Hamlet's Film Analyis

Skylar Nguyen        

Hour 5

4/10/14

Hamlet Scene Analysis

Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, which means we're in for a killing spree, and at the end, almost every character with a name has been checked in by Death in one gruesome way or another. Indeed, in Act Five Hamlet kills Claudius – finally. But he does so in such a roundabout, ironic, off-handed way, it makes one wonder whether this really counts as revenge; for the death of Claudius certainly lacks the poetic justice that vengeance seems to require. According to the moral logic of the play, in the final scene, after all the contemplation on the moral corruption of the living, Hamlet finally settled on one truth after handling Yorick’s skull; that death eliminates the differences between people. How that death was reached though, is portrayed differently between different directors and actors.

When the guard Marcellus famously says “something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (Act I, Scene IV), he's not being ironic about Hamlet's bathing habits. Marcellus's words refer to how something evil and vile is afoot. This moment could be interpreted as foreshadowing of the impending eight out of nine deaths of the principle characters. In the play, physical objects are rarely used to represent a thematic idea. With one important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V.  Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, fixating on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. As Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay throughout the play, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that the worm the fish one eat to fuel one’s body will eventually becomes worms food, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might as well be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

Even with my limited fluency in Spanish, it wasn’t a hard to distill the emotions that the director wishes to convey through a black and white recording.  Set in the proper intend setting of Hamlet, with 17th century style clothing, mannerism and manner of speech.  The Spanish version of Hamlet was more like a recording of what Shakespeare would’ve put on in his day. This Hamlet was younger than both the BBC and American version. Blond and almost teenager-like in his mannerism, comparable to an “emo” in today slang one might say.  The director in this version chooses to have a Hamlet who is more of a steeping anger kind of person. The black and white recording adds to the feel of Hamlet having a dark anger in his eyes. Even when he touches Laertes shoulders genially before their match, a flash of the camera shows his eyes sharp and not smiling, unlike the rest of his face. Claudius demise was also much more brutal than all other modern version and as written in the text.  He was unsparingly stabbed multiple after Queen Gertrude reveals to Hamlet that his cup is poison.  Not only did Hamlet stab Claudius multiple times, he also forcibly rams what’s left in the goblet down Claudius throat. This is significant, because barely half an hour before, despite his vexation, Hamlet was almost to the point of forgiving and let by gone be by gone.  The Spanish version ended with the camera closing on Hamlet groveling at the feet of his father statue and died.

In contrast, the modernistic BBC’s and American’s enactment of Hamlet were both portrayed by men well into their 30’s.  In the BBC’s version, Hamlet was played by the ever famous Scotsman David Tennant, whose wild eyes and ruffling behaviors breaths an erratic air into his role.  This Hamlet was not as subtle as the Spanish portrayal.  Tennant’s Hamlet displayed his disgust outright, with no qualm against how that’d make him look.  Another modernize version was played by Ethan Hawke, who’s the heir to Denmark Corporation.  The American’s version uses many modern enactments, for example, the apparition of the dead “king” appears to Hamlet through a monitor, or how the “mousetrap” play was recorded by Hamlet himself, and amateur film-student, or that Fortinbras’s conquests are not with a literal military, but corporate takeover with the aid of his "armies" of lawyers. Hawke portrayal of an understated Hamlet was also quite nice. And the biggest difference that the American’s version have from all the other versions that I’ve watch, is how the dueling scene was portrayed. Instead of the usual dueling by fencing, because the kingdom of Denmark is now a corporation, Laertes doesn't kill Hamlet with a poisoned rapier. Instead he shoots Hamlet with a pistol, and then is shot himself. Hamlet then uses the same pistol to shoot and kill Claudius.