Really Surprised!

One of my all time favorites.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Director Franco Zeffirelli gives his version of the famous William Shakespeare play. It's been 3 decades since I read the play and I don't pretend to be an expert in Shakespearean work. Zeffirelli puts the locations to good use although I want better representation of the spirit. It doesn't use cinema to the fullest and leaves the movie locked in as a play. Glenn Close is Queen Gertrude. She's playing it on the flighty side. I like the character more as a harlot. This is a showcase for Mel Gibson and he gives it his all. He comes away with a good performance. I don't think it's a complete performance but he is a compelling big screen movie star. He is able to hold the audience.

I love this movie, Mel Gibson's performance was Oscar worthy by far one of his best next to Braveheart! I haven't seen very many versions of the classic Shakespeare's play, but two. But this one surpassed the other one by far ! This is my daughters take on this movie.I have seen every one of the older versions of this play.And I can honestly say that his performance is just as good,as the men that portrayed this crazy prince in the past.Mel really made me believe that he was a mad man.He me feel sorry for him and mad at the next.If Shakespeare were alive to see him,in this play he would of loved it as much as I did. Glen Close, was great in this movie;she truly made me think that she too had gone mad.

After the king of Denmark dies(yes, back then, battles over ascension were common), his widow soon marries the man's brother. But Hamlet, the natural heir to the throne suspects that it was not as natural a demise as it might appear... could the man now bearing the crown be implicated? I have not read the play itself, but I have seen other adaptations(and I can definitely tell that the dialog is kept intact, if there are trims... so we get the undeniable lyrical skill, wit and cleverness of Shakespeare, with sayings that people sometimes forget actually are from him), and the '48 one with Olivier is a tad better. Gibson in the role is obviously the more crowd-pleasing choice, if he does do a good job. Everyone does give a passionate performance, and we are graced with immense talent in the cast, counting Close, Bates, Holm and a young Bonham Carter. This is a visual approach(I don't know if that is how this director goes about these, it's the only one I've watched), rather than the "filmed theater" of the half a century old take on it. It is photographed rather nicely, if there aren't really any stand-out images. This does have a solid pace, and the 2 hour, 7 minute running time sans credits is never boring. It is a story dealing with how death causes pain, as the survivors are devastated and the killer is haunted by the deed. There is disturbing content, including sexuality, in this. The DVD comes with a two minute trailer. I recommend this to fans of ol' Will. 7/10

This was the first of two filmed "Hamlets" in the nineties, the other being Kenneth Branagh's from 1996. Franco Zeffirelli had earlier made one of the great Shakespeare films, his "Romeo and Juliet" from 1968. (I have not seen his version of "The Taming of the Shrew"). Whereas his "Romeo and Juliet" was set against the background of the sunny Italian countryside, his "Hamlet", in keeping with the play's Scandinavian setting, is appropriately cool and northern, although it was actually filmed in Scotland.Branagh's "Hamlet" was also filmed in Britain, but the two films are very different in terms of their visual style. Branagh shot his film in the depths of an icy winter against the formal grandeur of Blenheim Palace. The interior scenes, by contrast, are opulent and palatial; all the leading characters wear splendid costumes. (The film is updated to the nineteenth century, so that means crinolines for the women and military uniforms for the men). Branagh's aim seems to have been to contrast outward pomp and splendour with inner corruption and decay. Zeffirelli's film is set in spring against a castle on the cliffs above the sea. The exterior scenes are often sunny; the predominant tone is the bright green of the grass. In this case, however, the interior scenes are dull and claustrophobic; the predominant colour is the grey of the castle walls. The film is set in mediaeval times; not the high Middle Ages, which might have made for greater visual colour, but earlier, in the eleventh or twelfth century. (This period may have been chosen as this was the time when the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus wrote the first version of the Hamlet story). The costumes, even of the royal or aristocratic characters, are dull and subdued; Zeffirelli seems to have intended them to reflect the mood of the characters in the play. I first saw this film in the cinema on the recommendation of my then girlfriend, but I did not hold out any great hopes for it, as Jill tended to judge every film solely on the looks of its leading man, a sort of female equivalent of those lust-stricken males who will solemnly insist, against all the evidence, that Pamela Anderson or Bo Derek really are great actresses. Mel Gibson was one of her particular heart-throbs, but at that time I regarded him principally as Mad Max and just could not envisage him as Hamlet. Well, Jill was right and I was wrong. Talk about coming to jeer and staying to cheer. Gibson is actually very good. He is not as polished as Branagh as a speaker of Shakespearean verse, but he brings his own rough honesty to the part. Like Branagh, however, he has little time for the traditional concept of Hamlet as indecisive, passive and melancholy. His Hamlet is vigorous and robust; his low spirits and disgust with the world are not the result of some innate character flaw but rather a natural reaction to the tragedies of his father's death, his mother's betrayal and the revelation that his uncle is a murderer. Of the other major characters, I liked Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia (indeed, I preferred her to Kate Winslet). I also liked Alan Bates as Claudius. His performance is rather different to Derek Jacobi's in Branagh's film, but equally persuasive. Jacobi suggests that Claudius could have been a good man under different circumstances, before he allowed himself to be led astray by ambition and lust. Bates' character is a more straightforward villain, but one who is adept at hiding his villainy beneath an outward show of jovial good fellowship. Paul Scofield's Ghost is less frightening than Brian Blessed's, but perhaps more moving. The one major character I did not like was Glenn Close's Gertrude. In 1990 I still thought of her mainly as the bunny-boiler in "Fatal Attraction", and her performance here did little to dispel that impression. To start with, she is nowhere near old enough to be Mel Gibson's mother. More importantly, Gertrude seemed to be fatally attracted not only towards her brother-in-law but also towards her son, embracing both with vigour and kissing them warmly on the lips. Close and Zeffirelli seem to have been heavily influenced by the idea that there is an incestuous attraction between Gertrude and Hamlet, something which has always seemed to me to owe less to Shakespeare than to Freud (or possibly to a misunderstanding of Freud), and which I think works to the play's detriment. The big difference between this version and Branagh's is length. Branagh's version is based on the full uncut text of the play and runs to over four hours, nearly twice the length of Zeffirelli's which, like Olivier's, is based on an abridged version. (The Fortinbras subplot, for example, is omitted altogether). Doubtless abridging the play in this manner makes commercial sense; three hours or thereabouts ("Titanic", "Lord of the Rings", etc) seems to be the outer limit of the modern cinema-goer's patience and Branagh's film did not do well at the box-office. Nevertheless, it is in my view the better of the two films, bringing out not only the full complexity but also the full emotional power of the play. Zeffirelli's version works well as a film in its own right, but it is little more than half of what Shakespeare actually wrote. 8/10