Missy - Hamlet ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 It’s been a minute since I watched the Gibson Hamlet. When I first saw this movie, in a theater, the year was 1990 and I was in my youth (high school). I LOVED it. It was the first Shakespeare that made me laugh and made me mad and it had a great sword fight. 

After I’d seen it I thought of myself as a Shakespeare fan. I’d seen Shakespeare plays before, and because of my King James Bible-centric education, and church going, I didn’t have nearly the barrier to entry that I find most people struggle with. 

I’ve seen it a few times but not again since my kids were born. That’s 16 plus years absence and a world of experience. 

I’m happy to report that I’m still into this movie. I don’t love it the way I did but I enjoyed it and am happy to have revisited it. I have rated it 4 stars. 

I’d forgotten just how much the Zeffirelli leaned into the Freudian interpretation of the play. I don’t find myself as compelled by that reading but I certainly see where it comes from.

The newest thing for me had to do with Gertrude. In the final everybody-dies-part of the play I teared up a little at the farewell between mother and son. 

I haven’t thought much about Shakespearean mothers before. His plays tend to be very father-daughter. He himself being father to daughters levins these relationships I imagine, but me, I’m a mom.

I’m going to score the Shakespearean moms in this blog. So I’ll start with Gertrude. I find Gertrude to be a very meh mom. She clearly cares tremendously for her son but can’t seem to keep her head straight enough to be helpful to him or even reasonable. I feel like if your husband, the king, dies unexpectedly the next move is to get your fully adult offspring onto the throne. Her move was to get into a new relationship and pawn off responsibility. Then not let her son leave to deal with his obvious angst, which he was trying to do. Self centered and/or dumb Gertrude gets a C+. When it was obvious, she tried to do the right thing, but she sure wasn’t looking for the right thing to do.

Anyway…

While watching bits of Hamlet this week, in fits and starts, (life/kids/work/etc)  I also read the Bill Bryson Shakespeare book. A Fantastic book! I’m such a fan of Bryson.

And I’ve started listening to a Great Courses Lecture that I’ve enjoyed in the past. It is  called  William Shakespeare: Comedies,Histories, and Tragedies, I assume named after the First Folio. 

I’m a massive fan of the Great Courses and this one has some nice reflections broken down play by play that are going to be helpful, I hope, in organizing my thoughts. 

Here are my thoughts therefore. 

Discussing the characters and their motivations with Mariam I am stuck by the contemporary desire to pathologize. I find remarkable also how great Shakespeare was at comic relief. 

Comic relief was a new or at least relatively new literary technique in the theater and he was just so good at it. Hamlets asides and 4th wall breaking, snide jibes, and backtalk land with fantastic punch to my modern ear. 

I enjoy the dark medieval feel of the Zeffirelli setting and almost entirely agree with his editing. I like the casting, particularly the Close as ditzy blonde Gertrude and the action hero that was Gibson of that era.  I found the performances rewarding and human. 

I think there isn’t much to be done with Ophelia. She either works as mad or as pre mad but I’ve not seen a convincing version of her as both. I think Bonnam Carter playing her off as fragile and innocent is as good a choice as can be made but she really shines as a mad giver of Rue. 

A special shout out here to Nathaniel Parker as Laertes. I remember being impressed by him each time I’ve seen this Hamlet and was again this time. It’s a tricky part to play (which one isn’t with Hamlet?!) but he made someone who could have been mere plot device or incomprehensible waffler into an appealing and sympathetic figure. 

I’m running through Shakespeare as pure audience for this project and had a solid enjoyable audience experience with this one. 

Hamlet - 4 star for enjoyability and setting

Mom score - Gertrude C+ mom for truly loving her son but also for being deleteriously oblivious. 

 

Onward to Lear. 

Dread