Return to Intro. to Film syllabus
Updated 26 March 2007
ENGLISH 114: INTRODUCTION TO FILM, Fall 2006
Section 2: Monday, 6:00-9:30 p.m., Professor Larsson
Week 8, March 5, 2007
See updates on class website, D2L
http://english2.mnsu.edu/larsson/introfilm/114syllsp07.htm
Hamlet (2000)
Producer: Jason Clum (Executive Producer) and
others
Director: Michael Almereyda
Script: Almereyda, adapted from Shakespeare’s
play
Cinematography: John de Borman
Production Design: Gideon Ponte
Editing: Kristina Bode
Music: Carter Burwell, with music by Franz Liszt
and and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(“Hamlet” themes)
Cast:
Ethan Hawke Hamlet
Diane Venora Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother)
Kyle McLachlan Claudius (Hamlet’s uncle, now stepfather)
Sam Shepard Ghost of Hamlet’s father
Julia Styles Ophelia
Liev Schrieber Laertes (Ophelia’s brother, Polonius’ son)
Bill Murray Polonius (advisor to Claudius, Ophelia’s
father)
Karl Geary Horatio (Hamlet’s friend)
Steve Zahn Rosencrantz (school friend of Hamlet)
Dechen Thurman Guildenstern (school friend of Hamlet)
Jeffrey Wright Gravedigger
TV Commentator Robert MacNeil
Synopsis: This production of Hamlet is set in New York City in the year 2000. Hamlet is the son of Hamlet the elder, CEO of Denmark Corporation (instead of King of Denmark). Hamlet is upset at his father’s unexpected death and the fact that his uncle, Claudius, is not only the new CEO of Denmark, but has also married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet learns from his father’s ghost that he was killed by Claudius. Hamlet, sworn to revenge, now has to work himself up to take vengeance while casting away his own love, Ophelia. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, leading to Ophelia’s own madness and suicide. Claudius uses the occasion to try to set up Hamlet’s death by sending him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (supposed friends of Hamlet) to be killed, but when Hamlet returns, Claudius sets up a supposedly friendly duel between Hamlet and Laertes that results in both their deaths and those of Gertrude and Claudius as well.
Questions for Discussion:
1. How does the film shift the setting from a Danish castle in the middle ages to modern-day New York? What is the effect of the changes?
2. How does the film play with referential meaning by using modern images, corporate logos, and the like?
3. How is your perception of Hamlet’s character shaped by Ethan Hawke’s appearance and performance?
4. How do camera placement, movement and angles affect your perception of specific scenes? How do photography and film themselves get used in this production?
5. Are the original ideas and concepts of Shakespeare’s play also changed by the changes in the mise-en-scene? How?
6. In a video that Hamlet is watching the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh appears. What is the point of including his words in this film?
“To be means to aim to be”—Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, from video
Discussion Summary:
Michael Almereyda shifts the setting of Shakepeare’s play to modern New York City, making Hamlet, not a prince, but the son of the murdered CEO of “Denmark Corporation.” Hamlet’s youth and his alienation from his mother Gertrude and uncle/stepfather Claudius become more strongly emphasized by the setting and by Ethan Hawke’s performance. Hawke, one of a group of actors identified with “Generation X” in the 1990s first became noticed in films about teenagers with similar problems of finding their identity, such as Reality Bites. The film’s youth theme sounds even more strongly with the casting of Julia Styles as Ophelia, a young teenager (about the same age as Shakespeare’s character should be) who is still adjusting to her growing physical maturity, desiring independence from her hovering father, Polonius, but still emotionally tied to him.
Hamlet’s emotional crisis in this film finds expression through the fact that he is not just a college student (again, like Shakespeare’s character), but a film/communications student who uses videos for self-expression. Instead of mounting a play that acts out the murder of his father in order to “catch the conscience of the king,” he shows an experimental film that he has made, with the same results. The real anguish of the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, in which Hamlet debates himself over the possibility of suicide, takes on more power when we hear that worn-out line uttered over images of Hamlet putting a gun in his mouth. Later, he recites the entire speech while wandering through the aisles of a Blockbuster store, wondering about whether he should take action—of course, he’s in the store’s “action” section. This Hamlet is caught, not in a world of “words, words, words” like Shakespeare’s character, but in a world of images that seem to have their own reality—or maybe no reality at all. The last lines of the play are not given to the conquering prince Fortinbras, but to Robert MacNeil, the former co-host of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on Public Television. In the week’s news, what do the images that we see not show to us?
Another twist on the speech comes with the clips that Hamlet is viewing of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, whose own speech includes the line “To be means to aim to be.” The words suggest the need for a direction in life, not so much the desire to achieve a particular goal but the need to be aware of life, aware of existence itself, what the Buddhists call “wakefulness.” The implied meaning of all these references is, perhaps, that the real meaning of life is life itself, that video images and corporate logos are just ways hiding more basic truths.