05/30/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Hamlet
Branagh's 'Hamlet' is a truly tragic film

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

** (out of five)
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Richard Attenborough, Richard Briers, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Judi Dench, Gerard Depardieu, Reece Dinsdale, Nicholas Farrell, John Gielgud, Rosemary Harris, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Jack Lemmon, Michael Maloney, John Mills, Rufus Sewell, Timothy Spall, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet. A Columbia Pictures release of a Castle Rock production written and directed by Branagh, from the play by William Shakespeare. Rated PG-13, contains violence, sex, nudity. Running time: 238 minutes.

Something is rotten in Denmark again.

This time it's Kenneth Branagh's version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

With a cast of famous actors doing cameos -- Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Charlton Heston -- a cast of hundreds dressed to the nines and Branagh's own overzealous performance, he has indeed put the ham back in Hamlet.

It kind of made me long for Mel Gibson.

Gibson, you may recall, starred as the troubled Danish prince in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 version of Shakespeare's most demanding play, in a pared-down version (at 135 minutes) that worked surprisingly well.

Branagh, who scored mightily with Shakespeare in his 1989 production of Henry V that rivaled Laurence Olivier's famous 1944 film, and four years later did a lively and praiseworthy version of Much Ado About Nothing, directs again. No doubt this was pegged to be a definitive Hamlet, designed to rival Olivier's 1948 Oscar-winning version. That ran 153 minutes. Branagh's, though still rewritten somewhat by him, runs 238 minutes, not including intermission.

I fear some might not come back after the intermission. But that would be a mistake, for after having invested so much time in Branagh's Hamlet, one still would have missed its most ostentatious moments: Hamlet riding a chandelier, like The Phantom of the Opera, down to crush his evil uncle who has murdered Hamlet's father and married his mother; and watching the dead Hamlet being carried out on the shoulders of soldiers, arms outstretched in a Christ-like pose.

Nearly as good is the sword fight, which is shot excitingly with quick cuts, yet which is almost laughable because of the costumes. Hamlet and his opponent, Laertes (Michael Maloney), wear molded white plastic vests that mimic the male torso, complete with nipples and abdominal muscles. The getups look like leftovers from the last Batman movie painted white.



Excess and silliness

The rest is nearly as ludicrous-looking. Branagh has set the play in the mid-19th century for what seems no particular reason except for being able to parade around in elaborate comic operetta costumes. Except for Hamlet's moodiness, it could be The Merry Widow or The Student Prince.

Branagh has said that he cast the film "color blind, nationality blind, accent blind." Some actors have American accents, others French and most British.

Soon Jack Lemmon turns up as a guard, wearing a foot-tall silly hat and trying to wrestle Shakespeare's words out of his dentures. Painful, though the worst is yet to come.

It arrives with the first entrance of Branagh, his hair bleached platinum blond and wearing a severe-looking, tight, double-breasted black suit. He looks like a New York interior decorator rather than a Danish prince. Could that pained expression be from too-tight trousers?

He delivers most of Hamlet's speeches at full tilt, playing to the far reaches of the balcony and getting so overworked that spittle occasionally flies from his mouth. With the camera dancing and zooming in and out and pirouetting nearly as much as he, it's dizzying.



A ho-hum tragedy

For all the tragedy inherent in the play, this Hamlet is surprisingly tepid, drowned in a sea of Branagh's grandstanding. He delivers a long, florid speech just before the intermission, with thousands of computer-animated troops massing behind him in front of enormous mountains (what part of flat-as-a-pancake Denmark is this?). It's supposed to be moving and fiery. But the effect is more, "What is he babbling about?"

When he does Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" speech, it's to a mirror image of himself. It looks like a vanity production.

Having all those famous faces flash on screen briefly in small roles is a mistake. It pulls one out of the story. Isn't that Gerard Depardieu mangling the Bard's phrases as a servant? Look at Billy Crystal trying not to overdo it as a gravedigger. Robin Williams seems as though he can't contain his inner merriment as a guard -- "Look, Mom, I'm doing Shakespeare!" And Richard Attenborough wanders in looking lost, as though waylaid on his way to The Lost World set.

John Gielgud, one of England's greatest actors, who played Hamlet in what is considered one of the definitive performances of the role in the past half century, is seen for seconds . . . and without any lines at all.

Instead of the usual eerie and creepy mood of Elsinore, things look fairly sunny and bright. The throne room in the palace is a great hall with swooping walkways and stairways that figure well in the swordfight scene.

Branagh is better directing others than himself. Julie Christie makes a lovely Gertrude, gracious and generous and trying to understand her son's emotional problems. Especially fine is Richard Briers, who brings a whimsical and sweet touch to Polonius. And there's a good turn by Kate Winslet as the doomed Ophelia, especially in her on-target mad scene.

Of the cameo actors, best is Charlton Heston as a traveling actor who serves as the catalyst for the plot. Heston, playing an aged king, looks much as he did 40 years ago as the elderly Moses at the end of The Ten Commandments, only this time he can play it without makeup.