look of the Doctor.  For the bulk of the film’s middle portion, it remains up, and he changes into jeans and a t-shirt depicting the structure of a man’s skeleton (again foreshadowing the Yorick skull scene and commenting on Hamlet’s internal struggles and philosophical exploration of corporeal life), while going barefoot.  Only near the end of the play, once Hamlet has cast off his antic disposition does his hair calm down again, so to speak.  He performs the gravedigger scene with a winter hat covering his head, and the final duel with his hair down.  In other words, his hair represents his internal state.  Ophelia and Gertrude’s madness are also reflected in their hairstyles.

Speaking of madness, director Gregory Doran mines even further psychological depth from the play than I have seen in previous productions, particularly regarding Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude.  Gorgeously played by Penny Downie, the Gertrude in this production actually begins to go mad herself over the course of the closet scene.  When Hamlet confronts her with her actions as well as potential culpability in Old Hamlet’s death, her mind begins to fracture, which shines further light on her motivations and emotions for the rest of the play.  There is a lovely and tragic irony in her reacting to and speaking of poor Ophelia’s madness and then death, when she herself is so clearly falling apart.  This nuance also adds another layer to her decision in the final scene.  In Doran’s production, almost everyone seems to be a bit mad.  Polonius’ (Oliver Ford Davies) mind is also slipping.  From the start, he is depicted as beginning the downward slide into senility, often drifting off mid-sentence or forgetting what is happening around him.  His evaluation of the mad Hamlet is just as ironic as Gertrude’s of Ophelia.

The production’s greatest irony is that the only major character who doesn’t seem to be outwardly mad is its central villain, Claudius, whom the masterful Patrick Stewart crafts into a complex, three-dimensional human being who one may never be able to truly sympathize with, but whose motivations one can understand.  His guilt over his brother’s murder is palpable, particularly in his truly remarkable reading of Claudius’ kneeling-at-prayer scene.  When others are in the room, he always seems paternalistic, kind, and reasonable, which, given his actions, might make him the maddest character of all.  Doran also ingeniously cast Stewart in the roles of both Claudius and the Ghost.  Symbolically, Claudius has killed an aspect of himself–his own mirror-image.

Along with madness, mirrors are the second most dominant theme in Doran’s production, reflecting Hamlet’s line to the players that their job is to “to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.”  According to the DVD documentary, the back of the stage production’s set was a wall of mirrors, which is carried through in the film version by a black, mirrored floor, constantly reflecting people’s images back up at them.  When Polonius hides in Gertrude’s closet, it is not behind an arras but a mirror.  Rather than stabbing him through the rug, Hamlet shoots directly into the mirror, killing the old man and shattering the glass. From that point forwards, numerous mad characters will stare into fractured glass, a visual representation of their fractured identities and minds–Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, and, yes, Claudius.

Incidentally, I read one negative comment lobbed at the director regarding the double-casting, saying that having the same actor play Old Hamlet and Claudius disregards Hamlet’s assertion that their likenesses were different.  To me, this completely misses the point.  In some ways, both characters being physically identical adds two potential additional nuances to the script. One can interpret it as a reflection of the concept that someone’s inner nature is reflected in his or her external features, so that even if two people look the same, their inner auras will distinguish their looks, or as an example of irony that Hamlet, in looking at a picture of his father and his uncle, can’t see how similar they are in appearance because his hatred for his uncle has blinded him.

Along with mirrors, Doran’s other most recurrent visual theme is that of the camera.  There are black-and-white security cameras throughout Elsinore, constantly watching, constantly documenting everyone’s every movement, which greatly adds to the claustrophobia and tension of the piece.  They underline the overwhelming oppressiveness of the palace, where there is nowhere to hide from the judgment of others.  Additionally they act as a harsh commentary on the ubiquitous CCTV cameras in the UK, a brilliant method of making the play even more relevant for today.  This Hamlet is under the pressure of constant observation, and his madness (and that of others) can be seen as a reaction to that.  The only thing that the cameras can’t pick up is the image of the Ghost, which points to modern technology’s weakness–its inability to capture the ineffable or unexplainable, or the inner workings of peoples’ souls.

Doran also adds the fascinating nuance of giving Hamlet his own camera later in the play.  Unlike the CCTV cameras, it isn’t sleek, modern, and cold.  Instead, it is older and rickety, and its film is covered in spots, dust, and scratches.  It is, however, authentic.  In using it to document The Mousetrap, the King and Queen’s reactions to the play-within-a-play, and one of his own soliloquies, Hamlet is performing an act of rebellion against his uncle and his cameras, turning his uncle’s methods against him and simultaneously taking ownership of his own image, perhaps for the first time in his life.

As far as special features, the Hamlet DVD comes with a fantastic half-hour behind-the-scenes documentary with the director, actors, and others discussing such things as the rewards and difficulties in translating a stage production to the screen in a way that captures the essence of the theatre piece, and some fascinating thoughts from Tennant and Stewart on the differences between stage acting and film acting.  It is particularly interesting to hear these perspectives from such distinguished actors who are both so experienced in both mediums.

All in all, this new Hamlet is a first-class production, an absolute masterpiece of both film and theatre that dazzlingly draws even more dramatic potential from what is arguably the greatest play ever written, reinterpreting the work for the modern day, while reminding us yet again just how alive Shakespeare’s writing has always been.  In the capable hands of Tennant, Stewart, Doran and Company, Hamlet becomes a new story, all over again, one that is as current and immediate as the reflection in a mirror.

Buy:

Hamlet DVD

Hamlet Blu-ray

Related posts:

1. “What’s Hecuba to Him or Him to Hecuba?”: The Pearl Theatre’s Frustrating Hamlet
2. “Two Plays Both Alike in Dignity”: Romeo and Hamlet
3. Friday in the Park with Hamlet
4. Hamlet 2
5. Stage Vamps: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead

Tagged as: David Tennant, Hamlet, Patrick Stewart, William Shakespeare