The Hamlet Project: Kenneth Branagh (1996)

 

By the time Kenneth Branagh made what is referred to as "The Eternity Version" of "Hamlet," he'd had more than twenty years to think about the part. Prior to directing his 1996 version, Branagh had played the part for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,  had acted in the play as Laertes for the Royal Shakespeare Company production, tackled the part again with his own Renaissance Theatre Company and again in a radio version. Then, there was his meditation on the play, the 1995 comedy "A Midwinter's Tale" (known as "In the Bleak Midwinter" in the UK), about a ill-starred community theatre production at Christmastime:

TOM: ...but no, no, no, no, Hamlet isn't just Hamlet, oh no, no, oh no, Hamlet is me...Hamlet is...Bosnia, Hamlet is...this desk...Hamlet is the air. Hamlet is...my grandmother, Hamlet is everything you've ever thought about sex...about...about...geology...

JOE: Geology?

TOM: In a very loose sense of course.

Kenneth Branagh has gone on to become the first person nominated in seven different categories for an Academy Award. He has known critical and commercial success in big-budget Hollywood spectacle, small independent films and in large character pieces. He is still best known for his Shakespearean work, and even had a go at playing the Bard himself in the remarkable"All Is True." There is a sense one gets in watching Branagh's Hamlet that he has attempted to cram his entire biography - and all of his instincts as an actor and director - into this version which uses the entire text. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that this is my favorite film version of the play. 

When Branagh wrote about his experience on the project, he cited Goethe: "A genuine work of art, no less than a work of nature, will always remain infinite to our reason: it can be contemplated and felt, it affects us, but it cannot be fully comprehended, even less than it is possible to express its essence and its merits in words." Yet in making his own filmed version, Branagh was guided by the impression left on him when he first saw the play at 15 with the prince played by Derek Jacobi - he wanted a "Hamlet" that left the audience asking "what happens next." He wanted a film that was an event - in 70 mm with huge sets, international casting, a world that was big and brightly lit, glamorous, suspenseful, sexy. 

The film begins and ends with the image of the dead King Hamlet, as a statue, guarding the real life Blenheim Palace, which doubles for our Elsinore. The final view we get of the statue may remind viewers today of the toppling of images of Middle Eastern dictators, such as Saddam Hussein. However, audiences in 1996 would have flashed back to the fall of the Soviet Union only five years before. From the beginning, we have a sense that we are watching the end of something - the fall of the house of Hamlet. At this moment in time, which appears to be late 19th century, when a ghost appears on the ramparts, invading armies are marching, the days of the monarch are numbered. 

Because Branagh opts for the complete text, he is free not only to explore the psychological drama of "Hamlet," but the political. There is also the spiritual, for a restless ghost is haunting the kingdom. In this version, the rationalist Horatio, played by Nicholas Farrell, is left with a mystery which he must impart to his tortured friend up in the castle. 

The throne room of Elsinore is a wonderful combination of the Winter Palace and Versailles - a hall of mirrors with an overhanging walkway. One of Branagh's aims was to show the paranoia of royalty - of a public performance that is always watched and must never be relaxed. The King can not be allowed to be anything less than regal. That is why the palace is stocked with hidden doors and passageways for quick escapes. There is always something to hide. 

But the people are celebrating the marriage of their new king - Claudius, played by Branagh's teenage hero, Jacobi. At first sight, Claudius appears to be a thoughtful, politically savvy ruler. We can easily imagine him having long prepared himself solely for this moment, perhaps a feeling that he is more suited to the role than his predecessor, no matter how popular he was. And there is continuity, since the Queen has not changed. Gertrude, played by Julie Christie, is just as much a presence on the throne. With everything tidied up, confetti falls and the celebration of the change in power continues, leaving alone to contemplate his fate - Hamlet. 

Branagh's prince is dressed in a black military tunic, as one might expect. But as director, Branagh is careful to give us little glimpses of what Hamlet could have been. Perhaps what he was prior to the death of his father. He leaves no doubt that Hamlet has been to bed with Ophelia. He shows the two of them as naked, playful lovers. When Rosencranz and Gildenstern arrive, he is shown to be a warm, jocular friend. And when the ghost of King Hamlet appears, one is led to an inescapable conclusion - Hamlet looks more like his live, villainous uncle than he does his late, virtuous father. Draw your own conclusions on how long Claudius and Gertrude have been intimate with each other. Does this mean that in his vacillations, in his subterfuge, in his self-dramatizations, Hamlet is behaving more like the man who might actually be his father?

Polonius, played by Richard Briers, is more human and less comic than in other productions. He is the Prime Minister, and shows himself a warm and loving father to his children. When he gives Laertes his parting advice, these aren't pedantic nostrums from an old windbag. They are the anxiety of a father who wonders if he will see his son again. When he dies by Hamlet's hand, there is the feeling of accumulating tragedy.

In keeping with earlier decisions, Branagh makes it clear that Claudius did kill his brother, by himself. He gives us flashes of a memory that comes back to Hamlet as the ghost speaks - that of a moment where his uncle and mother got a little too close; an indication of something sinister that perhaps led to the time being out of joint. The ghost scene itself is interesting, for another reason. In the 1988 documentary "Discovering Hamlet," Branagh says the ghost scene is one of the more exhausting ones to deliver on stage. An actor has to respond to the ghost in such a way as to show the audience the proper amount of fear, wonder and horror. To reproduce the scene for the film, he plays it out in a series of closeups, between himself and the ghost, played by the whispering Brian Blessed. (Anyone who has seen the bombastic Blessed in other roles might barely recognize him in this restrained appearance.) 

Branagh's strategy is to keep the image in constant motion, to give the audience every sense of the largeness of Shakespeare's vision in as many ways as possible without pausing long enough for attention to wane. When Rosencrantz and Gildenstern appear, they are brought to the royal bedroom in one continuous take, a hallmark of Branagh's directorial style. The maids are making up the bed, while Claudius welcomes the two. At one point, the king sits down on the bed while his boots are shined. The maids pause in their work out of deference to the royal person. Then the party proceed down the corridors to the throne room in a "walk and talk" at least a century before "The West Wing." Bits like this extend throughout the movie, along with cameos to remind the audience that they are watching something big. When Charlton Heston's Player King begins Aeneas' tale to Dido, we aren't just allowed to visualize the scene through Heston's epic voice, we are treated to flashes of John Gielgud as Priam, and Judi Dench as Hecuba. Neither has any dialogue, but in seeing Gielgud, we are reminded of his own Hamlet, forever lost to us because it was not recorded on film. 

The 1988 Hamlet stage production Branagh starred in was directed by Jacobi, For it, Jacobi envisioned that Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy should instead be a speech delivered to Ophelia. For the film, Hamlet enters the throne room, aware that Claudius and Polonius are watching him from behind one of the mirrors. This allows the speech to be more than a contemplation of life or death, but also a (not-so) subtle threat to the life of the king. Then Kate Winslet's Ophelia enters the room to return his love notes, and Hamlet exploits the moment, and her watching father, by feigning madness and torturing her with the "nunnery" speech. These directorial decisions have the effect of making Hamlet less wild and more calculating, though at the same time rendering him even more heartless to his lover. 

There are many great performances in this film, but Jacobi's Claudius stands out. As the king confesses his murder, for just a second, Hamlet is allowed to imagine the culmination of his revenge with Claudius' death. But just as quickly, when he realizes the potential theological implications, he pauses. By showing this, we see just how close we came to a different resolution. Again, Branagh exploits the possibilities of alternative Hamlets. And because he lives, Claudius is shown to be a genuinely remorseful man, accenting his humanity and his villainy.

When Laertes arrives at the head of a revolutionary mob in the final acts, the King very carefully talks him down from anger and subtly redirects him toward vengeance. But then Gertrude enters to relay the information about Ophelia. It's at this point that Branagh does not do what he has up to now - he does not show us the dead Ophelia immediately. Why? Because his focus remains on the conniving king, because he must show the moment when Claudius beckons Gertrude to come with him, and the queen refuses. She has seen the true nature of her new husband, and of her mistake. Then we are shown Ophelia in one shot, submerged beneath water, given up to madness. 

When we see Hamlet again, he is no longer clothed in black. He has returned from England, there is resolution in him, and an easy grace that shows itself with the gravedigger. This continues, even after Ophelia's burial, when Hamlet is again with Horatio in the library, sneering at the foppish Osric, played with sufficient camp by Robin Williams. Yes, Branagh's "Hamlet" is occasionally busy. The cameos, such as Billy Crystal and Jack Lemmon, might feel awkward. Not everyone can speak the speech trippingly on the tongue. 

And Hamlet's final duel with Laertes is staged with all the drama and panache one could ask for, but crammed with bits of stagey stuff. Laertes falls from the second floor walkway once defeated. Hamlet remains up there, so he must hurl his sword at the king like a javelin and manage to pin Claudius to the throne, just as a chandelier comes crashing down on him. Then, in Errol Flynn style, Hamlet cuts a rope, swings down to the floor, grabs the laced cup, runs to the throne and forces the last of poison  down the king's throat. For a man dying of the same venom, Hamlet's daring-do feels like a bit much, no matter how exciting it all is. (Then again, Olivier leaped 14 feet down onto Claudius.) But Branagh intercuts the duel with the invading Norwegian army, so that when Fortinbras bursts in, all of the pieces fit together. Richard Attenborough's English Ambassador is there only a second, before Hamlet is carried out, Christlike, sacrificed to little salvation by his tardy revenge.  No matter how we got there, we are appropriately breathless. 

Later, in "All Is True," Branagh's retired Shakespeare gives advice to another man on the act of creation: "If you want to be a writer, and speak to others and for others, speak first for yourself." That may be one reason why Branagh's "Hamlet" succeeds. This busy, feverish, breakneck barrelhouse Hamlet is the Hamlet inside him, a Hamlet that is not just speaking beyond a mirror to his antagonist, but to the reflection that only he can see. 

Previously:

The Play's the Thing
Laurence Olivier (1948)
Toshiro Mifune (1960) 
Richard Burton (1964) 

 

Francis Ford Coppola, in shadow and light

 

In the late 1980s, the director Francis Ford Coppola, struggling through the darkest patches of his life and career, made two films back-to-back so different in style and tone that they might more likely have come from anybody else.

In a recent interview with GQ, Coppola recounts the obvious grand notes of his career – a 10-year run where Coppola wrote the Oscar-winning “Patton,” and "The Great Gatsby," and directed “The Godfather,” “The Conversation,” “The Godfather Part II,” and “Apocalypse Now.” Few filmmakers have had a similar decades-long run. 

But only a little attention was paid to what came after. Following the debacle of “One From the Heart,” Coppola embarked on a series of work-for-hire pictures to pay off his enormous debts. These films, such as “The Cotton Club,” “The Outsiders,” and “Rumble Fish,” have never garnered as much attention as what came before, though they have devoted followers.

As for 1987’s “Gardens of Stone,” about the only thing that can be said is of the off-screen tragedy – the death of Coppola’s oldest son, the budding filmmarker Gian-Carlo, who died in a freak boating accident in the midst of filming.  “Nothing that I have ever experienced in my life comes even close to that profound thing,” the director said.

Looking at the movie, more than 35 years later, one sees what for any other filmmaker in the best of circumstances would be a workmanlike feature. For Coppola, even though the haze of grief, the film is a thoughtful, muted exploration of the many facets of grief – political, collective and personal. 

“Gardens of Stone” was based on a novel by Nicholas Proffitt which tells the story of the Old Guard, the U.S. Army’s Honor Guard tasked with burying the dead at Arlington National Cemetery. The film takes place from 1968 through 1969, the height of the Vietnam War. As was observed at the time, it’s impossible to see the movie without automatically referring back to its more well-known predecessor, “Apocalypse Now.”

But the film is better seen as a companion piece. Instead of looking back on Vietnam through a psychedelic haze of colored smoke, insanity and excess, “Gardens of Stone” takes place at home, and is viewed through the rituals and traditions of the U.S. Army. Because of this, Coppola had access to shoot scenes at Arlington and on bases using soldiers as extras. The film also came out during a sudden rush of big Hollywood Vietnam films – “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Casualties of War,” “Hamburger Hill,” “Hanoi Hilton.”

The film begins with a funeral at Arlington. One hears the sound of helicopters and radio traffic. But instead of trippy Air Cav units, we have “toy soldiers” who carry rifles without live ammo and bayonets that are never used. The Honor Guard is “show business,” according to James Caan’s character, Sgt. Clell Hazard. He has seen Vietnam and wants no part of it, but he longs to be transferred to Ft. Benning where he can train the men who will be going there. He thinks that will be better than encountering those same men after their tours are ended abruptly at the grave.

He encounters D.B. Sweeney’s Jackie Willow, a new guardsman who itches to fight in Vietnam. It is Hazard’s task to tell him that Vietnam has no front, that the war has “nothing to win, and no way to win it.” 

Coppola makes much of the theatrical aspects of professional soldiery, much of which is familiar to the moviegoer. There is the easy, manly shotgun vulgarity of the barracks, the spit and polish exactitude, the barroom fight, the late night beer calls. And there are the inevitable reminders that we are in the 1960s, at the moment when the postwar consensus begins to disintegrate with each funeral at Arlington, each troop escalation, each prediction of success left unfulfilled.

On Feb. 23, 1968, The Wall Street Journal wrote following the Tet Offensive: “We think the American people should be getting ready to accept, if they haven’t already, the prospect that the whole Vietnam effort may be doomed, that it may be falling apart beneath our feet.” By the time we encounter our cast, the war is breeding cynicism and doubt. The guard is doing 20 “drops,” or funerals, a day.

Caan’s character represents something different for Vietnam films of the era. He isn’t an anti-war protester, like his girlfriend at the Washington Post played by Angelica Huston. He isn’t a “parlor pink” radical, like the finger-pointing antagonist he savagely beats at a party. Caan is a fighting man who is loyal to the Army and its institutions, but feels Vietnam is a colossal mistake. He isn’t ready to turn his back on his country, but wants to save lives through training proper soldiers. That leads him to embarrass his commander, Dean Stockwell, during a training exercise, replicating the guerrilla tactics of the Vietcong. The tone is still anti-war, but it is the hatred of war bred in the career soldier.

One of the criticisms of the film at the time was its emotional distance. David Ansen wrote, “One is left feeling like a stranger who’s wandered into a wake of strangers.” But I found “Gardens of Stone” has a great warmth to it, a celebration of service comradery – the flipside of Col. Kilgore’s twisted love for his surfing cavalry boys. Perhaps the best embodiment of this is the superb James Earl Jones as Sgt. Major Goody Nelson, a giant striding panther who steals every scene with his eyes and his voice. In a memorable inspection scene, a white-gloved Nelson instills fear into the guard members, except for the exacting Willow, who stares him down with the satisfaction of knowing he will pass the test.

At least at home. But halfway through the film, it becomes apparent that the funeral which began the picture is Willow’s, and the letters home structure of the film are his to Hazard, his father figure. Hazard fails to convince him about Vietnam, fails to save him, can only mourn him, and say, “I won’t forget.” In a silent scene, Hazard approaches the flag-draped casket in a bare chapel, rips off his Combat Infantry Badge, and lays it on the casket, knowing that Willow sought this decoration more than any other. One wonders if this is the filmmaker’s way of saying goodbye to his own son. 

 

Coppola dedicated his next film, “Tucker: A Man and His Dream” to “Gio, who loved cars.” An insistent dream project of his, Coppola turned to long-time friend George Lucas for the financing of the film. Jeff Bridges plays Preston Tucker, the designer of a controversial prototype automobile. Coppola had originally seen the project as a musical, but instead made the film in the style of Frank Capra, through dramatic lights, shadows and lush colors.

Bridges plays the visionary with post-war brio, a big infectious optimism that dominates the screen without managing to come off as hokey or insincere. (He later duplicated this for “Seabiscuit.”) He is helped along in the process by Martin Landau as Abe Karatz, Tucker’s financial agent. One of the hallmarks of Coppola’s films is their flair for on-the-nose casting. “Tucker” features Joan Allen as Preston’s wife Vera, Christian Slater as his son Preston Jr., Frederic Forest as mechanic Eddie Dean, and Jeff’s father Lloyd as a senator doing the bidding of established automakers who see the new car as a threat.

Early on, as Tucker attempts to assemble his financial backers, he shows a room of bureaucrats graphic pictures of auto accident victims:

“The Big Three in Detroit have been allowed to make billions of dollars without spending one dime on safety. What I know, what you know and what the public knows is that they don’t give a damn about people. All they care about is profits. And let me tell you something, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, the entire automobile industry of America is guilty of criminal negligence. And if it were up to me, it would be tried and convicted of manslaughter.”

He later pays a heavy price for these words. Tucker is the voice of anti-corporate America, celebrating the spirit of maverick entrepreneurs who chase their dreams. As far as he is concerned, the fundamental feature of America is free enterprise, in the freest, most swashbuckling sense of the words. But with investors come contracts, responsibilities, the realities of business. Still, he is unwilling to compromise his vision, insisting the car should have seat belts, a rear engine, and other features later adopted by Big Auto. His enthusiasm draws risk-taking investors, and the attention of the enigmatic Howard Hughes, played with characteristic loopiness by Dean Stockwell. 

Tucker eventually finds himself in court, with large, faceless forces gathered against him to sabotage his plans. It’s not too hard to see this as Coppola’s comment on the filmmaking process, aided by his fellow outsider Lucas. Landau’s character, scared that his past will tarnish Tucker, relates the story of how he always heard his mother say, “Don’t get too close to people – you’ll catch their dreams.” This was a mistake, he says, as she was really saying “germs.” But Coppola wants you to catch the dream, because that’s what the story, indeed the movie, indeed all movies, are about: Catching somebody else’s dream.

“It’s the idea that counts…and the dream,” Tucker says, at the end, walking out of a courtroom, denied his factory yet exulting in carloads of people riding around in the only models he was able to make, taking satisfaction in the extent of his limited accomplishment.