V.ii. Duel and Deaths - Hamlet 2000

The setting for the duel is the Elsinore building's rooftop, the duelists dressed in fencing uniforms wired for electronic detection of hits. It looks windy and precarious, but there's still an assembly of courtiers and news photographers to witness the event. Hamlet is sincere and teary-eyed as he gives his apology, but Laertes cannot be thawed. He doesn't even answer, just goes for the foils. Interestingly, when Laertes says his foil is too heavy and he wants another, he's actually refusing the poisoned one. Claudius looks dismayed, wondering if his plan is already going awry. The audience may well think Laertes wants to try his hand at actually defeating the Prince without the poison, though the truth, as we will see, is something else entirely.

As the fighting begins - and Hamlet 2000 doesn't really do anything too impressive with the swordplay - the King looks uncommonly haggard, his kingdom slipping away. Gertrude has a certain smug pride in her son, and then decides Claudius is acting strangely. This is a Queen who knows her husband well, and his nervousness coupled with the perhaps unusual tradition of offering a cup of wine to the victor (an anachronism, surely), makes her suspect the worst. She runs to Hamlet to wipe his brow, pushing Claudius and his poison cup aside, and turning, grabs the cup herself and on impulse, drinks deep from it.

"I pray you pardon me" takes a different bent, a sarcastic acknowledgment that she's just spoiled Claudius' plans on several levels. Wiping her son's face becomes her last act, a motherly one.

Laertes' own plan is revealed when he pulls a gun - likely the one Hamlet used to kill his father Polonius - at "Say you so? come on". A major difference, it adds a layer of ironic mirroring to the situation, and since guns have been equated with swords throughout the whole film, except for the duel, it makes sense it would return as the murder weapon at the very end. Laertes doesn't shoot from a distance, however, he and Hamlet struggle corps-à-corps, the gun firing twice to produce the same effect as the twin poisoning. Here we might see another irony in Laertes and his father both being shot in mirrored circumstances, Polonius through a mirror and Laertes facing his "mirror" in the play. He does not ask for forgiveness, nor does he show regret (the cuts do pile up). Instead he whispers the truth in Hamlet's ears, revealing the Claudius as the villain only as a final blow, telling Hamlet he's been played and has lost.

One victim of all the cuts is Claudius' death, which is abrupt and lacks poetry. He's shot several times, an act not accompanied by Shakespeare's lines, nor even the use of the poison cup. Hamlet's own death is more complete, and accompanied by a montage of memories, treated like the artistic video he was wont to make, of all the characters in the play. A kind of fuzzy curtain call. It may hark back to silent film, if one would like to connect to his famous last words. Before we get to the coda, a shot of the blue sky, a plane trailing exhaust is used to show Hamlet's symbolic ascension to Heaven, but since the angle has the plane going downward from our point of view, it's ambiguous. He may be bound for Hell instead. Regardless, the use of a plane creates a visual travel pun relating to that "undiscovered country".

Though Horatio is left to tell the tale, there's no hint of him appearing on the news. A missed opportunity. Taking a page (or a shot, really) from Romeo + Juliet's Chorus, Fortinbras' lines have been put in a newscaster's mouth to close out the film. In addition to the Norwegian CEO/prince's lines, the anchor also uses the Player King's from earlier in the play:

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own

It's not uncommon for a Shakespeare play to hold the key to its themes somewhere in the middle (or several possible keys, open to interpretation). Highlighting those lines can be a useful directorial trick. Moving those lines to a meaningful position may be cheating, but that's what they've done here. Hamlet 2000's choice is in line with its protagonist's existential outlook, though I still prefer "to thine own self be true" as the key to the play. The final shot of the film is the anchor's teleprompter showing the above speech, as film returns to words.

V.ii. The Readiness Is All - Hamlet 2000

The sequence is set in Hamlet's apartment where Marcella is sleeping, with the Ghost at her bedside. I hadn't realized it before, but she and Horatio are Hamlet's roommates. Why is the Ghost here? This version of Hamlet Sr. haunts this building and has been seen more regularly than the play would have it. His vigil, and Marcella's resemblance to Ophelia, creates an image of grief building on grief, a reminder of two dead characters. As this is a scene about Hamlet's doom and about his allowing the tragedy to run its course, such imagery supports that sinking feeling of dread which is required of it. The Ghost will hear the boys come in and make himself scarce, but will reappear at the very end, and Hamlet seem to look straight at him, an acceptance of his own death to come. "I will join you soon," he seems to say. Hamlet and Horatio keep their voices low so as not to wake Marcella up, but Hamlet's temper will get the better of him when Horatio's questions paint him as not as on board with Hamlet's actions as the Prince would have liked. She soon wanders into the scene.

Hamlet's tale is seen in flashback and features an amusingly awkward modernization of the events recounted in the play. It's set on a plane, instead of a ship (the word "cabin" still fits, in a way), with the comedy relief Rosencrantz & Guildenstern fast asleep, one of them with a night mask. But that's not the awkward part. Hamlet goes into the overhead compartment and pulls out a laptop. And on that laptop, he finds a Word document from Claudius to England, which he edits easily. He hands Horatio a diskette with the original message on it. Now, there WAS an Internet in the year 2000, but I think we can accept that Claudius would not want to create a "paper trail" by sending his hitmen an email. But having an electronic copy of the message, with no way to authenticate it to boot, creates its own problems. Why can't the message be on a piece of paper?

Much better, but in the same vein, is Osric being replaced by a fax machine. The message from the King comes into the apartment via fax and Horatio simply reads the relevant lines. Hamlet's reactions, "How if I answer no?" etc. are thus said in private conversation with his friends, rhetorical or explicitly honest reactions to the message. He's not playing the scene to anyone who might report back to the King. The "readiness is all" speech, he rattles off very quickly, speaking to its inevitability. After a quick cutaway to Claudius poisoning a drink (testing it?), we return to Hamlet's preparations. He removes all the pictures he had on his wall - elements of his collages, pics of Ophelia - and turns off the lights after Horatio gives him a meaningful look that can only say "it's time", leaving a blank wall in a darkened room. Everything speaks to Hamlet's impending doom. He puts his affairs in order, destroys the evidence of his life before allowing the tragedy to destroy that life entire.

V.i. Ophelia's Funeral - Hamlet 2000

All told from Hamlet's point of view, we can barely hear Gertrude's and Laertes' lines as he and Horatio come up the hill and see the (closed casket) funeral. He witnesses a drunk Laertes jump into the grave, but doesn't follow him in. He might even have walked away - Horatio certainly tries to pull him in the opposite direction - but Laertes' shouts make him hard to ignore. And yet, the film avoids melodrama. Hamlet simply offers Laertes his hand and the other man takes it. His curse is quiet and bitter. Laertes walks away and it's Hamlet who hounds him, who keeps going after him trying to make him realize the futility of their grief. Hamlet shames him, competes with him, but still, Laertes walks away, and it's not until Hamlet blocks his way that the two come to blows (or rather, pushing and choking). Bodyguards converge on them, but too late, they're tumbling down a hill and wrestling until their energy is spent. The music is sad, bringing out the pathetic futility of the scene, and the way the rest of the family looks at them from the top of the hill recreates the idea of them both in a grave, or in hell. Hamlet eventually leaves Laertes weeping there, on the ground, the victor, but when we see him behind Horatio on the motorcycle, he's letting his emotions out as well. If he has won anything, it's to express his grief away from prying eyes.

Hamlet as aggressor is the innovation here. A hurt Laertes tries to ignore him, tries in fact to respect the plan he and Claudius concocted. Now is not the time. But Hamlet keeps pressing him. Why? Well, in this context, the lines take the bent of a suicide hotline, tough love perhaps, but love. Laertes just asked the gravediggers to bury him with his sister, and Hamlet, passed master at grieving, aims to shock Laertes back into life. His list of great feats do not have a competitive intent, but are rather used to show Laertes there is nothing he can do, however extreme, that will bring his sister back. He's trying to make him move on more quickly than he was able to (never able to). "Why do you use me thus? I loved you ever" becomes more immediate, a reference to what he was trying to do just before Laertes' hands wrapped themselves around his throat.

V.i. The Gravedigger Scene - Hamlet 2000

Hamlet walks out of an airport terminal in a hoodie, catches a motorcycle helmet, and embraces Horatio. The two of them drive out and stop in a cemetery. There are kids in costumes running around. It seems it's still Halloween. Either it's been a year since Hamlet left, or it's part of the "time out of joint" motif. Why are they there? Does Horatio know about the funeral? Has Hamlet already been briefed? Is this why he's back? By cutting the entire sequence's dialog, these become a possibility. We hear singing, but it's not Shakespeare's verse. A gravedigger "with no feeling of his business" sings Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. Though the lines we hear clearly have little bearing on the scene, the song does link to Hamlet, and Hamlet 2000 particularly, in several ways (see below). The nobles do not engage the man. It's a visual reference to the play without having to actually play the scene.

And yes, that means we don't get any interpretation of "Alas, poor Yorick", a brave thing when it's likely the most iconic image of the play. The modern trappings killed it. It would have been difficult to explain why a modern-day Gravedigger would have been throwing skulls out of a mass grave, or whether "king's jester" has enough of an equivalent to make any measure of sense in the context of the year 2000. We simply move directly to Ophelia's funeral and Hamlet's confrontation with Laertes.

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the cold distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Only the first couple lines are heard, but the next has a reference to digging the earth, and to the businessmen who stand in as the play's nobility in the film. The verse is an equalizer, just like Hamlet's description of death, with neither businessmen (later, princes) nor plowmen knowing what's going on. Life treated as a joke is Hamlet's thing, so he can be the joker, or this may be a reference to Yorick. And by the end, we have two riders, Hamlet and Horatio, approaching and heralding something furious, a wildcat or howling wind. Though the song isn't about Hamlet, its lyrics do seem to fit a lot of the play's (and film's) details, and makes an interesting choice, even if it isn't featured in the movie enough to make those who don't already know it (and who recognize it from what little we hear) see how its words resonate with Shakespeare's.

IV.vii. Ophelia's Death - Hamlet 2000

Because Gertrude's speech refers to things absent in the modern adaptation - the brook, the flowers, Ophelia's dress - it is completely cut from the play, as is Laertes' scripted reaction. Nothing after the multiple utterances of "drowned" can be heard from either of them, and the film instead opts for an image that contains information one would have gleaned from the text.

In Hamlet 2000, Ophelia is frequently seen flirting with the idea of drowning. She throws herself in a VIP pool with her clothes on, she walks the edge of a fountain in the lobby. It's in that fountain that she is found, drowned in barely a foot of water, and though these things happen, it is just askew enough an image to underline the madness of it. Ophelia simply let herself die. A security guard runs in to try and rescue her but is too late, which answers the question of whether Gertrude was witness to the events or not. Of course, she might have seen it happen from one of the lobby's high balconies and been unable to do anything about it, just as in an Elizabethan or Medieval setting, the Queen might have seen it all from a tower window. The shot ends on her box of letters from Hamlet, floating by her body in the fountain, telling us more definitively that her suicide was driven by lost love, though the letters are also a symbol of the tug of war between her father and her lover - the letter revealed to the Royals, the tokens returned to Hamlet as an excuse to spy on him, and so on - so does double duty.

IV.vii. Claudius' Seduction - Hamlet 2000

Though it does suffer some important cuts, the scene is well-played and well-staged, and features some interesting innovations. For example, there's a bodyguard in the room, which makes sense after Laertes tried to kill Claudius. They can't be left alone together. It also means Claudius has soldiers loyal to him - his power is still real - or else he wouldn't conspire to kill the Prince in front of a third party. The other interesting idea is to stage the scene so Gertrude is in the next room. Low voices, furtive glances, the tension is raised considerably and the conspirators made more conspiratorial as a result.

Laertes accepts Claudius' excuses and is shown the gun Hamlet used in an evidence bag, but his expression is clear. The Royal Family survives while his own pays the price. The State screws the People over (though obviously, the Polonius family wasn't exactly middle-class). He is otherwise cold towards the King, his mind elsewhere perhaps, as he fiddles with Ophelia's hair comb, but that gives a nice spin on the line about warming the sickness of his heart, which in turn highlights Claudius' own about an "ulcer". The only emotion Laertes will allow himself to have is that sickness, a need for revenge, a hate beyond all hate.

Among the many cuts, we of course find the Normand material, which doesn't fit the setting, but also the details of the assassination scheme. In fact, what the characters fear throughout actually happens and Gertrude walks in on them, earlier than in the play. She cuts them off just as Laertes was about to answer Claudius' question about what he would do to show himself his father's son.

A final note: The fax machine used to deliver Hamlet's message turns this "modern-day" version into a period piece after all.

IV.v. Laertes Returns - Hamlet 2000

Seconds after Ophelia is carried off by security, Laertes comes out of nowhere to confront Claudius (well, security IS distracted...). It's a quick, furious scene on a balcony overlooking a pit. It screams danger just like the Danish rabble at Laertes' heels might have. Claudius quickly moves to an adjacent room, his fear more about the public relations aspect of Laertes' rebellion than about his physical safety, though the younger man soon has his hand around the elder's throat, and image that is reversed by sequence's end when Claudius does the same, but in a kind of bond-creating embrace. In this version, the Queen is portrayed as being just as decadent as her husband, so she gets a good portion of Laertes' abuse. He screams at her to drown out her protests. He tells HER he dares damnation. In a sense, she's the King's only bodyguard in this scene, his only enforcer.

One note about the room: It somehow doesn't appear to be on the same floor as the balcony it seemed adjacent to. The street outside makes this no more than the second or third floor, while the balcony was high indeed. It gives the sense that the reception hall is a pit dug into the ground, a funnel into hell itself.

Ophelia comes in with Polaroids of flowers instead of the flowers themselves, which makes sense for the photographer she is in this adaptation. In great distress, Ophelia barely recognizes her brother and appears to be in a constant state of swooning, going weak at the knees and cross-eyed. Is she on drugs, medicine, or is this just how her madness manifests? Notably, many of her lines are cut and she does not make any reference to prayer. She's merely helped out of the room by her brother. This is because Christian notions have largely been weeded out of the text to better represent young people of Hamlet's and Ophelia's social class circa the year 2000.

"Where the offense is let the great axe fall" is now part of the next scene, not spoken to Laertes, but to Claudius himself, in the broken mirror up in his bedroom, just before he manipulates Laertes into helping him kill Hamlet. It takes on another meaning. Rather than trying to sound sincere for Laertes, he's rather psyching himself up for the task of "turning" an antagonistic "Laertes". The moment may imply that Claudius is ready to take his lumps if he can't work his magic, and that success in this instance is a sign from above that he shall prevail against Hamlet as well. The things we tell ourselves in the mirror to convince ourselves we're on the correct course.

IV.v. Ophelia's Madness - Hamlet 2000

Hamlet 2000 uses heavy cuts to ramp the scene's momentum up, focusing on Ophelia's disruptive influence at "court". The scene is set on an interior balcony overlooking a central atrium. On several levels, there appears to be a company function going on, some cocktail party attended by shareholders perhaps. Ophelia seeks the Queen, going round and round the concentric balconies, an image of her own mind spinning out of control. She finds Gertrude laughing, drink in hand, and seemingly untouched by the feeling expressed by her speech, done in voice-over. This is the face she shows the shareholders, a brave front to keep confidence in the company up, which makes Ophelia's intervention all the more destructive. She stumbles into guests and Gertrude naturally tries to smile over the incident and lead the girl away. With this more sinister Queen, it becomes possible for the song "How should I your true love know / From another one?" to be directed at her, the mother-in-law who has apparently spurned her and spurned her own son. One of Ophelia's transgressions is to question the love Gertrude bears her son (which she let the King exile), and her loyalty to Polonius' family (who died while theoretically under the Queen's protection).

The King walks in with a bodyguard in tow and Ophelia gets more and more agitated. Not feeling like they're listening to her, she screams "Pray mark". Gertrude turns to the King for help, her smiles still trying to cover for the girl's antics. "When they ask you what it means", she tells the royals to convey not the original song, but an incredible scream that startles the guests (pictured above). The film translates her trauma differently than the play does, cutting out most of the "nonsense songs", replacing them with moments such as this, which we might call "nonsense sounds". What we lose in poetry we gain in visceral immediacy.

The rest of Ophelia's performance, including the warning about her brother, is given while being dragged away by the bodyguard, again keeping things moving. The scene's rather surprising punchline is that Laertes comes out of nowhere before the King can utter more than one line of the final speech, grabbing him by the throat. Ophelia's appearance was but the first volley in this "rebellion", played rather more personally in this version of the play, as we'll discuss when we tackle the next scene.

Act IV, Scene 4 - Hamlet 2000

You'd think this modern adaptation, with countries represented as corporations, would cut Fortinbras' "powers" and this scene altogether. You'd be wrong. Instead of a snowy plain, we're on an airplane. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are sniggering, reading Wired and eating peanuts in the aisle opposite Hamlet who is watching in-flight television and looking at postcards that symbolically represent his exile. A plane taking off, a nude painting, a stone mask. We're heading back in time, to parts unknown, to Hamlet's reptile brain, and away from the civilization and intellectualism that has plagued him to date. On the television is Fortinbras, or so a flight attendant says when Hamlet asks. At least, he looks like a flight attendant, until he puts the drink he's holding to his mouth. Is he then just an officer of some kind? In the play, it's Fortinbras' captain, but here, is he the plane's captain? If so, he shouldn't drinking or walking around the craft. It's an odd moment. If I were to give it purpose, I'd say it's a representation of Norway usurping Hamlet's Danish power. A steward approaches with a drink, but then doesn't give it to the passenger and drinks it himself. It foreshadows' Fortinbras' corporate takeover. Not that this is is any way clear.

One thing that is missing from the exchange is the idea that soldiers are about to die for a useless cause in Poland. Because we know the play, we might infer it ourselves. Fortinbras dismantles a Polish company for no other reason "than the name", costing untold numbers their jobs. But there's no way to show this with Shakespeare's text, so Hamlet's exhorting examples don't have anything to do with Fortinbras' war. This Hamlet lives in the modern world and is surrounded by "examples gross in nature", many of which he's used in his art films. We accept his growing determination without it needing a trigger. The staging is crucial. Hamlet heads for the bathroom at the other end of the plane, speaking his soliloquy as he walks down the aisle, an echo of "To be or not to be" in Blockbuster's aisles. This forces him to walk through economy class - largely empty, a sign of severe class divide? - and sees a woman holding a baby. The examples before him, though different than in the play, may still cause his personal call to arms. Seeing other children and other parents only reinforces the unnaturalness his own family relationships.

The plane seems incredibly long, and the dramatic vanishing point behind Hamlet makes him akin to a bullet in a cannon, about to be fired. In the bathroom, he speaks to himself in the mirror, gives himself a mission. Has he become the Ghost himself? He dares himself to act, nose to nose with his reflection, and he will take that dare.

Act IV, Scenes 1-3 - Hamlet 2000

Skipping right to Scene 2, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern find Hamlet washing his bloody clothes in a laundromat. Cutting Scene 1 is an easily made cut since the audience can infer that the murder was found out and people sent to track the killer. We're only really missing Claudius' selfish reaction to it. In this modern day adaptation, the whole sequence (as Claudius walks in with bodyguards soon after being called by one of the twins) smacks of something out of a mob movie. The family never called the police, they're handling this themselves, quite possibly falsifying the details of Polonius' death to protect Hamlet from the authorities. And for that, they need the body. The laundromat is obviously redolent in meaning, a place where Hamlet attempts to wash his soul of his sin, and where indeed, we learn the King washed it from the public eye. We found out it was Halloween earlier (a child dressed as a ghost booed at the King), so there are two pumpkins on a table in the corner, and in an amusing piece of staging, Rosencrantz sits next to them during the scene, surely an attack on R&G's wits.

Unlike most interpretations, they let Claudius win the scene. He comes in with a disarming smile, and Hamlet gets through his lines with fear and apprehension in his voice. The prince even tries to bolt for the door, but is pinned to the wall by the King's bodyguards. Claudius vacillates between kindness and thuggery, punching Hamlet in the gut when he loses patience with him, but wiping the hair off his brow when he finally gives up the body's location. Among the many cuts is Hamlet's seeing a cherub that sees Claudius' purposes. So only in the final disquieting kiss to his mother/father does Hamlet score a point. The look on the bodyguard's face says it all - these people are crazy.

Cut to the airport, where Hamlet is given a rare farewell with a very drunk Gertrude, cold at first, then coming back for a warm embrace, an image of their last conversation in a way. Claudius stays in the limo to do his short soliloquy, and he has to get it out fast before Gertrude returns to the car. He's in his own world when she does and doesn't notice the way she looks at him, distrusting and wary. So though Scene 1 was cut, we still get a very good idea of which side she's really on thanks to her inclusion in this scene.

III.iv. The Closet Scene - Hamlet 2000

It must be said that Hamlet 2000 cuts out many lines, for time as much as anachronism, but these do create dialog juxtapositions that can, at times, illuminate the text. And as usual, part of the joy of watching the play translated into a contemporary setting is to see modern props, settings and attitudes used to give well-known scenes a new spin. The setting in this case is an odd bedroom, the bed's backboard right to a wall of skyscraper windows, no curtains (this later causes a technical hiccup when the boom microphone becomes visible in its reflection, but that's neither here nor there). A kind of tower from which the Royals can survey the realm, but also one where their incestuous debauchery would be visible to everyone. They are clearly shameless, and shame (or lack of it) is an important theme in this scene. As we come into it, it is set up like a bedroom farce. Polonius is sitting on the bed and rushes off to a mirrored closet, coming out again comically to grab his forgotten coat. There may not be something going on between Gertrude and Polonius (at least, we hope not), and Bill Murray's effete performance takes us away from any post-coital thoughts, but he is acting as the King's proxy and at least creating the image of an affair, perhaps an echo of Gertrude's original adultery.

Hamlet walks into her apartment and immediately moves to the bedroom, which is a bit suspect, but makes sense if he thinks to find Claudius there, or plans to accuse his mother of adultery in full sight of the bed (which seems a bit calculated for this particular Hamlet, but is still possible). He angers her and gets slapped, hard, at which points he actually uses the closet door to "set [her] up a glass", literally showing her her own sin. When Polonius starts shouting, it's not a dagger Hamlet pulls out, but a pistol, and he shoots through the mirror, breaking its reflection and, in effect, his family's status quo. Polonius walks out, having been shot through the eye, before collapsing.

This is one instance where the modern trappings can create an image the original props would have had difficulty with. Here we have a spy ironically shot through the eye, and layering in more irony, that spy can be called a blind fool. Gertrude seems surprised at her son's subsequent accusation, so despite her rather callous manner prior to this, she appears not to have been in on her husband's murder. Scared for her life, she attempts to grab the telephone, at which point Hamlet uses the "wringing of your hands" line to take it away from her. He jumps on the bed, throwing up the covers, grabs her and chokes her with the bedspread, he gives in to violence, but not to Oedipal lust (thankfully). In this adaptation, the Queen isn't shown the presentment of two brothers, the momentum is kept through movement, not words.

The Ghost appears to Hamlet as Gertrude is ready to pass out, sitting in the room. The cuts juxtapose "he glares" with "Do not look at me!", putting the focus on Hamlet's own shame. He has lost control, killed a man, and almost killed his mother, and the Ghost's judgment is unbearable. In his own mind, that judgment has just linked him to Claudius. The Prince thus acts as an example to his shameless mother. All are sinners, but having sinned, this is how one should feel. Thematically, it's what cleaves his mother's heart in twain. She is split between Claudius' hedonistic values and Hamlet's puritanical ones. There's also a lovely moment for the Ghost, a reaction shot to Gertrude saying she sees "nothing at all". He looks ascant, saddened and regretful that he cannot be seen by the love of his life. She cannot see him now, perhaps like she didn't really see him before. There's existential angst as the Ghost himself doubts his reality, and he dies again (never to reappear in the play) having been ignored and forgotten by his widow.

The end of the scene is cut with a silent sequence in which Hamlet drags Polonius' enshrouded body through corridors, and near the building's laundry, he calls Gertrude on a payphone to have "one more word". Structurally, the purpose this serves is to put the "neighbour room" well away from her apartment, a requirement the way this "Elsinore" is represented. It might also have been used as a reveal that Claudius is sitting in on the phone call, but that doesn't happen. Gertrude does not betray Hamlet. His "good night, mother", after the phone has been hung up, because more symbolic than literal, as if he's closing a chapter on his life. He's soon off to England and does not speak to her again before he leaves (and hardly after, in the play), but more importantly, his thoughts of taking revenge on her have been quelled. It's good night to that part of his plans.

III.iii. The Confessional - Hamlet 2000

The staging in the modern-era Hamlet 2000 is cleverly done. Hamlet takes the place of Claudius' chauffeur, and so is able to hear the confession from the front seat. The confession, and the conversation with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern over the car phone. This is how he learns of his impending trip to England, and gets confirmation that Claudius is guilty. And yet, he fails to pull the trigger. Aside from the modern trappings, there is an important deviation from the play in the way this is handled. As written, it is unlikely that Hamlet is meant to hear the confession. He comes upon Claudius praying for salvation, and based on that and his reaction at the play, concludes he is guilty. He does not kill him just then on religious grounds. In this film, Hamlet hears the confession, but has no soliloquy to express why he leave the car without carrying on the execution. It looks like he's just unable to commit murder at this point, and that he might actually feel sorry for Claudius. After all, if he's unable to kill, he sees in Claudius his future self, a man having trouble living with the guilt of such an act. It may also be that the religious nature of Hamlet's delay would ring false in a contemporary, so much more secular, setting. However, a shade of this idea is retained for the viewer who would like to think Hamlet's reasons are the same in any era: Claudius' lines which are specifically about his inability to be forgiven are the ones said in voice-over, the implication being that Hamlet cannot know Claudius' prayers are null and void, or else he would have shot his uncle.

The staging also allows for some dynamic elements. Hamlet gives the steering wheel a turn during the confession, further destabilizing the King. His royal hand lands on the limo's television, where backlit, it triggers his lines about his bloody hand. Some of the images on that screen may or may not inform the scene. While he talks on the phone, for example, he switches channels from an ad saying "Stop living paycheck to paycheck" to a crude animated skeleton reading the newspaper, to news footage of Bill Clinton. Images of desperation, death and kingship. When his hand lands on the monitor, it is showing a vaguely volcanic cliff on the sea. The undiscovered country? The real Denmark? An image of precariousness? Director Michael Almereyda uses a lot of images on television screens throughout the film, most to simply evoke a feeling and theme, not to necessarily comment on particular lines.

Soon, Claudius is at the stock exchange, and it's business as usual, his doubts and guilt a momentary thing.

III.ii. Critical Reception - Hamlet 2000

In Hamlet 2000, we don't stay in the theater long. Horatio and Marcella noted Claudius' blenching at the movie screen (as did we), but seems more confused than certain. Still, in cases where the actor playing the King isn't ambiguous in his reaction, there's no real need to dwell on Horatio's. Hamlet races off into night as we hear the song's words in voice-over. It takes an entirely different bent spoken as internal monologue. In the play as written, the lines are a manifestation of Hamlet's exultant victory. Here, it becomes commentary on the evening's events. Some must watch, some must sleep and so it goes. He is saying that only a few, like him, are vigilant, and the world outside is still oblivious to Claudius' crimes. There is still much work to be done, and the melancholy of Hamlet's tone shows him weary still, despite his small victory.

He hails a cab and jumps in, and that's where Rosencrantz & Guildenstern catch up to him, box him in. As the cab drives off, we hear words on the radio, but not from the play, a commercial for buckling up about cats having nine lives. It informs the scene only in the smallest degree. It's about danger and safety, something all the participants are ignoring. They're all playing a dangerous game. The difference between R&G and Hamlet is that the twins don't know it. In fact, Hamlet will survive his deadly encounter with them (he's the cat) and they will not. But here, the Prince is caught and though he tries to remain aloof, he does wipe at his wet eyes from time to time. In the absence of recorders - this version frequently does away with lines about anachronistic props - their conversation ends at "my wit's diseased". He cannot give an answer and that is that. He's not playing coy as other Hamlets do, he's frankly telling they are unlikely to get anything from him.
When he gets off, part of the "witching hour" speech is done in voice-over. It's all about mood. Heavy metal leaks out of a revolving door (the Ghost's passageway to and from the undiscovered country?), steam blows out of sewer grates, and in a few moments, as we cut to Claudius heading out of Elsinore, he crosses paths with a child dressed as a ghost who boos at him.
It's Halloween in New York, apparently, and it's a nice ironic image that a dead child would haunt the King at this point, he who has killed his brother, someone he grew up with, was a child with. It comes after a mysterious scene in which Hamlet is seen bothering a limo driver, but as we'll see, it is merely set-up for the confessional scene.

III.ii. The Mouse-Trap - Hamlet 2000

Hamlet 2000 features some important cuts, including the entirety of the play within the play, replaced by a dialogless art film of Hamlet's creation. While it serves the same function as the play, by showing images designed to perturb the King and Queen, it does mean a lot of commentary on the play had to be cut as well ("'Tis brief", "doth protest too much" and "is there no offense", for example). Still, staging the scene in a movie theater does have its uses. There's a depth to such a room that allows the entire audience to be seen at different levels in the same shot, and the director keeps the Royals in the background kissing until Claudius finally pulls focus by speaking. Hamlet's words are for Ophelia alone, keeping up the barrage of insulting words started in their previous scene together, playful but highly sardonic. What comes across is that Ophelia really doesn't understand him. Everything she says in this section is wrong, either a misunderstanding or really Hamlet switching things on her. Hamlet seems angry with her for not understanding him, though it's also his fault for behaving differently.

Only at the end of his diatribe about people forgetting his father does he raise his voice enough for Claudius to notice him and ask "How fairs my cousin Hamlet?" The answer is cut down to a simple "excellent" after a pregnant pause that dismisses the King and let's it be known he really has nothing to say to his stepfather. Polonius, meanwhile, is absent from this scene entirely, and after all, there's no reason for him to have the Brutus lines seeing as there are no Players or talk of acting.
The film starts with white on red title cards that plays on Hamlet (the play)'s own title: "The Mouse-Trap, a Tragedy by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", a visual reminder, perhaps of his aborted rise to the throne. The images shown include time-lapse photography, clips from old movies and Monty-Python-style animation. In order, we see a flower opening, clips of a happy childhood with a father and his son, the world turning, a bottle of poison, animation showing the poison going into the ear, scenes of murder and death, athletes falling like dominoes, the flower wilting, a child comes down the stairs, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra (a reference to another adulterous relationship in Shakespeare), some pornographic material, a crowd applauding and a king crowning himself before the mirror.
At the sight of the poison, Claudius starts to sweat, catching the obvious accusation. For Gertrude, the difficult part of the film is the pornography, and given her innate lasciviousness, it must be because she gets the inference. She is the pornographic Cleopatra on the screen, and it's her son (there are no other authors of this drama, no "Murder of Gonzago" template) who has represented her this way. Claudius will walk out of the theater at the end, fighting with his demons, while Gertrude attempts to follow, speechless as she turns towards her son.

By virtue of the many cuts, this Hamlet is less active than the text's, but he needs to prod the King and Queen much less because he made the film, whereas in the text, The Mouse-Trap is meant to be a play he ordered from the Players' repertoire. The message is more direct, and Hamlet need not jump on stage to make his own intent clear.

III.ii. Instructing the Players - Hamlet 2000

Because Hamlet presents a film, not a play, the scene is drastically reduced. We now pick it up from somewhere in the middle of Hamlet's talk with Horatio, as the two welcome and occasionally shake hands with guests at the theater's door. The staging is comical even if the text is not, as the Prince is continually interrupted by passers-by (including Rosencrantz & Guildenstern). It's a most public arena in which to give Horatio a secret mission. As patrons come in to humor the Prince by seeing his highly experimental short films, viewers who know the play well may be reminded of Hamlet's speech about false shows of love, the "absurd pomp", that is usually part of this scene. Sadly, nothing remains of it but the idea. Instead, we start at "Give me that man...". Hamlet still compliments Horatio, but he does not feel the need to compare it to common fawning. The nature of their relationship survives the cut, but is given in brief.

When Hamlet says he must be idle, he puts on wacky yellow-tinted glasses, an outward sense of his madness. There's an awkward moment (or two!) when Ophelia walks in and the modern recontextualizing of the play creates a big change there. In period staging, it's assumed Ophelia must come to the play, along with the rest of the Court. Her father is there, so she is there. She lives within Elsinore's walls, is part of the community. Here, it's a movie being shown in a private theater, but the characters are not really organized into a Court, and move around New York, often outside the walls of the Elsinore building. In other words, she CHOSE to come. It's not to say the text's Ophelia didn't make a choice, but it's assumed she didn't. Ophelia's choice - if there is one - opens another avenue of analysis. Does she believe she can still move Hamlet to sanity? Does she wish to show her independence? (Ophelia tries to give as good as she gets during the play.) Is she simply a fan of theater/film? (This might be a common interest that brought them together in the first place.) Or is it a false choice and she is still being coerced by her father? Giving Ophelia an option and somehow showing it may be a worthy and fruitful exercise.

III.i. The Nunnery Scene - Hamlet 2000

In this version, Ophelia is wired by her father and heads for Hamlet's apartment. The transition to that scene is a wall of water (a fountain in Elsinore), water being Ophelia's totem element. She's brought Hamlet a somewhat psychedelic box filled to the brim with letters and other mementos (like a rubber ducky - again an image of water). The whole scene feels particularly modern and, in a sense, mundane. We recognize the (ex) boyfriend-girlfriend dynamic here, playing out an argument as old as time. She's reproachful of his attitude, and he plays the cold bastard with her. Cutting the lines about the paradox makes the dialog more of this time as well. Hamlet's more ambiguous explanation of "are you honest/fair?" is the simpler "I did love you, once", reducing, perhaps, the emotional equation to there being no beauty without honesty. Alternatively, he may be telling Ophelia he loved only her falsified image, and that he does not love the person she actually is under the surface.

The scene really hinges on the line "I loved you not", after which Ophelia for the first time seems to feel emotion (her usual attitude could be described as "numb", or at least, "guarded"). After these wounding words, we cut to a shot of a jet, overhead, an image of something departing, or just a way to underscore a silent beat? And yet, Hamlet isn't without kindness. He seems comforting as he moves to her and rubs her shoulders, and his speech sounds like someone saying "it's for the best" and justifying why the two of them shouldn't marry lest they revisit the sins of their parents on their partners and children. It's one of the play's themes, isn't it? Hamlet's struggle is that having found his parents lacking, he fights not to become like them. One might even find enough evidence here to show that Claudius is Hamlet's biological father, as the latter resists the former's romantic and murderous aspirations. At least this Hamlet tries to leave Ophelia with some measure of kindness. Overwhelmed by emotion, she kisses him out of desperation, perhaps only now understanding that it's over between them. When he tells us to "believe none of us", it may be a warning to keep her safe from the plots that are about to unfold - his madness, yes, but also the courtly schemes, her father's most of all.

And as the scene gets hotter and heavier sexually, he suddenly finds the wire under her blouse. He's been trying to warn her about the conspirators in their midst only to find she's one of them. "Where is thy father?" is spoken with a hand over the microphone, but even under that muffled safety, she doesn't answer (because OF COURSE he would be at home, this is a remote "arras"). Hamlet shouts some of the next lines right into the wire, leaving no doubt that he's discovered it. Ophelia, caught, embarrassed and upset, puts all her things in the box, rips off the wire and packs it too, leaves in a rush. Most of the time, we don't even see Hamlet in frame. This is her scene, her point of view, her pain.
After a bike ride home, we see her burn Polaroids of Hamlet. Why, when the rest of the scene seems to tell us she's still in love with him? She probably thinks it's all her fault if it's over. Things were looking as if they might get back together for a moment there, and then the wire was discovered. Foolish girl, allowing your father to use you against the man you love like that. Because Ophelia's story ends in a suicide, we know her to be self-destructive, and here she destroys the better part of herself, so to speak, as her answering machine picks up Hamlet's curses and nunnery talk. It makes "no more marriages" something more intimate, something only she hears since Claudius and Polonius cannot possibly overhear it. From kindness, Hamlet has moved to cruelty. There can be no ulterior motive to yelling this part of the speech at Ophelia (though one may easily presume Polonius taps her phone).

And as she breaks down, we cut to Hamlet renting videos. He's moving on. From the relationship, and to a more active role in the play itself.

III.i. To Be or Not to Be - Hamlet 2000

Hamlet 2000 has a unique placement for the speech: Just after the spies make their plans, and before Hamlet meets up with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. It's a scene completely divorced from the rest of the characters. No one sees or hears Hamlet (who goes in and out of voice-over anyway), nor does the Nunnery scene (still to come) weigh on him. The staging is, I must admit, a little precious for my tastes.

The scene takes place in a Blockbuster, specifically its Action section (to go with "lose the name of action"). Hamlet is a film buff and amateur filmmaker, which makes the setting fairly natural for him. The screens behind him show fiery explosions of the same kind seen during Hamlet's meeting with the Ghost, where they evoked the hell the latter had escaped from. Here, it is the "undiscovered country" Hamlet fears. Though chronologically before Hamlet's meditation on the Player in the film, we at Hyperion to a Satyr can remember that scene's use of James Dean as the nominal actor. When we discover at the end of the "To be or not to be" speech that the explosive film behind Hamlet is The Crow, a link is made between Dean and The Crow's star, Brandon Lee (who gives a kind of salute to camera). Hamlet seems to be fascinated by actors who tragically died young, his own death prefigured in those of his idols.

As for the performance, Ethan Hawke makes his walk as nonchalant as possible, whispering the words when they aren't coming from voice-over, running through.lines at a quick, pause-free pace. This is a jaded Hamlet, one who is either verbalizing things he's already thought about, or repeating words he's written for one of his short films. It takes away from the power of the speech, but is legitimate in the context of the film.

III.i. Briefings - Hamlet 2000

We get into the sequence through the invitation to The Mouse-Trap, the title of Hamlet's film within a film, spoiled a good while before it is in the text. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are on the phone with the King, speaking the single line "We shall, my Lord" together, comically. It's an efficient piece of modern staging, putting great distance between the royals and the sycophants, and playing on the duo's "sameness" by having them huddle around the same phone (at least, in our imaginations).
While that is going on, Polonius is strapping a wire onto Ophelia, yet another piece of modern technology used to simulate the Elizabethan "behind an arras" technique. There's something rather creepy and hilarious at the same time about all this. Polonius winking at the royals as he seemingly fondles his own daughter, the gesture made more inappropriate by the royals ogling the situation lasciviously. There's in fact something very sexual about Gertrude in this adaptation. Here, she's halfway sitting on her husband, and talking about Ophelia's "virtues" in ironic quotation marks. She seems to infer that Ophelia's power over Hamlet is sexual, and that all her son really needs is a good roll in the hay. This Gertrude is someone who solves her problems with sex, having promptly changed her widow's fortune into a wedding, and definitely enjoying the honeymoon period. There's no real affection for Ophelia here. it's about using the girl as a sex object, if not to "fix" Hamlet, then at least to get information from him.
There are a lot of lines cut from the sequence - we come in late on the phone conversation, and the modern spin must avoid mentioning certain anachronisms - but the most important are Ophelia's. She has no lines at all, remaining silent and weeping through the entire ordeal. Cutting "I wish it may" makes her an unwilling participant in the scheme and supports her later suicide, making the royals and her father share in the responsibility along with Hamlet. The cuts also support the idea that the meeting will not be accidental. Ophelia will have to go to Hamlet while the older men listen in on the conversation. It also means that they won't hear "To be or not to be", nor will they be able to see what's going on. But those are all matters for the next time we pick the adaptation up, and I won't spoil them here.

II.ii. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I - Hamlet 2000

2000's Hamlet does his soliloquy as voice-over, obviously depressed and watching an old movie (Rebel Without a Cause) in his bed, listlessly. In this version, film has replaced theater as Hamlet's interest, and indeed as a medium for the play (we will later have a film within a film, rather than a play within a film). No troupe of players arrives at Elsinore, but "Players" are continually arriving there (as they do in our own homes) via the television. The Player than moves Hamlet so is James Dean on tv, rather than an old friend (although this isolated Hamlet may think of old film actors as his only friends). Though the performance we see isn't particularly filled with the emotion Hamlet speaks of, the choice is nonetheless a good one. Like Hamlet, Dean was a self-destructive youth dead before his time, possibly by suicide. Rebel Without a Cause has an ironic connotation as well, since Hamlet most definitely has a cause but cannot bring himself to rebel. And so beyond the Player, we have his character, who rebels without cause, motivating Hamlet to finally act because he DOES. Hamlet starts to film the film for inclusion in "The Mouse-Trap".
Hamlet's films are made in editing and he need not call on a company of Players. As the speech continues, we see him at the editing table, crafting an experimental film from odd bits and pieces. Images include eyeless women (his mother), wilting flowers (surely a reference to Ophelia), lips on cheeks (adultery), a classic Hamlet with skull (an image of his father, though also disturbing because it makes reference to the play as if it exists in this world where its actions and words are repeated), and accusatory eyes. We'll have more cause to discuss these images and others as "The Mouse-Trap" actually unfolds.

II.ii. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - Hamlet 2000

R&G board Hamlet in a club chronologically after the "To be or not to be" speech. They are played by Steve Zahn (as Rosencrantz) and Dechen Thurman (brother of Uma, as Guildenstern). Hamlet embraces these two wild and crazy friends, initiating a long booze-up. Their idiosyncratic performances soon reveal them to be two different kinds of creep. Rosencrantz is manic, spinning on stools, making karate moves and shouting through the music in a way that Hamlet simply does not. Meanwhile, Guildenstern is on the other end of the scale, listlessly resting his head on Hamlet's shoulder, his sexuality as relaxed as the rest of him. They come off as immature party lads, unable to grasp Hamlet's true nature.

The film retains the banter, spreading it across the night through time cuts, but cuts everything after it. Hamlet does not force these men to confess their allegiance to his parents. There is no "what a piece of work is a man" speech at this point, nor is there discussion of the Players. Indeed, the film does away with the Players and replaces them with actors on film. They are not characters in their own right. From this scene, we immediately move to R&D reporting to the Royals (by phone), a result of this sequence, brought forward editorially for comic effect. That sequence makes it clear he says some of the things he does in the play, if only off-screen. The other effect is to keep 2000's Hamlet a more internal character who might know R&G are spies, but does not tell them he knows.