#hamlet on camera

[prissybabyhamlet]

i did just finish the 2016 rsc hamlet with paapa essiedu and it was! so good! it’s the first time in a long time that the ending has moved me to tears

[prissybabyhamlet]

transnureyev replied to your post: mildkay replied to your post: ...

have you seen campbell scott’s? thoughts on that one? (and what are your favourites? im always looking for other versions to watch :3 )

i rewatched campbell scott’s a few days ago and look. i LOVE it. i dont know why i just do. his hamlet is so.....untheatrical. sardonic. i really dig this version.

the david tennant version is super close to my heart, it was very formative for me so i’m always going to single it out. hamlet at elsinore with christopher plummer is great (and michael caine is.....maybe the best horatio i’ve ever seen). tbh those three are prob my favs - and i also really enjoyed the paapa essiedu rsc version, which i just finished!

[prissybabyhamlet]

Have you seen the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet? If so, what are your opinions on it?

honestly I have a lot of mixed feelings about it - I love kenbran with all my heart but he does tend to overdo it esp seeing as I’m really not a fan of traditional Big Serious Shakespeare which is what his hamlet is all about. the final scene is so ridiculous and overblown that any emotion is just killed and there’s a reason hamlet is never performed in full it’s fucking boring in some parts. also horatio stays ridiculously far away from hamlet as he dies and I ain’t about that life. but! it has its really good points too. kate winslet is so great as ophelia and kenbran def has some great moments. it’s def not my favourite but for what it is I do really enjoy it and I can def admire what kenbran’s achieved with it

[prissybabyhamlet]

What are your favorite and least favorite Hamlet adaptations and why? By the way, sorry if I end up spamming your inbox, I just really love how you always seem so into Shakespeare (more than most people I know) and willing to discuss this kind of stuff with p much anyone!

no problemo comrade, I am super into shakespeare and I will talk about it all day so by asking about it really you’re just saving my flatmates from it

okay well least favourite is so easy, the mel gibson was trash. so fucking trash. I liveblogged it when I watched it but I can’t find the post now?? but anyway omg the cuts are so fucked up and the oedipal thing is everywhere and mel gibson is so bad and horatio might as well not even be there and just oh god what a mess. I wish someone had given helena bonham carter a chance to properly play ophelia tho because she was like the only good thing about that film

best adaptation is much harder!! the gregory doran (david tennant) version was the first one I watched so obviously I’m very biased towards it. tennant is great, the cinematography is great, all the actors convey the text beautifully, and seriously peter de jersey as horatio is so much. I love him.

hamlet at elsinore is amazing, I honestly love christopher plummer as hamlet so much, tennant must have watched this version because his hamlet is very clearly drawn from plummer’s. plummer gives such a young hamlet, he’s so vibrant and his aesthetic is on point, he is almost exactly how I visualise hamlet, the closest film version anyway (apart from asta nielsen, but we’ll get to her). I love a lot of things about this version but the one I’m gonna highlight here because I’m a parody of myself is michael caine as horatio like seriously oh god I’m gonna cry just thinking about it. the tragic danish boyfriends in this version is too much for my poor heart

and the other forerunner for favourite version is the campbell scott version, which is so so so much better than an american tv film has any right to be. I really love scott’s interpretation of hamlet, it was so untheatrical and nuanced and the only hamlet I’ve seen that kept this strain of irony and princeliness from before his dad died throughout the whole play. I wrote a long post about this version when I finished it here which explains all my feelings but the tl;dr is this version is amazing

and I cannot write this post without mentioning asta nielsen’s silent interpretation of hamlet, which has nielsen playing hamlet as a woman raised and dressed as a man. it’s so interesting and the whole aesthetic is so! on! point!! hamlet should look like asta nielsen okay. also hamlet/horatio is REAL and STRONG there is this adorable seen where they meet at wittenburg and my poor trash heart cannot handle it. it’s not a straightforward version but it’s amazing please watch it

[prissybabyhamlet]

so in the scene with Oscric in the BBC Tennent film, Hamlet and Horatio are really quite incredibly in sync. I hadn't noticed until a gif isolated the moment, but Hamlet is sort of swaying and talking with raise eyebrows and Horatio is smiling and open, but the moment Hamlet stops speaking and his expression goes flat, Horatio drops the smile and goes somehow more solid, closed off. Its really quite subtle but such a sublime piece of directing/acting to illustrate their companionship

I’ve never noticed that either omg

this pairing is beautiful this film is beautiful everything hurts

[prissybabyhamlet]

my favourite thing about the campbell scott hamlet was horatio's sweater vest

[prissybabyhamlet]

so I  (FINALLY) finished campbell scott's hamlet and WOWOWOW it was legitimately great. like okay laertes was pretty average but other than that I can't really think of anything that I was like 'no no no' for??

oops I wrote a really love review

the last scene was really great tho like it was nice to have a proper amount of time given to the fencing and they had the sword AND DAGGER and hamlet being all cocky and fucking around because to him it's y'know just a casual fencing match and all the subtleties of laertes fucking with the swords and then the GHOST AS HAMLET DIES wow yes I am all for putting the ghost in as many scenes as possible

lisagay hamilton is the best ophelia I've seen I think? it's been a bit too long since I've seen kate winslet's and I do really love mariah gale BUT this is the first ophelia I've seen where I really felt the noble mind speech was working; even mariah gale was a bit too weepy and didn't retain enough of the sass she had in her first scene. also the mad scenes were very well done, a bit more restrained than in the branagh or doran versions which I kinda like, esp because this hamlet was pretty legit nuts at times

SPEAKING OF HAMLET I really really loved campbell scott's version of the character! very nuanced and consistent, if david tennant had one flaw it was that sometimes it feels like he's playing a totally different character (which is a totally valid way of doing it and I do really really REALLY love his hamlet) whereas with scott's you could really see the vestiges of who hamlet was before the play threading right throughout his sad hamlet and his crazy hamlet and his resigned-to-fate hamlet, like there was always a touch of that kind of cool sassy princeliness to him and I loved that. his crazy was melancholy and his sadness was self-deprecating and I just really got a sense of this is hamlet as I see him. he always had that ironic twist to him that I've always felt is an integral part of hamlet's character, one of the remnants of who he was before his dad died, and I just really loved it. christopher plummer was great, and tennant, to me, kind of took what plummer did and updated it, and they both created a very sort of modern and 'real' hamlet,  and I love their interpretations, but scott's was very, idk, untheatrical, but in the right way, and I really loved him too. please don't make me choose a favourite

umm what else? the hamlet/horatio was suitably present but not super strong (although there were some lovely moments, like hamlet using horatio as an arm rest after the play scene), gertrude was very good (not all weepy and annoying like a lot of gertrudes I've seen, and she was almost the right amount of motherly) and polonius was pretty good (although I'm sorry was oliver ford davies was literally the perfect embodiment of polonius no-one will ever even come close to him for me)

all in all I really really enjoyed it!! I knew it was good from everyone else's reactions, but if I'd just been going from 'american tv movie made in 2000' I would have been extremely pleasantly surprised. better than branagh, a little bit better than hamlet at elsinore?? (which I loved btw) and probs on a par with the 2009 one...??? I haven't watched that version in a while and also I'm biased towards it because it was the first one I ever watched so a lot of my ideas were formed by it and I'm ridiculously attached to it. but anyway yes I love I love