Sunday, March 03, 2002

Hamlet (2001)

I have yet to meet a Hamlet I didn't like... but this one, along with Kenneth Branagh's four-hour slog, came the closest. Truth be told, this version (starring and co-directed by the immensely talented Campbell Scott) is sort of like a roadshow-company version of Branagh's Hamlet -- all the cuts to the text are so minor as to be unnoticeable (aside from a strange re-arranging of events centering around "To be or not to be"), they're both set in roughly the same time period (this Hamlet never actually gives a specific year, but the fashions look late-19th century, maybe a little later), and Scott's performance occasionally recalls Branagh's in that he chews the scenery to a pulp. (Once again, the play-within-a-play scene is the worst offender.) Scott also can't seem to get the monologues quite right; on more than one occasion, he flies through the words as though he can't wait to get other people back on screen with him. Therein, though, lies the redeeming aspect of his Hamlet: the parts where he has someone to play off of. This is where Campbell comes alive, creating one of the most caustic and sardonic Hamlets in recent memory (his treatment of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is especially memorable for its barely disguised contempt). The other actors are a mixed bag (Jamey Sheridan's Claudius is a smarmy delight; Roscoe Lee Brown and Lisa Gay Hamilton are simply terrible in their respective roles as Laertes and Ophelia), and the direction is kind of pedestrian, which is to be expected when you realize this is actually a TV production. But when all is said and done, it's still friggin' Hamlet. And like I said, I have yet to meet a Hamlet I didn't like.

Grade: B-