Hamlet (1996 film)

Plot

The film follows the plot of the original play.

Main characters

Supporting characters

Origins

Aspects of the film's staging are based on Adrian Noble's recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, in which Branagh had played the title role.

Text

The film uses a conflated text based on the 1623 First Folio, with additions from the Second Quarto and amendments from other sources. According to a note appended to the published screenplay:

The screenplay is based on the text of Hamlet as it appears in the First Folio – the edition of Shakespeare’s plays collected by his theatrical associates Heminges and Condell and published in 1623 by a syndicate of booksellers. Nothing has been cut from this text, and some passages absent from it (including the soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me ...") have been supplied from the Second Quarto (an edition of the play which exists in copies dated 1604 and 1605). We have also incorporated some readings of words and phrases from this source and from other early printed texts, and in a few cases emendations from modern editors of the play. Thus in I, 4, in the passage (from the Second Quarto) about the "dram of eale", we use an emendation from the Oxford edition of the Complete Works (edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 1988): "doth all the noble substance over-daub" – rather than the original's "of a doubt".

Style

Despite using a full text, Branagh's film is also very visual; it makes frequent use of flashbacks to depict scenes that are either only described but not performed in Shakespeare's text, such as Hamlet's childhood friendship with Yorick, or scenes only implied by the play's text, such as Hamlet's sexual relationship with Kate Winslet's Ophelia. The film also uses very long single takes for numerous scenes.

In a radical departure from previous Hamlet films, Branagh set the internal scenes in a vibrantly colourful setting, featuring a throne room dominated by mirrored doors; film scholar Samuel Crowl calls the setting "film noir with all the lights on". Branagh chose Victorian era costuming and furnishings, using Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th century, as Elsinore Castle for the external scenes. Harry Keyishan has suggested that the film is structured as an epic, courting comparison with Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments and Doctor Zhivago. As J. Lawrence Guntner points out, comparisons with the latter film are heightened by the presence of Julie Christie (Zhivago's Lara) as Gertrude.

Filming

Hamlet was shot in Panavision Super 70 by Alex Thomson. It was the last feature film to be shot in 70 mm until production of The Master in 2012.

Music

The score to Hamlet was composed and co-produced by frequent Kenneth Branagh collaborator Patrick Doyle and conducted by Robert Ziegler. Doyle composed three primary themes for the film to accompany the characters of Ophelia, Claudius, and Hamlet, which are varied throughout the score. The "simple, childlike" theme for Ophelia is mostly string-dominant, often performed by a string quartet yet occasionally accompanied by a full string ensemble or mixed chorus. For Claudius, Doyle composed a theme in the form of a demented canon, using more 20th century harmonies. The theme for Hamlet was considered by Doyle to be "the most daunting and elusive" to conceive, before settling upon a more "simple" motif to accompany the contemplative character.

The soundtrack was released 10 December 1996 through Sony Classical Records and features twenty-six tracks of score at a running time of over seventy-six minutes. For his work on the film, Doyle received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.

1. In Pace (3:07) – performed by Plácido Domingo (this is heard in the film during the closing credits)
2. Fanfare (0:48)
3. "All that lives must die" (2:40)
4. "To thine own self be true" (3:04)
5. The Ghost (9:55)
6. "Give me up the truth" (1:05)
7. "What a piece of work is a man" (1:50)
8. "What players are they" (1:33)
9. "Out out thou strumpet fortune" (3:11)
10. "To be or not to be" (1:53)
11. "I loved you once" (3:27)
12. "Oh, what a noble mind" (2:41)
13. "If once a widow" (3:36)
14. "Now could I drink hot blood" (6:57)
15. "A foolish prating nave" (1:05)
16. "Oh heavy deed" (0:56)
17. "Oh here they come" (4:39)
18. "My thoughts be bloody" (2:52)
19. "The doors are broke" (1:20)
20. "And will 'a not come again?" (1:59)
21. "Alas poor Yorick" (2:49)
22. "Sweets to the sweet – farewell" (4:39)
23. "Give me your pardon sir" (1:24)
24. "Part them they are incensed" (1:47)
25. "Goodnight, sweet prince" (3:36)
26. "Go bid the soldiers shoot" (2:52)

Release

Hamlet was screened out of competition at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. A shorter edit of the Branagh film, approximately two-and-a-half hours long, was also shown in some markets.

Home media

A 2-Disc DVD was released in the US and Canada on 14 August 2007. It includes a full-length commentary by Branagh and Shakespeare scholar Russell Jackson. A Blu-ray Disc was released on 17 August 2010 in the US and Canada with similar additional features, including an introduction by Kenneth Branagh, the featurette "To Be on Camera: A History with Hamlet", the 1996 Cannes Film Festival Promo, and a Shakespeare Movies Trailer Gallery.

Box office

Hamlet was not a success at the box office, mostly due to its limited release. The film earned just over $90,000 in its opening weekend playing on three screens. It made just over $30,000 in the Czech Republic (the film's only foreign market) and ultimately played on fewer than 100 screens in the United States, bringing its total gross to just under $5 million on a budget of $18 million.

Critical response

Hamlet received overwhelmingly positive reviews. It currently holds a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus, "Kenneth Branagh's sprawling, finely textured adaptation of Shakespeare's masterpiece lives up to its source material, using strong performances and a sharp cinematic focus to create a powerfully resonant film that wastes none of its 246 minutes."

Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film four stars, comparing it to Laurence Olivier's lauded 1948 version, stating, "Branagh's Hamlet lacks the narcissistic intensity of Laurence Olivier's (in the 1948 Academy Award winner), but the film as a whole is better, placing Hamlet in the larger context of royal politics, and making him less a subject for pity." Janet Maslin of The New York Times also praised both Branagh's direction and performance, writing, "This Hamlet, like Branagh's version of Much Ado About Nothing, takes a frank, try-anything approach to sustaining its entertainment value, but its gambits are most often evidence of Branagh's solid showmanship. His own performance is the best evidence of all." The New York Review of Books praised the attention given to Shakespeare's language, "giving the meter of the verse a musician's respect"; Branagh himself said his aim was "telling the story with utmost clarity and simplicity."

Some critics, notably Stanley Kauffmann, declared the film to be the finest motion picture version of Hamlet yet made. Noted online film critic James Berardinelli wrote the film a glowing four star review and went so far as to declare the Branagh Hamlet the finest Shakespeare adaptation ever, rating it as the best film of 1996, the fourth best film of the 90s, and one of his top 101 favourite films of all time, saying, "From the moment it was first announced that Branagh would attempt an unabridged Hamlet, I never doubted that it would be a worthy effort. After all, his previous forays into Shakespeare have been excellent. Nothing, however, prepared me for the power and impact of this motion picture. Hyperbole comes easily when describing this Hamlet, decidedly the most impressive motion picture of 1996. Nothing else this year has engaged my intellect, senses, and emotions in quite the same way. I have seen dozens of versions of this play (either on screen or on stage), and none has ever held me in such a grip of awe. This may be Branagh's dream, but it is our pleasure."

The film did have its detractors, however, with Lloyd Rose of The Washington Post calling it "the film equivalent of a lushly illustrated coffee-table book" and Desson Thomson writing of Branagh's performance: "the choices he makes are usually overextended. When it's time to be funny, he skitters over the top. When he's sad or touched, he makes a mechanical, catching noise in his throat." The notoriously severe John Simon also criticised the film, calling Branagh's performance "brawny" and "not easy to like" and stating that Branagh's direction used "explicitness where Shakespeare ... settled for subtlety or mere suggestion". Leonard Maltin, who gave the film a positive three stars in his Movie and Video Guide (and gave the Olivier version of Hamlet four stars), praised the cinematography by Alex Thomson, but stated that "Branagh essentially gives a stage performance that is nearly as over-the-top as some of his directorial touches."

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet ranks No. 3 on Rotten Tomatoes list of Greatest Shakespeare Movies, just behind Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985, based on King Lear), which ranks in second place, and Branagh's own Henry V (1989), which ranks in first place.