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From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: HAMLET
Summary: r.a.m.r. #00905
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Message-ID: <1991Jan29.191315.21491@cbnewsj.att.com>
Date: 29 Jan 91 19:13:15 GMT
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				    HAMLET
		       A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper

	  Capsule review:  Unexceptional is really the word for
     the new HAMLET from Franco Zeffirelli.  Gibson is okay as
     Hamlet but is nothing startling.  Glenn Close is the only
     actor experimenting with her role.  The scenery is nice but
     this much-trimmed re-telling is nothing Shakespeare would
     feel bad for missing.  Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).

     Generally in reviewing a film, first consideration is given to how good
the story is.  It is a little tougher to review a Shakespeare film because,
whatever the good qualities of the story itself or even the dialogue, it is
pointless to praise the gentleman who contributed them.  HAMLET is a film
that gets no points, positive or negative, for story.  The question is not
whether HAMLET is a good story, but rather whether this is a good HAMLET.

     First of all, this is not so much HAMLET as HAMLETTE.  Every line
that's there is Shakespeare's, but not every line that is Shakespeare's is
there.  Franco Zeffirelli tells the story slowly, taking time to bathe the
viewer in the impressive scenery, then cutting much of the play--half, I am
told--to make it fit into two and a quarter hours.  As one expects from a
Zeffirelli film, it is lushly filmed, though perhaps not so much as some of
his other films, particularly the ones set in Italy.  This film has less of
the soft focus of, say, ROMEO AND JULIET.  The scenery is mostly in stoney
castles shot with a much harder focus.  Some of the exteriors look much like
the real Elsinore, but the Scottish castles used for the interiors has far
too much Celtic-looking decoration. Ennio Morricone's score is not only much
less intrusive than usual, it seems nearly non-existent.  Surprisingly few
scenes have any score at all.

     The important question is whether a popular actor like Mel Gibson can
play a good Hamlet.  In many ways Hamlet is very much a character of the
1990s.  He has horrible family problems, he screws up his love life, and he
has absolutely atrocious audience manners.  Gibson's Hamlet, however, is
surprisingly uninteresting and not particularly relevant to either Hamlet's
time or our own.  Gibson's performance makes no statement about the Dane
that was not on the printed page.  By contrast Glenn Close's Gertrude takes
the incest a step further than Shakespeare's did by apparently being
attracted to her own son.  Alan Bates plays new King Claudius not very
notably and even the great Paul Scofield seems unable to do much with his
role.  Helena Bonham-Carter of A ROOM WITH A VIEW and LADY JANE needs a new
character to play.

     This film has too many problems to become the definitive HAMLET the way
Zeffirelli's is the best known version of ROMEO AND JULIET.  It is simply an
okay retelling of the classic story.  Rent HENRY V instead.  I give it a +1
on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					leeper@mtgzy.att.com