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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Art / Music / Theater / Dance
- Published: 08/09/2013
HAMLET - A DESPERATE SOUL
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, GermanyHAMLET – A DESPERATE SOUL
Analysis by Charles E.J. Moulton
When the young Dane ponders as to why he has to be so tortured, we ponder with him. When he jumps at the chance to trap his uncle, we are there with him and we somehow want the new king to fall.
William Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet, written at the end of 16th century, within just a few centuries became known as “the best play of all time”. The themes discussed in Hamlet are universal. They are common to all man and the problems the character faces is known to each and every one.
We are all Hamlet. We have all been caught talking to ourselves, hating our neighbor, shaking our fists at the skies and wondering why.
The real fascination, however, is the fact that he is a symbol for the eternal search for life beyond death. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in Act III, Scene I is the focal point of that search. This search is the centre screw of the merry-go-round, everything revolves around this search. There are a million ways to say the lines.
Part of the trick is to surprise the audience. When the play begins, the plot is already in full swing. That might be the fascination. We don’t get aboard the train. We discover that we are already on it. Hamlet’s father Hamlet Senior is already dead, murdered, and Hamlet discovers that the current king has murdered his own father and married his mother. It is Oedipus with a twist. This time Hamlet starts a spiral downwards that can only end, as he says himself, in calumny and demise.
Accordingly, Hamlet is haunted by his father’s ghost in more ways than one. Finding out that his uncle killed his own father is a huge blow not only his manhood, but also to his hope of life and humanity. It doesn’t drive him insane, although the pretense is there. It makes him cynical. His weapon is to hide behind lunacy within this cynicism. He tries to trap his enemies by cornering them, laying out small hints like pellets of rat poison in order to make them fall like his own father did. “If my father, the king, fell, so shall everyone else.”
Of course, anger eats itself. So, the story is a warning. Man can never hate his enemy without killing himself. Hamlet simply describes a very old human problem. It is every war ever fought.
Therefore, and as it is to be expected, Hamlet has as many interpretations as the world has people.
This dilemma is especially clear in Lord Laurence Olivier’s version, where the pure art of the tragic bard is emphasized. Moody, mystical, foggy and philosophical, Olivier produces an astounding effect. His classic Michelangelo face shows little movement, but expresses a lifetime of misery and pain. The ghost that appears is not as horrific as in Branaugh’s version. It is not as sad as Paul Scofield’s ghost in Zefferelli’s version. It is not as undefined as in the uncut, Danish version I saw in Copenhagen, where the ghost was simply a voice from the auditorium. He lacks emotion, reeks of sadness. Here, Kafka meets the bard. The cuts and inner monologues of the royal courtiers really host reminders of Josef K.’s neuroticism in The Trial.
Olivier gives us a Freudian Hamlet: a thinker whose doom is his own padded cell. Nay, his own inner hatred. He plans his Hamlet to the minute detail, showing us a Hamlet standing on the top of a cliff speaking about death. He holds a knife, a bare bodkin, in his hand and speaks about suicide. The bard would’ve been proud.
Olivier deserved his title as the world’s greatest actor. The film version was slandered for its unorthodox way of handling Shakespeare’s original, but Olivier alone is worth the watch just as much as his Othello or his Richard III. For geniune Shakespeare, Lord Laurence is your man.
Olivier paved the way for Hamlets of all creeds and linguas. Klaus Maria Brandauer’s German Hamlet at the Burgtheater in Vienna was sweaty, but the stunts overkilled the authenticity. Shortly after that, I was introduced to a version that merely strengthened my view of the Danish prince as a troubled soul.
Mel Gibson astounded me. My father called it “a very good student performance”. A great Shakesperian actor, he would’ve changed his mind had he seen it today. Mel grows on you. Franco Zeferelli has unorthodox choices for his leading men. Robert Powell as Jesus was so transparent that he was glowing. Mel Gibson was a lion in winter that raged from his toes.
While Olivier was brooding, Gibson was angry. Olivier’s weapon was words. Gibson fough with his whole body. He suffered, twisted and shook like an encaged tiger, a neurotic bull fighting his own demon, grabbed his ex-girlfriend Ophelia by her cheeks and threw her against the walls of the Shepperton Studio location. He leapt upon his mom and became the original Oedipus when he attacked her upon her bed in insectuous anger.
That troubled quality segued into a new tangent with Kenneth Branaugh as Hamlet. Probably the latest and most complete version to appear in the last decades, the movie is a feast for the lover of epics. Set in the 19th century, it is made in glossy surroundings with an all star cast and shows off the Dane as an angry intellectual. Brian Blessed in his white contact lenses is, as Dame Edna used to say, “very spooky, indeed”.
Art and theatre are very close cousins. Follow my comparison. Whether we are moved by Olivier’s Caspar David Friedrich-like moodiness or Branaugh’s Michelangelo-assuming brash rainbow, it brings other fabrics to the baroque picture than Gibson’s performance. He might be compared to El Greco’s dark genious or Dali’s surreal pain.
We have arrived at the fact that Hamlet is as versatile as the world is varied. Olivier leaping ballet moodiness is an antithesis to Gibson’s raw anger and Branaugh’s Schopenhauer thought.
We are back where we started: Hamlet grabs our attention. We can picture what Hamlet was like before he entered this crisis.
I am sure Hamlet really believed in the perfection of his family before discovering that some of them were arrogant fools. Ophelia and Hamlet obviously had an incredibly intense love affair, but as soon as Hamlet discovered that his own mother betrayed him he lost faith in women forever.
We are left with one thought: actors have an important profession. The soul slips into a new role every time it is reborn. Reincarnation changes us and gives us a new chance to rediscover ourselves. As actors we reincarnate ourselves on stage into new parts. We try to imagine what it is to be something else. We have sympathy with people unlike us and so we are the essence of the global movement. We are devastated when we see how cruel people can be. We marvel at how infinite in faculties a human being is and we dismay when we see that people don’t use their abilities.
We love truth and we hate ignorance.
That makes us human.
Just like Hamlet.
HAMLET - A DESPERATE SOUL(Charles E.J. Moulton)
HAMLET – A DESPERATE SOUL
Analysis by Charles E.J. Moulton
When the young Dane ponders as to why he has to be so tortured, we ponder with him. When he jumps at the chance to trap his uncle, we are there with him and we somehow want the new king to fall.
William Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet, written at the end of 16th century, within just a few centuries became known as “the best play of all time”. The themes discussed in Hamlet are universal. They are common to all man and the problems the character faces is known to each and every one.
We are all Hamlet. We have all been caught talking to ourselves, hating our neighbor, shaking our fists at the skies and wondering why.
The real fascination, however, is the fact that he is a symbol for the eternal search for life beyond death. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in Act III, Scene I is the focal point of that search. This search is the centre screw of the merry-go-round, everything revolves around this search. There are a million ways to say the lines.
Part of the trick is to surprise the audience. When the play begins, the plot is already in full swing. That might be the fascination. We don’t get aboard the train. We discover that we are already on it. Hamlet’s father Hamlet Senior is already dead, murdered, and Hamlet discovers that the current king has murdered his own father and married his mother. It is Oedipus with a twist. This time Hamlet starts a spiral downwards that can only end, as he says himself, in calumny and demise.
Accordingly, Hamlet is haunted by his father’s ghost in more ways than one. Finding out that his uncle killed his own father is a huge blow not only his manhood, but also to his hope of life and humanity. It doesn’t drive him insane, although the pretense is there. It makes him cynical. His weapon is to hide behind lunacy within this cynicism. He tries to trap his enemies by cornering them, laying out small hints like pellets of rat poison in order to make them fall like his own father did. “If my father, the king, fell, so shall everyone else.”
Of course, anger eats itself. So, the story is a warning. Man can never hate his enemy without killing himself. Hamlet simply describes a very old human problem. It is every war ever fought.
Therefore, and as it is to be expected, Hamlet has as many interpretations as the world has people.
This dilemma is especially clear in Lord Laurence Olivier’s version, where the pure art of the tragic bard is emphasized. Moody, mystical, foggy and philosophical, Olivier produces an astounding effect. His classic Michelangelo face shows little movement, but expresses a lifetime of misery and pain. The ghost that appears is not as horrific as in Branaugh’s version. It is not as sad as Paul Scofield’s ghost in Zefferelli’s version. It is not as undefined as in the uncut, Danish version I saw in Copenhagen, where the ghost was simply a voice from the auditorium. He lacks emotion, reeks of sadness. Here, Kafka meets the bard. The cuts and inner monologues of the royal courtiers really host reminders of Josef K.’s neuroticism in The Trial.
Olivier gives us a Freudian Hamlet: a thinker whose doom is his own padded cell. Nay, his own inner hatred. He plans his Hamlet to the minute detail, showing us a Hamlet standing on the top of a cliff speaking about death. He holds a knife, a bare bodkin, in his hand and speaks about suicide. The bard would’ve been proud.
Olivier deserved his title as the world’s greatest actor. The film version was slandered for its unorthodox way of handling Shakespeare’s original, but Olivier alone is worth the watch just as much as his Othello or his Richard III. For geniune Shakespeare, Lord Laurence is your man.
Olivier paved the way for Hamlets of all creeds and linguas. Klaus Maria Brandauer’s German Hamlet at the Burgtheater in Vienna was sweaty, but the stunts overkilled the authenticity. Shortly after that, I was introduced to a version that merely strengthened my view of the Danish prince as a troubled soul.
Mel Gibson astounded me. My father called it “a very good student performance”. A great Shakesperian actor, he would’ve changed his mind had he seen it today. Mel grows on you. Franco Zeferelli has unorthodox choices for his leading men. Robert Powell as Jesus was so transparent that he was glowing. Mel Gibson was a lion in winter that raged from his toes.
While Olivier was brooding, Gibson was angry. Olivier’s weapon was words. Gibson fough with his whole body. He suffered, twisted and shook like an encaged tiger, a neurotic bull fighting his own demon, grabbed his ex-girlfriend Ophelia by her cheeks and threw her against the walls of the Shepperton Studio location. He leapt upon his mom and became the original Oedipus when he attacked her upon her bed in insectuous anger.
That troubled quality segued into a new tangent with Kenneth Branaugh as Hamlet. Probably the latest and most complete version to appear in the last decades, the movie is a feast for the lover of epics. Set in the 19th century, it is made in glossy surroundings with an all star cast and shows off the Dane as an angry intellectual. Brian Blessed in his white contact lenses is, as Dame Edna used to say, “very spooky, indeed”.
Art and theatre are very close cousins. Follow my comparison. Whether we are moved by Olivier’s Caspar David Friedrich-like moodiness or Branaugh’s Michelangelo-assuming brash rainbow, it brings other fabrics to the baroque picture than Gibson’s performance. He might be compared to El Greco’s dark genious or Dali’s surreal pain.
We have arrived at the fact that Hamlet is as versatile as the world is varied. Olivier leaping ballet moodiness is an antithesis to Gibson’s raw anger and Branaugh’s Schopenhauer thought.
We are back where we started: Hamlet grabs our attention. We can picture what Hamlet was like before he entered this crisis.
I am sure Hamlet really believed in the perfection of his family before discovering that some of them were arrogant fools. Ophelia and Hamlet obviously had an incredibly intense love affair, but as soon as Hamlet discovered that his own mother betrayed him he lost faith in women forever.
We are left with one thought: actors have an important profession. The soul slips into a new role every time it is reborn. Reincarnation changes us and gives us a new chance to rediscover ourselves. As actors we reincarnate ourselves on stage into new parts. We try to imagine what it is to be something else. We have sympathy with people unlike us and so we are the essence of the global movement. We are devastated when we see how cruel people can be. We marvel at how infinite in faculties a human being is and we dismay when we see that people don’t use their abilities.
We love truth and we hate ignorance.
That makes us human.
Just like Hamlet.
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