Act IV, Scene 4 - The Banquet

The Banquet (sold in America as Legend of the Black Scorpion) must be the only version of Hamlet that includes snow ninjas. While the story is often very different from the play's, the Prince's exile definitely evokes Hamlet's own, as he is escorted on horseback through a snowy plain. As in the play, he spies an army from afar, and it is a mirror of himself on that other road. No Fortinbras, but a fake Prince who will act as tribute to the country standing in for England while he is assassinated by his own escort, here, now. In other words, what if Claudius, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern were far more treacherous than they appeared? The Prince is rescued by the timely intervention of, yes, snow ninjas burrowing from beneath and killing the murderous escort with their crossbows. It is a wuxia film, after all.

The rescue party is led by the Laertes figure working on the orders of the Queen who, more villainous in this story than in the play, is holding his sister hostage. He is also ordered to then tell the King that the entire party was silenced, escort and all. This "Laertes" has no real love for "Hamlet" and in a scene that takes the place of the IV.4 soliloquy, he dares tell the Prince his course for revenge will cost many lives before it is over, and that he puts "Ophelia", "Polonius", everyone in danger so long as political machinations continue to center upon him. Better everyone believe he is dead. For the Prince, this acts as a wake-up call, that his readiness to die should not be his readiness that the people he loves die. When he returns, in spite of Laertes' admonitions, it will be to end it once and for all, but it will be too late for many of the characters.

What I find very interesting about these important changes made to the story is that they don't in any way diminish the drama, but rather give viable alternatives to the events and motivations found in the play. When one isn't tied down to the text (and a Chinese version - or any translation - wouldn't be), one can better experiment with the Bard's structure. It may even be possible to do it within the confines of the text as written. Imagine a Laertes who colludes with Hamlet during his exile. A Laertes that returns to Denmark to cause trouble and prepare the way for Hamlet, possibly depose Claudius in his name. One who believes Claudius responsible for Polonius' death (has Hamlet lied to him?). But it all goes wrong when Claudius denies the charges, when Ophelia walks in completely mad, and when finally, she commits suicide. Hamlet returns to find Ophelia dead and Laertes a surprise enemy. It could give the Hamlet/Laertes relationship an additional layer of complexity.

III.i. The Nunnery Scene - The Banquet

China's Hamlet adaptation is too different from the original text to enjoy a scene-by-scene analysis (though I'm tempted to include the snow-tunneling ninjas sometime), but it does feature a few noteworthy staging ideas. In its equivalent of the Nunnery Scene, for example, the fight turns to passionate love-making. Using this ideas on a more traditional adaptation could have various effects on the play, depending on the director's intent. If the colloquial meaning of nunnery is retained, Hamlet has just called Ophelia a whore and then physically turns her into one. This would be especially disturbing if it were their first time. The tenderness Ophelia shows Hamlet in The Banquet does not mean that the prince has renewed their romance, only that she believes he might. Giving the (former) lovers a night of passion need not keep Ophelia from breaking down later. In fact, it can be used to destabilize her further by giving her highs followed by extreme lows (the humiliation of the Mouse-Trap, her lover killing her father). And this has got to be confusing for Hamlet as well, giving in to what he has renounced, and perhaps doing it out of rage more than love. More guilt to pile onto his psyche.

I.v. The Ghost's Tale - The Banquet

Because it doesn't use the integral text (or even all of the plot) ot Shakespeare's original, I do not return to China's The Banquet very often, but some of its staging does at times deserve mention. Such is the case with the completely visual way Hamlet gets his mission from the Ghost. The Ghost does not truly appear in this film, but it does manifest itself. Earlier, Hamlet had paid homage to his father's armor and we saw it weeping blood. That was the only hint of something supernatural going on in the story. It does not communicate anything to Hamlet at that point.

Later, Hamlet is resting on a fountain inside the palace when a piece of cloth wafts down from above, right down to the prince's hand. The images on the cloth depict his father's murder.
That is a very efficient way to stage the scene, especially for audiences who already know the story. As audiences grow more used to elliptical story-telling (as evidenced by modern editing sensibilities, for example), such shortcuts may become more common, even in the theater (where technology may be able to show details actors alone cannot). In a version of Hamlet where the Ghost does not really appear or speak, the audience is left to puzzle out what is happening and why the prince is acting in such a way. There are enough mentions of the murder after this point that we know the basics, and the play within a play would reveal the particular details, bringing the image on the cloth into focus.

Early ambiguity would give way to satisfying revelations, as Shakespeare proves once again how impervious he is to cuts.

Act I Scene 3 - The Banquet

The Banquet has probably the best explanation for Ophelia being warned off Hamlet I've ever heard. It's all about politics, though in the play, no one would ever explain it to poor, innocent, apolitical Ophelia. But the father in The Banquet does:
When Hamlet Sr. was king, a match between Hamlet and Ophelia was a good thing for the Polonius family. Now that Claudius is king, and Hamlet has fallen out of favor with that regime, any alliance with the Prince may put the Polonius family in political jeopardy. Polonius is nothing if not a political creature. It also helps explain why Gertrude goes on about marrying Hamlet and Ophelia after the latter's suicide. On the Hamlet side of the family, this was seen as a good match. But Polonius would not have expected the same reaction from Claudius.

Speaking of Gertrude, the dialog here goes on to make a point about mirroring the play's two women:
"My heart will never change."
"Make it change. Learn from the Empress."
In this reimagining of the play, Ophelia's father asks her to change her heart, just as the State asked Gertrude to do the same (in line with the unwilling wife aspect of this version).

All interesting notions as we delve deeper into the play.

The Banquet - Hamlet as Wuxia

A couple weeks ago, I discovered The Banquet (out on DVD as Legend of the Black Scorpion), a Chinese reimagining of Hamlet as a wuxia swordplay epic set in the corrupt Tang Dynasty, starring Zhang Ziyi and directed by Feng Xiaogang. Obviously, The Banquet doesn't use Shakespeare's text, but it does use his characters, scenes and metaphors as a template. Structurally, it's very different. We remain in the first Act for at least the first hour of the film, and the ending (who dies when and by whose hand) is extremely different (notably, Hamlet never kills Polonius). I've decided to add this film to those studied, but only to come back to it on about a handful of scenes with direct parallels to the play. In the present article, I'll discuss some of the more important staging choices made by the writers and director, those that resonate throughout the film.

Focus on Gertrude
The Banquet plays a lot like the Gertrude version of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. We see the story from her perspective (or Empress Wan's, if we go by the film's character names). Originally designed for an actress of Gong Li's age, the role was instead offered to Zhang Ziyi and so made Hamlet (Prince Wu Luan)'s stepmother, actually a few years younger than he is. The film manages to use the Freudian baggage often associated with the Hamlet/Gertrude relationship without making it disturbing and distracting. These characters are contemporaries, and Wan is the dead emperor's second wife. In any case, the focus on the Empress makes me realize how badly served the female characters are in the play (uncharacteristically so, by Shakespeare's standards). In the play, both Gertrude and Ophelia are essentially puppers, dominated by men. By making Gertrude/Wan the protagonist, the film must find motivations where there was, at most, ambiguity before, as well as create many scenes from whole cloth.

For example, The Banquet shows not only how the Claudius character (Emperor Li) fell in love with Wan, and what kind of hold she has on him, but also how he cut into the line of succession. Just as in the play, the son should have inherited the throne from the father. The Empress' fear and political maneuvers give Li power instead, as a way of saving her adopted son/former lover from being assassinated. This is a really interesting interpretation, that makes the Empress an unwilling wife who sacrifices herself to protect Hamlet/Wu Luan and has her own revenge brewing. Imagine a Gertrude who is always lying while in court and who drinks the poison willingly at the end to save Hamlet (some have done this). How does that play? Can such an interpretation be reconciled with the closet scene? I think that it perhaps can, as Gertrude can be distraught at her son's apparent madness more than at the revelation of her second husband's treachery. In a play that is very much about masks, what is Gertrude's? An unwilling Queen must endure grief, psychic damage from sleeping with her husband's killer, AND cruel barbs from the son she dotes on.

The other effect this structural conceit has is to marginalize the Hamlet figure. In fact, Wu Luan is a far less active character, in large part because the film forbids him the use of soliloquies. His interior life must be created with looks and acting alone, making the character far more passive.

Hamlet Under Fire
Another very interesting idea in The Banquet is to make Hamlet the target of multiple assassination attempts before the final scene (or I should say, before the trip to "England"). In fact, the film begins with one such attempts while he is at "Wittenberg" (in the film, a theater in the forest). Claudius/Li arranges a training "accident" when he returns to "Elsinore". His escort jumps him on the road. And so on. The idea, of course, is that the ruthless Emperor wants to ensure his place on the throne by killing off his brother's heir(s), and idea that will be familiar to Shakspeare adepts from Richard III. The effect this has on the play is to generate more paranoia than is usual (in a play where people are already constantly listening to you behind an arras), as well as playing up the corrupt political side of Elsinore and Claudius' evil.

China White
China is rarely snow-covered in films, which creates a striking "Denmark" when season change to winter in the film. While Denmark's bitter winter has always run parallel to Hamlet Sr.'s death, a Chinese version adds another layer. White is the color of death in China, so not only do we have that represented in the landscape, but it's also the color the Prince wears - customary suits of solemn white, you might say. A white-clad Hamlet in a field of snow allows him to visually disappear in his own grief, rather than stand out from it.

There are other points I will want to make, but I'll use specific scenes to do so. Since Act 1 Scene 3 is one of those scenes, expect the next article to do just that.