Hamlet

I have watched many versions of Hamlet. Some good and some bad. But this is the first Hamlet where I practically understand all of Hamlet's soliloques! Campbell Scott's performance as Hamlet really won me over. He plays Hamlet as a sensitive young man trying to come to grips with his father's untimely death and his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle. When this Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, he pretty much goes mad. And I mean, not just playing mad, but going mad.

There is something in the way that Campbell Scott saids his lines that makes me totally understand what Hamlet is feeling. Often times, I don't understand everything that Hamlet saids, but this time, I understood practically everything!

The rest of the cast is very good, especially Blair Brown who plays the queen.

I've watched this movie two times because I was fascinated by Campbell Scott's great performance. This was one of the few movie rentals that I've enjoyed in a long time.

Anyone who likes Shakespeare's work will love this version.

This film has a lot of problems. It looks made for TV; it is overlong; the transposition to of the plot to 19th century America makes no sense. But the real weakness of the film is Cambell Scott.

The popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis has made it very easy to read Hamlet as neurotic; and very easy, too, to read his relationship with his mother as "Oedipal" fixation. Consequently, some readings of Hamlet have the whole play revolve around the question of whether Hamlet is mad, or just neurotic (and with good reason to be upset at his Step-dad).

All this should only remind us that Freudianism is a terrible trivialization of human personality.

If the reader really needs a one-sentence reduction of Hamlet it is this: Both Hamlet's father and his uncle-stepfather are barbarian bullies from Hell, and Hamlet is trying very hard not to be.

Notice that Mom of Denmark doesn't really show up in this equation. Nor does the avoidance of Hell seem to be an overly neurotic concern (certainly not for an Elizabethan).

Scott gives us a 20th century post-Freudian Hamlet. Of course the complex morality of the piece gets entirely lost.

Everybody here tries hard, but it's just not convincing.

I have seen several different versions of "Hamlet" with various actors playing the title role, but Campbell Scott's portrayal is one of the best, revealing Hamlet's thoughts and emotions as if the viewer were inside his mind. Hamlet's decline into madness was justified (rather than simply "going insane" because the script ordered insanity) by the midnight vision of the ghost, and his flirtation with suicide was logical yet gripping. Perhaps the highest praise I can bestow is that, even though I was familiar with the play, I understood the inner motivations of the main characters in a fresh new way. Bravo!

And I think I've seen the lot, from Olivier through Gibson to Branagh. If Scott Campbell misses perfection, it's by a hair. Apart from the fact that American English is better suited to Shakespeare (historically, I mean - the posh British King's English didn't arrive until 1710 when German George I came to the throne - and it's a crying shame that this version leaves out the best example of a pun that only works in American English, Hamlet's "tropically" - a pun on "trap") - I think that Campbell hits that delicate balance between being both someone we like and side with, and also an irritating, spoiled brat. It's an amazing job. Best performance I have ever seen. Hats off.

Among the few reservations (to the film, not to Campbell)is that the film lets the ghost interfere with Hamlet's assassination in the prayer scene. I believe the abortive murder here is entirely due to Hamlet's invalid subterfuge - his father would prefer to have his brother bumped off whenever. I don't think Ophelia should be present when Hamlet is exposed as her father's murderer.

However, two things make up for this in full: that we have a blood-soaked Hamlet making jokes about Polonius' death (which displays Hamlet as the self-absorbed brat Shakespeare intended him to be), and we expose Hamlet's final betrayal of his father when he signs the entire kingdom off to Norway (the ghost appears also in the final scene, looking very dismayed). Hamlet never avenges his father, not in Shakespeare, a fact that has been overlooked for 400 years, but this version suggests it.

But the best feature of the film is Scott's performance. I don't think anyone can take Hamlet, or Shakespeare for that matter, further in the direction of naturalistic acting. All stilted pronunciation and over-articulated syllables that we are frequently served are banished from this production; Scott could have spoken his lines on a bus, and no fellow passengers would suspect that they were Shakespeare. Scott's fast.talking, neurotic and endearingly gawky Dane is the best Hamlet I ever saw.

Usually, Americans playing Shakespeare make a hash of the language - see "Much Ado About Nothing" with Keanu Reeve and Robert Sean Leonard for unassailable proof. In this version of "Hamlet", though, Campbell Scott's unassuming, straightforward delivery of some of Shakespeare's most challenging lines is almost flawless. It is not that the American accent is unsuited to dealing with Elizabethan English, it seems, but the tradition of allowing the language to speak for itself is usually lacking with American actors. They seem to need to imbue everything with their own idea of what the character's emotional state should be, which the language, if it is powerful enough, should be able to do all by itself. As a result of seeing this version of "Hamlet", I have had to rethink completely my prejudices about Americans playing Shakespeare.