NT Live: Hamlet 2015

[shadowfireflame]

Finally got to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in the movie theater and really enjoyed it!

Benedict shines as the lead role in this fantastically accessible (and abridged, even at 3 hours!) adaptation of Hamlet, screened by National Theatre Live to movie theatres around the world. The gloomy, atmospheric setting within a dark Victorian mansion is a gorgeous stage for this tale of grief, murder, and insanity.

Like with all his roles, Benedict throws his soul and body completely into the character and actually does so in a way that make Shakespeare’s timeless words seem fresh and relevant, lending poignant or funny new insights with a pause or a turn of phrase—silence often speaks louder than words here. His Hamlet goes on a character journey from depression to pretend madness to actual insanity and all the way back to having his reason returning when it’s too late and his and his uncle’s destructive actions have unraveled everyone’s lives.

I appreciated his takes on the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene, and especially the surprisingly moving scene where he says to Guildenstern, “Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?”

All the cast was great (like Ciarán Hinds as Claudius), but particular standouts to me were the female characters (Gertrude and Ophelia, played by Anastasia Hille and Siân Brooke), whose stories are given weight and solemnity as they are subjected to tragedy due to the men in their lives.

An amazing performance, and I’m so glad they broadcast it so I and others not in London could watch it!

More reviews of BC's films here.

Comments

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

...I'm sincerely glad you enjoyed it :)

I'm just back from seeing it today! LOL. I do think seeing it on film brought out many lovely details that you probably wouldn't have seen if you were part of the audience, but all my initial reservations about the various performances remain. I desperately wanted to turn his emotional register down about five notches. Maybe six *g*

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, I just read your posts on seeing Hamlet in person and in the theater--they were so detailed and lovely! Thank you for doing that, even though you didn't like lots of the elements. Somehow I missed that you had actually seen Hamlet in person?! Wow!!! I think at the time I was avoiding reading Hamlet posts until I'd seen it myself, so that's probably why. But that's awesome!

I actually agree with you on many things that didn't work so well (I didn't like Horatio either, wish there had been more of Polonius, felt that the staging was occasionally distracting, etc.)

But overall, I guess I liked it because...to me, Hamlet isn't a nice guy, and the play embraced that. I took a course in college where we watched about 10 or 15 different takes on Hamlet (including Branagh's brilliant one), and for me BC simply got Hamlet and made the words clear and meaningful in a way that very few other ones did.

The main reason was that sometimes the other actors had a tendency to play him like a hero, when for me he's not a hero (or an anti-hero), he's more an emotionally overwrought moody man-child who has a mental break from reality after his father's death and mother's remarriage.

This break leads him to see visions of his dead father, randomly stab people hiding in bedrooms, be cruel and neglectful to his girlfriend, be capricious and mistrustful of his longtime friends, be frankly nasty as hell to his grieving mother, and contemplate ridiculous revenge plans that lead to the destruction of his family and country.

And I saw those elements basically be embraced in this production while taking Hamlet on a journey from being afraid of suicide to accepting death as an inevitability.

To me the play's not an ensemble so much as a a character study of an insane-not-insane guy (I think you used that phrase?).

So in short, I liked where BC was dialing it up to 15/10 and not being able to get along with the supporting cast and being an asshole while in his mind he's the hero. :)

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

0.0

You know, I don't know whether it's just that you have the knack of explaining things so they make sense to me *g*, but I feel that of all the things I've read this:

This break leads him to see visions of his dead father, randomly stab people hiding in bedrooms, be cruel and neglectful to his girlfriend, be capricious and mistrustful of his longtime friends, be frankly nasty as hell to his grieving mother, and contemplate ridiculous revenge plans that lead to the destruction of his family and country.

and

not being able to get along with the supporting cast and being an asshole while in his mind he's the hero

make the most sense of the director's "vision", which I think has been murky as hell up until now.

See, everything, EVERYTHING, is so disjointed - the clothing, the acting styles, even the physical layout of the stage. Which if you take it as some kind of reflection of Hamlet's fragmented psyche (taking the whole "the time is out of joint" thing literally, lol)... sort of makes sense? I realise I sound like a complete wanker but it's actually the first time I might almost believe there was any coherent message in the production at all. I mean, I still dislike it intensely - probably because I do like a cohesive production, and I "need" to sympathise with Hamlet in order to enjoy the play. Hence my preference for Branagh's dignity - put simply, I don't *want* to spend three hours watching an overgrown man-child having an enormous temper tantrum *g*. But the way you describe it, I at least get a perspective that makes sense in its own way and "see" the interpretation a little better <3

(I'm not sure I agree on how much he felt the actual words, but he certainly... emoted them *g*)

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

See, everything, EVERYTHING, is so disjointed - the clothing, the acting styles, even the physical layout of the stage. Which if you take it as some kind of reflection of Hamlet's fragmented psyche (taking the whole "the time is out of joint" thing literally, lol)... sort of makes sense?

This is totally fascinating because it could, strangely, work like that--I'd forgotten the "time is out of joint" line, actually!

I find I'm able to sympathize with Hamlet better when Claudius is much nastier or when it's clearer that Hamlet is stone-cold sane the whole time. In this one, though, you know, Claudius wasn't really convincingly bad and Hamlet was just causing chaos and sadness wherever he went and truly seemed like he had lost it. I never am sure what Shakespeare's original intention was, though, so it's fun to see the different interpretations! :)

[mariole.livejournal.com]

I am SO glad to see your write-up on BC's Hamlet. I've had a couple of friends who've gone, but they haven't yet committed their experience to writing.

It sounds gorgeous. Yeah, Benedict, for being so darned good at what he does. :)

[shadowfireflame.livejournal.com]

I know, right?! It is certainly very gorgeous, and the set is creative (and of course BC is gorgeous too, lol!). I got very lucky to go in an encore because I couldn't make the first showing. :)