HAMLET [2015]

 

Maxine Peake's HAMLET was praised to the statosphere when it stormed the box office for the stage performance.  Such hyperbole can be a little hard to live up to so I was cautiously optimistic when I popped in the DVD of the filmed performance (I was never lucky enough to see it live on stage).  While I do feel that the entire production was excellent, I can't help but feeling just a little underwhelmed by what I saw on the DVD.  Maxine Peake was excellent as Hamlet (with one exception which I'll come to later on) with John Shrapnel (as Claudius), Gillian Bevan (as the now female Polonia) and

Claire Benedict (as the Player King) particularly superb as well.  Katie West as Ophelia seemed not to make as much as an impact as her character usually does despite West's fine performance; I suspect maybe some of her lines or scenes may have been excised.  "The Mousetrap" scene by the roving players, which can often be a slog, was here excellently mounted in an exciting way.  Maybe it was too absorbing as Claudius' cry of "Give me some light!" was something of an anti-climax.  I also found very interesting the use of piles of assorted clothes to represent the dirt of the gravesite for the burial scene; indeed, even Yorick's skull was represented by a craftily-knotted sweater which approximated the shape of a skull.  All in all, quite a superb production.

Now, my (very) slight disappointment does not mean I was let down.  As I said, I thought the whole production was excellent.  There is only one problem I had and no other review of the DVD I've seen has mentioned it.  It seemed to me that Maxine Peake had a cold when this performance was recorded. 
I have no idea if this is true but her voice is terribly hoarse throughout; ranging from very hoarse to extremely hoarse such that, instead of finding myself absorbed in the play and the performances I was instead waiting for her voice to give out any second.  Peake's voice was also very thick and congested-sounding so that many lines were not as clear as they could be.  She can be seen wiping her nose often and seemed . . . well quite snotty and sniffy, I have to say.  Now this is a terrible shame because, if it is true that she was sick when this performance was recorded, it doesn't really document her "actual" performance in the role of Hamlet.  And yes, this would be a shame because her performance here on the dvd is nearly magnificent . . . if it wasn't for her seemingly congested and hoarse voice.  Everything else about Peake's performance is top notch and she brings many nice touches to the role including genuinely funny humour, a great command of the role and new angles to the "mad" scenes.  It's just that I feel her performance would have been titanic if not for her voice.  I've seen some reviews that call her performance on this dvd "shouty" and it's true; however, I think if she actually was sick then she had little choice but to shout many of her lines or else risk her voice totally giving out on her.  As I've said, I have no idea the facts of her health when this dvd performance was recorded but it's the only explanation I have for how Peake's voice sounded here.  And if she indeed had a cold or something like it, then we are not really seeing her true performance on this dvd.  And that's a shame.  Because Peake shows many flashes of brilliance which may indicate what her stage performance was truly like at the height of her powers.  And Maxine Peake's powers as Hamlet are way up there.  

THROUGH THIS PORTAL, YOU MAY ENTER THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN 2017

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter blogging as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my keyboard.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be spooky, and supernatural:
I will watch scary movies by the dozen;
My Twizzlers will be tender and my popcorn buttered;
How in my Halloweenie words shall never be shent,
To give them musings of October, my soul, consent!"

           The Halloween season is once again upon us.  The first time I ever saw a Halloween Countdown was over 10 years ago on John Rozum's blog and I've been doing my own for about a decade (give or take a missed year).  I nearly missed doing a Halloween Countdown THIS year, too; but I couldn't miss two years in a row, now could I?  Circumstances in the real world being what they are (and I've NEVER been a fan of the "real" world), I have not been able to do my usual massive preparation so this time around things will be more laid back.  There being no overarching master plan, I will do my best to post something "Halloweenie" every day but may not be able to avoid missing a day or two here and there.  Nevertheless, it's Halloween that we're celebrating and celebrate it we shall!  So let's hop aboard the Halloween hayride and see what creepy places it takes us!

MACBETH (2015): THE THANE OF CAWDOR TOOK A SNOOZE

A somnambulistic and confused filmic adaptation of the Scottish play. Director Justin Kurzel reveals an almost complete lack of understanding as to what the play is about while focusing instead on showy (if often beautiful) shots and "edgy" hand-held camera unnecessarily occurring during conversational two-shots. The entire cast often seems to be at a loss as to what they should be doing during any particular scene (hinting at a lack of guidance from the director); they also all seem to have been instructed to say their lines in a throaty whisper which lends a sleepwalking air to the performances. Honestly, after each line delivery I kept expecting Michael Fassbender to state "I'm Batman!".

Fassbender as Macbeth plays the entire movie on one monotonous note without the hint of an emotional character arc or any internal turmoil whatsoever; he starts off the movie as a sociopathic cold fish and stays that way throughout the movie. It's Macbeth as automaton rather than a good man turned to evil by a fatal character flaw. Lady Macbeth, one of the most powerfully ambitious and manipulative of all Shakespeare's characters, here has absolutely no charismatic, seductive influence upon her husband in Marion Cotillard's equally one-note performance. Having seen both actors in other movies, I can only surmise that the performance choices here were imposed upon  the actors deliberately by the director; maybe Kurzel was insecure about the Shakespearean language coming across as comical. Well, the endlessly earnest whispering going on in scene after scene DOES become laughable after about 15 minutes and the complete lack of any identifiable character takes one completely out of the movie before too long. Again, the total lack of inner conflict shown in Macbeth's character creates a listless, matter-of-fact quality to the proceedings: the 3 witches prophecy Macbeth will become king, he comes home and tells his wife, they say "Hey, let's kill Duncan", he goes and does it -- all without any soul-searching anguish or one iota of suspense, guilt or panic. All this reduces one of the Bard's most visceral and tormented tales to a dull, "Who cares what happens" slog.  

It seems to me that one of the most interesting and purposeful themes in Shakespeare's Scottish play is the fact that a relatively nice bloke like Macbeth and his presumably normal good lady wife can, through a set of fatal character flaws like ambition or the ability to be easily led, can quite quickly ruin their lives before they even know it.  The relative flood of positive reviews for this film admittedly bewilder me; were they watching the same film I was?!?!  The above poster, which points out that the film's producers are the same as brought us the equally over-praised and lackluster THE KING'S SPEECH was perhaps a warning that went unheeded in my case.  The air of "this is a SERIOUS PRODUCTION" hangs over Kurzel's MACBETH like a dagger of the mind which apparently hoodwinked some reviewers that this was a good film.  In Fassbender's and Cotillard's -- well, let's face it -- lackluster performances, they make the Thane of Cawdor and his wife appear like they've already seen the play MACBETH and are going through the motions by rote.  Watching Kurzel's film reminded me of sitting in a high school English class while the teacher made teenagers read aloud from the text; not exactly the makings of great cinematic drama!

HALLOWEEN WITH THE BARD: HAMLET'S DAD

HALLOWEEN IS ALL-PERVASIVE HERE THIS MONTH.  Hey, it even infiltrates the works of William Shakespeare now and anon.  Exhibit A:  The ghost of Hamlet's father.  Murdered by Hamlet's uncle who has taken the throne for himself, the ghost appears to Hamlet and desires revenge.  Here are some of the Pop's appearances throughout the years:

engraving by T.R. Gould

 

from the 1948 Laurence Olivier film

 

 by Faxtar

 

by Henry Fuseli

 

by Sir John Gilbert

 

by Robert Dudley

 

by William Blake

 

by Phillipe Jacques de Loutherbourg

 

an opera poster from 1868

 

by John Millar Watt

 

by Johann Heinrich

 

prisoner of war camp production starring Michael Goodliffe as Hamlet in Tittmoning, Germany

 

from Classics Illustrated #99

 

Patrick Stewart from the RSC BBC TV production starring David Tennant

 

by Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard

 

a 19th century engraving by "Reid"

 

from the 1996 Kenneth Branagh film

 

paper dolls by David Claudon

 

by J. Coghlan

 

from Hamlet:  The Comic Song

 

by John Absolon

 

by Donald Langosy

 

from the 1964 Soviet film by Grigori Kozintsev

 

from HBO's Shakespeare's Animated Tales

 

 

from the unpublished 1996 DC Comics "Elseworlds:  The Tragedy of Batman, Prince of Denmark" by Steve Englehart

 

MY 100 FAVOURITE FILMS (PART NINE). We're heading into the home stretch.

• On Golden Pond (1981) dir. Mark Rydell -- How CHARIOTS OF FIRE won best picture this year I'll never know. Examination of old age and the communication (or lack thereof) between the generations. Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda are sublime as always and Jane Fonda allows herself to be subordinated to the needs of the film. Henry Fonda's character feels himself fading away while Hepburn as his wife tries her best to bolster his sagging confidence. Bittersweet without being cloying.

• The Four Seasons (1981) dir. Alan Alda -- Three couples (Alan Alda & Carol Burnett, Rita Moreno and Jack Weston & Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis)grapple with the onset of middle age and the breakup of one of their marriages. A film divided into four parts (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) rejoins the groups only when they rejoin each other on their shared group vacations during each season of the year. Strongly character driven and quite funny in places. The introduction of Bess Armstrong as the "newcomer" throws all their staid lives into a tailspin.

• Strange Brew (1983) dir. Rick Moranis/Dave Thomas -- Before Beavis & Butthead, before Wayne & Garth there was Bob & Doug McKenzie. Direct from SCTV, the pair make their big screen debut in an audacious knuckleheaded comedy which manages to snare Max Von Sydow into the mix as well. The plot is too ridiculous to recount (deliberately convoluted as part of the joke) but the strange and very true-to-life brotherly relationship between Moranis and Thomas makes the film eminently watchable.
• A Christmas Story (1983) dir. Bob Clark -- the perennial Christmas favourite actually deserves to be dragged out every year. Magnificently written Jean Shepherd sorta memoir/reminiscence that manages to evoke the late 30's/early 40's with the addition of modern sensibilities looking backward. Peter Billingsley manages to carry the film on his tiny shoulders while Darren McGavin's father is priceless.

• Brazil (1985) dir. Terry Gilliam -- Former Python's masterpiece of dystopian near-future (are we there finally at long last?!?) with the faceless, monolithic power-that-be treating you and I like pawns. Jonathan Pryce is the nebbish office worker who dreams of heroics while battling his appliances. Katharine Helmond is his plastic surgery-obsessed mother (My God we ARE there already, aren't we?). Michael Palin is genuinely frightening in his smiling evil portrayal. Gilliam's epoch-shaking battle with the studio who wanted to impose a happy ending on the film was the stuff of a book in itself (THE BATTLE OF BRAZIL) but Gilliam's original cut is the ONLY one to watch; avoid the studio version like the plague!

• The Breakfast Club (1985) dir. John Hughes -- Not a John Hughes fan but I love this movie. Probably because I practically lived it. Unusually effective "brat pack" cast brings real emotion to the plight of high schoolers desperately trying to resist being crammed into the neat little boxes imposed by society at large. My late great college professor (The Underground Grammarian Dr. Richard Mitchell) once said to me that he always watched two movies before the start of every school year: EDUCATING RITA (which just missed out on this list) to remember how a teacher SHOULD be and THE BREAKFAST CLUB to remember where his students were coming from. Keen soundtrack too.

• Clockwise (1986) dir. Christopher Morahan -- John Cleese's cinematic highpoint as he plays a teacher obsessed with punctuality who must travel to be guest of honour at a teacher's symposium. Naturally, everything that could possibly go wrong does go wrong. A modern day screwball comedy/road picture.
• 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) dir. David Hugh Jones -- Based (almost verbattim) from the real life correspondence between author Helene Hanff and the manager of a rare book store in England. The two leads are sensitively played by Anne Bancroft (who got her husband Mel Brooks to produce the picture for her) and Anthony Hopkins who manage to depict a love story between two people who never actually meet.

• Shirley Valentine (1989) dir. Lewis Gilbert -- Hello, wall. The story of a beaten down, ignored and taken for granted British housewife (Pauline Collins in an Oscar-worthy performance) who one day gets fed up and takes off for a vacation in Greece. She finds herself becoming so alive there that she suddenly decides not to go home at all and to stay in Greece for good. Brilliantly written and acted. And a film which every woman I've ever known who has seen it LOVES it.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) dir. Tom Stoppard -- closely adapted from his own play, Tom Stoppard's film follows the misadventures of those two extremely minor characters from HAMLET. The film follows the events in Shakespeare's play but prefers to stick with the two dolts instead of following the main characters of HAMLET. Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are perfect as the dumb and dumber Shakespearean characters; sort of an Elizabethan Abbott & Costello.

Well, holy frijoles! We're almost to the end of the 100. Stay tuned for the next installment which will bring us up to the present day (Lord help us!). And there awaits for us AIDS, assassination, more AIDS, a dodgy knee, Japanese school children with assault weapons, big feet, ghosts and zombies. See you there.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!

DYNAMIC DUOS PART 6: ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN -- OR GUILDENSTERN & ROSENCRANTZ . . . .DON'T YOU DISCRIMINATE AT ALL?!?

Do you want to play questions?

How do you play that?

You have to ask a question.

Statement. One - Love.

Cheating.

How?

I haven't started yet.

Statement. Two - Love.

Are you counting that?

What?

Are you counting that?

Foul. No repetition. Three - Love and game.

I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.

Who's serve?

Uh...

Hesitation. Love - One.

Who's go?

Why?

Why not?

What for?

HA. No synonyms. One all.

What in God's name is going on?

Foul. No rhetoric. Two - One.

What does it all add up to?

Can't you guess?

Are you addressing me?

Is there anyone else?

Who?

How would I know?

Why do you ask?

Are you serious?

Was that rhetoric?

No. Statement. Two all. Game point.

What's the matter with you today?

When?

What?

Are you deaf?

Am I dead?

Yes or no?

Is there a choice?

Is there a God?

Foul. No non-sequiturs. Three - Two. One game all.

What's your name?

What's yours?

You first.

Statement. One - Love.

What's your name when you're at home?

What's yours?

When I'm at home?

Is it different at home?

What home?

Haven't you got one?

Why do you ask?

What are you driving at?

What's your name?

Repetition. Two - Love. Match point.

Who do you think you are?

Rhetoric. Game and match!