Hamlet Video

It was a little hard to find a Hamlet video but I eventually got one. It was a modern day version with Ethan Hawke playing as Hamlet, Kyle Mclachlan as Claudius, Diane Venora as Gertrude, Bill Murray as Polonius, Liev Schreiber as Laertes, and Julia Stiles as Ophelia. I was a little surprised to see actors that I recognized in this film version of Hamlet. When it started out in the first scene it was only Hamlet by himself talking, then it went on to a press conference with Claudius and Gertrude announcing their marriage and how well the Denmark Corporation was doing. It displayed very well the love between Gertrude and Claudius as sensual and nothing more. Might has well called them friend with benefits. I can see how Hamlet would have been disgusted as an older couple displayed they love with too many kisses and a lot of not needed touching. It also portrayed the love between Hamlet and Ophelia very well. In that they loved each other but it was very easy to see that Laertes and Polonius did not approve of it in anyway. Both of the men would grab her and direct her away from Hamlet and showed disapproving faces when she would show notes to Hamlet of when they could meet by themselves. It was funny that they would do that even in front of Hamlet especially considering that he out ranked them being heir to Denmark Corporations. However, Hamlet didn't seem phased at all by this but I couldn't tell if it was because he was depressed and feeling withdrawn or because he knew his place and wouldn't let them bother him. When I first saw that it was a modern day version I immediately thought of how the dialogue would be done. I wondered how much of the original script would be kept and how much would be changed to modern speech. I found out that they kept most of the original script especially the beautiful flow of Shakespeare but mainly changed the thee's and thou's. Unfortunately that basically ruined the movie. It all sounded poetic but it looked and felt as if they were just saying what they had memorized. They said their lines with not a lot of feelings and when you watch a modern day film you usually expect modern day English but since it wasn't modern day English it felt very weird. It was almost as if I was watching a dress recital but not the actual movie. This completely ruined it and I decided to not watch they whole thing as they ruined speech after speech. It was horrible as I already knew the story of Hamlet and had read the original script. I have seen parts of Hamlet movies that weren't modern versions of it which were portrayed very well and acted very well. So at the end I'll just keep to reading Shakespeare.