This is Thursday, So It Must Be Denmark.

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 Hamlet's old University buddies, summoned to the Court by his mother and step-father. They only appear in a few scenes, no one seems to be sure which one is which, and they disappear entirely about half-way through the play.

The announcement of their deaths is one of the last lines of play, by which time anyone who would care one way or another has already died. They are probably the unluckiest characters in Shakespeare (with the possible exception of the guy in A Winter's Tale who gets eaten by a bear).

Tom Stoppard's 1966 play (and the 1990 film version) basically imagines what Hamlet might look like from the point of view of these two minor characters who have only the vaguest idea of what's going on, but who are nonetheless part of the final body count. This is Hamlet, if (as one character observes) "you look on every exit as an entrance - somewhere else."



Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is (to date) Tom Stoppard's only film as director. Gary Oldman and Tim Roth give memorable performances as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and vice versa) while Richard Dreyfuss is surprisingly compelling as the Player King.



We'll be screening Rosencrantz and Guildenstern this Thursday (the 24th of March) at 7.30 at the Victoria Park Baptist Church. 

Heads!



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