Word: hamleted
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...Rosemary Harris, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Jack Lemmon, John Mills, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet and the Duke of Marlborough, to name but a dozen--in the second longest film released by a major studio (after Cleopatra). If Kenneth Branagh doesn't win an Oscar for his four-hour, uncut Hamlet, he should at least cop a Chutzpah Award...
...egotistic stunt, but in the sensible belief that the greatest work in dramatic literature damn well deserved to be filmed in full. Next to this, all other movie versions, from Laurence Olivier's to Mel Gibson's, seem like samplings--a Reduced Shakespeare Company run-through of Hamlet's greatest hits...
...pretty, vigorous, thoughtful, this Hamlet expands the story with helpful flashbacks; Yorick, Priam, Old Norway come alive as if from a vivid history book. The full version restores Shakespeare's emphasis on court politics, with whispers of intrigue that establish Hamlet and Laertes as potential usurpers of Claudius' throne, and massed armies behind Hamlet. Here he might be a Henry V who's gone just this side of bonkers...
This version is strongest where most shorter productions fail: in Act IV, where, in Hamlet's absence, Ophelia goes picturesquely mad while the star gets to catch his breath. Winslet's decline is an edifying horror show; Christie gives all her urgent glamour to Gertrude's one big speech; and Michael Maloney's subtle power as Laertes makes him a kind of good twin to the melancholy Dane. Hamlet, after all, hates his stepfather because he seduced the lad's mother and killed his father. But Laertes has similar reasons for hating Hamlet, and here he has the same carnal...
...ambition, the entrepreneurial magnetism that attracts the brightest lights of Britain and Hollywood to his projects. What's lacking in this merchant of culture is Olivier's danger, the preening beauty and sweet delirium that makes an actor a star. Those are precisely the qualities that keep this admirable Hamlet--and Hamlet--from being a thrilling...