This is, without a doubt, the best performance of 'Hamlet' that I have ever seen. I kick myself for never heading down to Stratford or London and seeing this one in person - it must have been intense. David Tennant plays the prince and Patrick Stewart is both his uncle and father.
Need I say any more?
Both actors are blisteringly perfect, delivering every line brilliantly (not always how I would imagine them delivered, but an excellent and often original take on the classic) and would easily carry the show on their performances alone, if it weren't for the host of other great actors involved.
Oliver Ford Davies was awesome as Polonius, Penny Downie made a great Gertrude, and while I wasn't as blown away by Mariah Gale and Edward Bennett (Ophelia and Laertes respectively), they did very well, and it would be difficult for any actor to make an impression against such towering talent. The rest of the cast did well too, and I struggle to find fault in any aspect of the performance whatsoever.
Tennant seems to have been born to play the unstable, ranting, indecisive prince. The jerks of his head and tensing of muscles convey madness in a very physical way, beyond what his character is apparently acting out. The Hamlet of this rendition isn't as immune to his own tricks as he would like us to believe: he clearly becomes increasingly unhinged as the plot unfolds, and it is as Hamlet's sanity slips that Tennant really hits his stride. And what a wall against which to rage! Stewart plays Claudius with the ease one would expect from such a veteran of the RSC, and we can see the joy in his performance at having such a talented partner. I worship Patrick Stewart a little (possibly because he is somewhat one and the same as Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise in my mind), but I don't think that I am understating his or anyone else's performance in this masterpiece. These actors, more than anything else, make this the best rendition of this play. They are almost definitely why this is my favourite play by Shakespeare - hell, my favourite play by anyone. I would go so far as to say that their performance here is what really grabbed my attention in Shakespeare initially (with the help of an excellent English teacher), and ultimately they are part of the reason why I like writing. Heavy shit.
It's all done in modern dress, and several shots are even in the style of security cameras. Most of the main characters are wearing dinner suits and whatnot throughout. This works very well with the feel you get from the characters, and the style of the rendition as a whole. I loved the scene where Hamlet was doing his crazy thang, and was wearing a t-shirt with a muscly torso on it. So many little visual jokes that sneak in past the constricting script (and you know it's good if I'm calling a script that Shakespeare wrote constricting), and so many little twists on the lines, delivering them in a whole new way that either changes the meaning by leaning more heavily on a particular element, or by adding a whole new element of sarcasm or comedy and altering our traditional perception of the character. The way that Hamlet spins aimlessly on a chair as he raves, the off-hand remarks that a confused Polonius really can hear, the disturbed look on Horatio's face as we realise that he can't hear the ghost's voice, and maybe Hamlet really is mad from the start.
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| I needn't mention the broken mirror imagery, but the part of my brain that's still in secondary school English class wants too. |
Someone once said that if Hamlet and Othello's places had been swapped, both stories would have ended very differently. Hamlet would have seen through Iago's scheme, and Othello would have killed Claudius immediately after being told to do so by the ghost of his dead father. This stark difference between Hamlet and a more action-orientated man is part of the reason why I like the guy so much, and is what David Tennant shows us so well. The whole thing is just excellent, and while the sets are bare and minimalistic, and I wasn't sure weather to include it in with the movies at all (as it is the recorded version of a play - but it's classed as a "Television Film" by Google, and I've done TV movies before, damn it!), I still think this is deserving of a high place in my big list thing. I'll never be able to produce anything so perfect, but at least I can have the joy of watching it.
Hamlet: 90.4