Cap'n Howdy's Handy Hamlet Handbook:
Date of Release: 1990
Directed By: Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew)
Dramatis Personae: Hamlet (Mel Gibson), Claudius (Alan Bates), Gertrude (Glenn Close), Horatio (Stephen Dillane), Polonius (Ian Holm), Laertes (Nathaniel Parker), Ophelia (Helena Bonham-Carter)
Other Notable Cast Members: Michael Maloney (Babel, Othello, Laertes in Branagh's Hamlet) - Rosencrantz, Paul Scofield (Henry V, The Crucible, Quiz Show) - The Ghost, Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects, The Duellists, Romeo + Juliet) - Player King.
Setting: Medieval Denmark (well, actually an unusually sunny Scotland doubling for Denmark).
Running Time: 135 minutes
What's Missing: Fortinbras is again completely missing from this version (without mention this time, and without lines assigned to Horatio). The second shortest of the five versions of Hamlet, Zeffirelli's version retains much of the basic story but cuts down almost every aspect of the film. Nearly every speech, soliloquy, or scene is cut in half, if not pared down to the bare minimum needed to advance the plot. Notably, the opening scene of Bernardo, Marcellus, and Horatio facing The Ghost is removed completely in favor of a funeral scene for the King Hamlet, played mostly without dialogue, followed by a dissolve to Claudius' post-wedding speech.
Other Deviations: There are so many deviations that it's hard to decided where to start, but let's begin with some major shifts in the leafs. Almost every major character in Hamlet plays their character differently than any other version I've seen; Hamlet is perpetually unable to carry out his plan, and the question of whether he's mad or not seems to vary from scene to scene. When he is "on plan," so to speak, Hamlet is like an overeager child desperate to show everyone what he knows (as in The Mousetrap scene).
In the extras, Glenn Close describes Gertrude as "marrying young to a much older man, so that she and Hamlet grow together, and the film is a story of the three men she loves." Gertrude moves from mourning to sexually virile and childlike between the funeral and the wedding announcement, and the film is tinged with incestuous overtones between mother and son. Ian Holm's Polonius is less foolish and more calculating; a sinister manipulator of Claudius, Gertrude, and particularly Ophelia. This would make sense, save that Bonham-Carter's Ophelia is so stand-offish that her transition to madness feels less organic. Her hyper-sexuality while mad is also a bit curious, since much of the discussion about Hamlet's "country" relations with Ophelia are excised from the script.
Claudius and Horatio are mostly the same, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are perhaps more dispensable in Zeffirelli's version than they were being cut out in Olivier's. Speaking of R&G, the 1990 take on Hamlet sees it fit to show Hamlet switching the letters aboard the boat (shown in real time and not as part of the pirate flashback), followed by their beheading in England (yet, for some reason, the line "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" is not in the film).
This is one of many ways that Zeffirelli's version shifts; in an attempt to be more cinematic, scenes are moved around to suit his approach. For example, the discussion between Claudius and Laertes about the method of poisoning Hamlet during the duel is intercut with Osric's conversation with Hamlet about said duel, as though audiences might not be aware of the nature of this trap before the King reveals his treachery. The duel is also interrupted frequently by Gibson's Hamlet clowning around between blows, something consistent with the actor's public persona. That being said, Zeffirelli fails to use these distractions to raise Laertes' frustration with Hamlet, and when he finally cheats it feels more like an afterthought than an exercise in desperation.
For my money, the biggest change is the way that the beginning of Act III plays out almost in reverse. Zeffirelli's Hamlet, like Olivier's, opts to move "To be, or not to be" until after the confrontation with Ophelia - even as it moves the "Get thee to a nunnery" to the Mousetrap sequence - for reasons I can't quite explain. Rather than go to the tower, Gibson's Hamlet heads to the catacombs to ruminate on death with the dead, but the placement of the speech strikes me more as an homage to Olivier than any practical shift in tone. Furthermore, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive after this, followed by the Players. The order of the first scene is reversed entirely.
What Works: For all the changes, it is fair to say that this very different take on Hamlet does play to the language of cinema well. Zeffirelli finds better ways of transitioning from scene to scene (and of condensing some scenes into others) than Olivier did with his dizzying camera moves. At no point do you feel that this is a filmed version of a play; the 1990 Hamlet is constructed as a film, one that dissected the play and reconstructed it as need be.
The Medieval setting actually works well for the play, and perhaps better than the Medieval castle punctuated with Elizabethan garb present in the Olivier adaptation. The physical locations and castles in Scotland lend a verisimilitude to the film that the 1948 version lacks, and Zeffirelli finds little touches that enhance the mood. A particular favorite of mine involved draining the color from Getrude's doorway when the Ghost is visible to Hamlet, but when shown from her subjective view it remains a bright orange with candlelight.
On a small note, it was nice to hear some of my favorite lines reinstated in this version. It's strange not to hear Hamlet say "a little more than kin and less than kind" or, "not so, I am too much in the sun," but both are missing from Olivier's adaptation.
Generally speaking, I felt the cast was good. As I'll get to below, it's less their performances and more decisions made about the way their characters behaved that was a problem for me. I was particularly fond of Alan Bates' Claudius, in part because he's somewhere in between the overt villainy of Basil Sydney and the nearly sympathetic Derek Jacobi. Bates is a thinking Claudius, one deeply concerned with saving face at any cost, and more importantly appearing justified in his actions, but not at the point of moustache-twirling evil. Robbing him of most of Claudius' "my offense is rank" speech does Bates no favors though, and yet he finds a way to portray depth.
What Doesn't Work: I'm just going to say this up front - the "incest" subtext doesn't work. From the very first time that Gertrude kisses Hamlet for just a little too long while talking him out of returning to Wittenberg to the dry humping in her bedroom, this particular deviation felt forced.
It may be that - despite the fact that Close is only 9 years older than Gibson - in this version Gertrude looked like she could be Hamlet's mother (not the case in the 1948 film). Gibson also looks younger in the 1990 version of Hamlet than even in the first Lethal Weapon film, appearing only slightly older than he was in The Road Warrior, which inexplicably increases the age gap. The sudden virility of Gertrude was less jarring than the suggestion that she and Hamlet were considerably closer than previously portrayed.
Motivations become a big issue in this version of Hamlet, and not always for the best. Olivier's Hamlet spies on Claudius and Polonius plotting to spy on him with Ophelia, but Gibson's Hamlet instead spies on Polonius warning Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, a shift that has no bearing on his behavior towards her after meeting his ghostly father.
It's actually for the best that Polonius' line "though this be madness, yet there is method in't", because I can't honestly say there's any method to the way Gibson plays Hamlet. While he isn't bad, it is apparent in the extras that Gibson latched onto the "tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind" from the Olivier prologue and plays Hamlet as eternally unsure of his purpose. Hamlet is less sidetracked by his anger with his mother than unable to proceed with his revenge.
While this Hamlet is more cinematic, purists are going to be driven crazy by the moving of key passages to scenes where they lack any context. The build towards Ophelia's madness lacks any escalation in part because of the way Bonham-Carter plays her, but also by the fact that Hamlet's behavior towards her has no method to it. He simply treats her like anyone else (and particularly like he treats Polonius), as an excuse to vent his frustrations. At no point did it ever seem clear that the almost silent scene between Ophelia and Hamlet (after he swears to the Ghost) was indicative of their relationship, because he not only pretends to no longer care about her, but it felt like he never cared at all.
Final Thoughts: If you've never seen or read Hamlet before, and you want a nice looking introduction to the play - albeit one that takes any number of liberties - then the 1990 Zeffirelli / Gibson version is worth looking into. Despite a number of strange character choices, the cast is quite good and Gibson admirably steps up and does his best with the adapted play. It's certainly not a version I'll be in a hurry to revisit, but it tries a few interesting twists - some more successful than others - and is more successful in approximating a cinematic take on the material that Olivier.
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