How do you portray an actor among actors playing non-actors. Others are strange: -he introduces recognizable actors in secondary roles to jar us into the realization that this is a play. Many work extremely well, in particular the mirrors in the `to be' and Ophelia sequence. The play was written for sparse settings it translates naturally to audio tape and unnaturally to film. This makes Ophelia's loss (and earlier obedience) believable. Polonius is treated humanely, as more than a dottering fool. Also his book on `matters' (often thought to be Bruno's) is actually given to Ophelia. we are reminded that Hamlet's initial and sustaining anger is because his uncle jumped into the line of succession -we see the hints that Hamlet was a student of Bruno in the book on witchcraft he consults after seeing the ghost. In doing so, he's included some nice touches: -gone are superficial hints of mother-lust in the closet scene. Consequently, this work has extra dimensions of life. The purest choice, the only choice which can encompass the full weave of the work, is to include everything - and that's what Branagh has done. This is Shakespeare's most ambitious vision, one he tinkered with and enlarged both conceptually and literally. But in making the translation to film, the artist has two challenges. As a play, Hamlet is an anchor of civilization, and even moderately successful films are worth seeing.
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