4/21/2023 0 Comments Hamlet full movie 2000Though the existentialism and powerful emotions of the play’s dialogue are indeed affecting, Almereyda understands that the conditions which engender these emotions are different, contorting its meaning and processing even though the tormented feeling remains roughly the same. As with the original, Hamlet suspects foul play and dithers about killing his uncle to exact revenge and ensure “justice”. The erstwhile king/CEO is succeeded by his brother, Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan), who reveals his marriage to his brother’s wife and successful staving of Fortinbras’ takeover in a press conference, watched attentively by a morose Hamlet (Ethan Hawke). The retention of the original dialogues naturally begs the question of the meaning of king and ruler, and Almereyda subverts expectations by making the king a CEO of a corporation rather than the president of the country. Under lesser hands, this certainly could devolve into a gimmick but Almereyda’s film brims with visual ingenuity and interesting ideas for the most part. But what makes Almereyda’s version so unique is its pared-down retention of Shakespeare’s original dialogue anachronistically in a world remotely similar to Shakespeare’s, thereby making it an adaptation that’s more of a recontextualization than a reconfiguration, shifting the emphasis from the story and broad emotions to an ontological and sociopolitical understanding of these putative primal emotions. Shakespeare’s magnum opus has spawned multiple adaptations, both literal and reconfigured. This, in a sense, is exactly what Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet seeks to do, subjecting a canonical classic to the ultimate test of timelessness by literally transposing it to the present. If we were to apply the multiple definitions of timelessness to every work of art, it is bound to fail in at least one category. The slipperiness of the term allows a certain distortion of its perceived meaning for different contexts, smothering its ambiguities in favour of emotional resonance or selective political critique. The affixation of timelessness to a work of art is somewhat of an exercise in futility masquerading as the highest praise. What I am trying to say is, you would have encountered Hamlet somewhere or the other, so stop cribbing about spoilers!) ( We live in a postmodernist world, but even if we live in a structuralist world, we still evaluate objects and texts in relation to another object/text.
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