The Illusion of Depth

  In 1996, Kenneth Branagh released his film version of Hamlet , and it proved to be one of the grandest, most over-the-top adaptations of Shakespeare I have ever seen (and I've sat through the Max Reinhardt Midsummer Night's Dream - see note ). Hamlet is not a short play at the best of times, and Kenneth Branagh's version is not only completely uncut, he actually adds more stuff; inserting flashbacks, fantasy sequences and extra scenes, all of which add up to a film that runs over four hours. The already strong core cast (Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet etc) is supplemented by some very very famous cameos, several of whom don't even have dialogue. This is truly the Ben Hur of Hamlet s, and it almost works - but that's a discussion for another day, because I have no plans to show this film, this week or any other week. Sorry, you weren't worried, were you? A year before his behemoth Hamlet , Kenneth Branagh released a different Hamlet -relat...

Consider Hamlet . Being a character in Hamlet is not exactly a healthy lifestyle choice.  Are you the King of Denmark?  Dead.  Are you the brother of the King of Denmark? Also dead. Perhaps you are the Queen of Denmark. That's right: dead. What about the girlfriend of the Prince of Denmark?  Insane. And dead. The girlfriend's father? And brother? Dead, and dead. You can probably see a pattern starting to emerge here. Do I even need to mention Hamlet himself? (There's a reason why the play isn't called The Wonderful, Long and Happy Life of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. ) The bottom line here is that if your life intersects at all with Prince Hamlet, you probably shouldn't start reading any really long books. Hamlet isn't a play so much as a terminal condition. Hell, there have been Doomsday Cults with higher survival rates. Even people on the extreme margins of the story are dead by the end. Which brings me to next week's film: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are H...

 Our series of films this year has focussed on films that re-work "the classics" in various ways, and truth be told, one author in particular has been conspicuously dominant (and will continue to be). Ultimately, there is a reason why writers and film-makers keep returning to the works of Shakespeare. Actually, there are several reasons. Firstly, he was an incredible writer - one of the very best in the English language - so any film adaptation of one of his plays is starting out with one hell of a screenplay.  Beyond that, however, Shakespeare's characters and stories have become deeply embedded in our modern consciousness. In a sense, they have become our new mythology. Images of (for example) Juliet on her balcony, or Hamlet with Yorick's skull, or the dead Ophelia - these images are instantly recognisable, and have entered the shorthand of popular culture. The irony is that most of Shakespeare's stories weren't actually written by Shakespeare. And no, I do...

Last week's film was an Ancient Greek Drama, re-worked in 1944. This week's film is almost exactly the opposite: a 1941 film re-worked as an Ancient Greek Drama. Permit me to explain. Preston Sturges' 1941 comedy Sullivan's Travels tells the story of a successful film-maker, John L. Sullivan, who is having a crisis of conscience. His films thus far have been light, comic, and very, very popular - but he feels guilty about making such trivial entertainment at a time when much of the country is suffering through genuine hardship and pain. To that end, he wants his next film to be a dark, serious portrait of American pain and Depression, called O Brother, Where Art Thou? (you can probably see where I'm going with this). John L. Sullivan never got to make O Brother, Where Art Thou? because a) his life went in a different direction and b) he was a fictional character in a Preston Sturges movie. Not to worry however, because 59 years later, the Coen Brothers (who are no...