The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Malthouse Theatre
27 February 2008
Tower Thearte, CUB Malthouse
Director Oscar Redding aptly says, “If a play has continued
to be extraordinary for four hundred years and you fuck it up you only have
yourself to blame”. So Oscar, I
guess I’m blaming you.
Malthouse Theatre chose to include a film in their 2008
season. I was so looking forward to seeing this. Poor Theatre’s original
production of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was performed in 2004 in a shopfront to a maximum audience
of 15. Looking at the actors, the design and the interpretation of
Shakespeare’s work, I’m sure it would have been stunning and I wish I’d seen
it.
This is the film version. It was shot in 38 hours, at night
over nine days. The effort and dedication of everyone involved is clearly
evident. It’s shot in some of Melbourne’s identifiable seedy spots, including
Bourke Street Mall, the Degraves Street underpass (where the cast use to rehearse,
because it was dry and free) and The Waiters Club.
This is a film, so it has to be viewed and reviewed as a
film. I don’t want to use the word atrocious – as I really respect and admire
what these folk did to make this film – but it is not a good film.
The whole thing is seen from the POV of whoever is holding a
camera. Some googling revealed that it is Osic and he’s the wedding cameraman
for Gertrude and Claudius wedding. I spent most of the film trying to figure
out who he was. I thought it might be Hortatio and that Hamlet’s little hand
puppet was a joke, rather than an indication of madness. Why all of these
people continue to trust Osic with their secrets is never clear.
I know Hamlet – it’s one of the best damn stories ever
written. If I didn’t know that story, I would have had no idea what was going
on on that screen. Nothing was done to establish who the characters were and
what their relationships were with each other. So much was hidden in darkness
and shadow, that it wasn’t clear what was happening. I get that it’s meant to
be hidden and dirty – but isn’t the whole point of film that we see what is
going on? It looked like Hamlet pulled back the shower curtain to find Polonius
having a drunken nap in the bath. Ophelia’s
death and even her burial were even more mysterious. Gertrude runs into the
Waiters Club and says she has drowned. Who drowned? You have to show on the
screen, telling doesn’t work. Seriously, please show this film to someone who doesn’t
know Hamlet and ask them to summarise the story for you.
Then there was the actual filming. I can see that you were
trying to emulate the Dogme 95 declaration. However the Dogme directors knew
what rules they were breaking and some did it stunningly (I’m by no means a
Lars Van Triers fan, but he could shoot a film). This had unfocussed and wobbly
close ups and two shots with lots of language – but rarely did we see what was
going on and the quality of the film was so distracting that it was even harder
to concentrate on the slabs of language.
The nauseating shaky camera makes the screen almost unbearable
to look at. The individual shot composition went from dodgy to bad to “have you
ever actually sat in a cinema and watched a film?” I’d love to see the
storyboard – if there was one. I really do not understand how a film can look
so bad on a screen.
I don’t care about the lack of resources and the roughness. That
had nothing to do with this film. It has some admirable ambitions, but was shot
badly and failed to show an understanding of film, action and visual story
telling.
This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com
