Hamlet (2009)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Hamlet |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 180 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK not specified BBFC 12: "Contains one use of very strong language and moderate sex references" JMK not specified |
| Rod | |
| Director | Gregory Doran |
| script | William Shakespeare |
| production | John Wyver and Seb Grant ( BBC Two ) |
| music | Paul Englishby |
| camera | Chris Seager |
| cut | Tony Cranstoun |
| occupation | |
Hamlet is a film adaptation of the eponymous Shakespeare - drama by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in collaboration with the BBC from 2009. This is the film version of the highly acclaimed RSC stage production of the play at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in the previous year. Both were directed by Greg Doran , who took over the management of the renowned ensemble in 2012. David Tennant played the title role, Patrick Stewart (Claudius / King Hamlet) and Peter de Jersey (Horatio) took on other leading roles.
background
Stage production
The RSC production originally opened its doors at the ensemble's Royal Shakespeare Theater (RST) in Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon . Directed by Gregory Doran , who became director of the ensemble in 2012. Cast included David Tennant , Patrick Stewart , Penny Downie, Mariah Gale, Edward Bennett, Oliver Ford Davies , and Peter de Jersey .
David Tennant, who shortly after graduating from the RSAMD had received in 1991 his first engagement with the RSC and since his latest role as the tenth Doctor of cult - family series Doctor Who is one (2005-2010), the most popular actors of Britain, came even as his last year of filming in the series returned to the RSC, which, under Doran's direction , brought Hamlet and Lost Love to the stage at the same time in 2008 . In Hamlet , Tennant spoke with the rather general English accent (cf. Standard German ), which he had previously used for Doctor Who and several other roles since the turn of the millennium, including the title role in Casanova (2005), while the native Scot spoke in Lost Love Meme with its own dialect.
Sir Patrick Stewart OBE is also very well known and loved by a similar audience (especially science fiction ) worldwide: as leader of the X-Men as well as commander of the spaceships Enterprise-D and -E . The extraordinary popularity of the two actors among television audiences of all ages generated great media interest in the run-up to the performances and 6,000 tickets for the first season were sold out within three hours. Despite the general ban on resale by the RSC, individual dealers took the equivalent of over 600 euros per card on the Ebay trading platform .
After a full season at the RST in December 2008, a move to the Novello Theater in London's West End , but Tennant suffered a slipped disc and had the first ideas of the stand-in , will represent Edward Bennett, who otherwise played Laertes. Tennant took over the lead role again in early January 2009.
Cinematic implementation
“Shakespeare would have been an excellent screenwriter. All we will do here is to devote ourselves entirely to this piece, which has been performed for 400 years - as a group of actors, directors and artists of the 21st century. […] It really is a thriller and I hope the attention to detail and the tension of the stage play are expressed in the film as well. With this film adaptation we did not want to create the best possible 'archive material' of the original theater production, but rather try to capture something of the spontaneity and immediacy of a stage performance on film. For a speech like ' To be or not to be ', in which the character is so deeply immersed in a dialogue with himself and really struggling to decide whether to live or die, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to get up close and personal . "
Film production by the BBC and Illuminations came after it was announced that director Gregory Doran would take responsibility for the RSC flagship for the 2008 season and acclaimed actors David Tennant and Patrick Stewart will star Hamlet and Claudius / King Hamlet in Dorans new stage adaptation would take over. Tennant and Stewart are both recognized not only as gifted stage actors and have received numerous awards, but can also look back on a successful second career in film and television (especially important for a broadcaster's funding decision) and thus develop a new audience that is relevant for television broadcasting. Greg Doran is known for his high quality interpretations of the sometimes difficult plays and the antiquated language of Shakespeare, which are also easily accessible to a modern (also young) audience. He has been the artistic director of the renowned ensemble since 2012.
“When it became clear that David Tennant and Patrick Stewart were going to star in a new RSC production of Hamlet , it dawned on us that this could be a production that we could use to successfully solicit support from one of the broadcasters. There wasn't that much risk here - because of the cast, but also and especially because of Greg Doran as director. Greg is a great Shakespeare director. On top of that, Greg is someone who always pays attention to making access as easy as possible for the audience in his productions. "
Doran sees the central elements of the piece as constant surveillance / the complete lack of privacy, and especially the mirror in the literal and metaphorical sense: “Hamlet holds the mirror up to nature. He tells his mother that he will show her a glass through which she should look inside. The idea of mirroring caught something for us that we could well imagine visually implemented. ”Although mirrors are much more problematic in film production than on stage (camera, lights, microphone and film team are not allowed to be reflected), the participants sat down everything possible to include as much as possible of this focal point of the production in the film adaptation. A gigantic mirror makes up a large part of the set, the smooth black floor is polished to a high gloss. The experienced DP Chris Seager worked with Doran to develop the most appropriate representation and approach for each scene from a cinematic and dramatic point of view.
Six months after the final performance of Doran's Hamlet at the Novello Theater, the full cast and the crew members of the RSC production finally got together to shoot.
The film was filmed with a single-camera setup using the pioneering RED-One camera technology . Wyver and Doran visited a dozen possible filming locations together, including old factories, vaulted cellars and an old school building, in search of a place of “ vivid neutrality ”. They finally decided on the castle-like building of St Joseph's College in Mill Hill, a disbanded and former Catholic seminary, whose administrators gave them a free hand in the use and design (also for major renovations). The deconsecrated chapel from the 19th century became the main place of action. With its polished floor and various mirrors, it received a similar appeal as the stage design in the RST. Difficulties (particularly of a financial nature) arose from the lack of electricity and water connections, in return the administrators of the old building only demanded a minimal rent.
Problem of soliloquies
“I think you've got to be very careful because you've got something very precious, this stellar production, but at the same time, it is a theater piece. And then you've got to be very conscious that people are going to watch three hours of Hamlet sitting at home on their loungers. What is it going to be that's going to translate this stellar production into watchable television? […] The soliloquies in Hamlet are a real challenge. At the end of the day, it's one bloke talking to you for two minutes, three minutes. And we're very unused to watching that in television terms. And bear in mind, there are seven soliloquies. It can't be the same device each time. So, what Greg, the director, did, he broke down each of those soliloquies, along with Chris, the DP, and tried to think, 'What is the appropriate language?' ”
In Shakespeare's time, the interaction of stage actors with the audience was a natural and much more frequently used stylistic device than it is today. His pieces contain numerous monologues ( soliloques ), some of which are designed as conversations with oneself and others as direct addresses to the audience. In Hamlet , in addition to the monologues, there are many other intervening sentences that can be understood and interpreted as thoughts expressed out loud, either as self-talk or as addressing the audience. The Royal Shakespeare Company has always attached great importance to making Shakespeare's world as accessible as possible to a modern audience of all ages. In this Hamlet production, the actors broke through the so-called fourth wall particularly often and the RSC also adopted this stylistic device in its film production. The participants described in the DVD interview:
“When you come to something like 'To be, or not to be', you're trying not to think of the fact that it's probably the most famous speech in English literature. You're simply trying to think, 'Well, where is the character right now? What is his emotional state? What is his intellectual state? And how can you best communicate that? ' [...] You make instinctive judgments, and obviously, you play to the camera, and you're aware of how close the camera is, and so on. I won't know until I see it back, whether I've judged it correctly or not. Clearly, it's smaller, it's more intimate, it's less loud. And perhaps you can tell certain bits of the story with a nod of the head or a flick of the eyes. With the soliloquies, of course you've got the very different situations where, in the theater, you would address the audience, and here the audience is the camera, which is physically closer. And also, you can be a bit more defined about when your thoughts are to the camera, and when your thoughts are perhaps internal, perhaps taken off slightly. Whilst in a theater, any individual audience member will be getting a different aspect at different times, here you can choose when you share lines directly with the audience and when you take them slightly away. "
“There is an internal process of thinking, which, it was not a play, would just be thinking. But thinking isn't dramatic. You have to use language. [...] Having a camera lens close up, yes, you have to say the words but the thinking process becomes evident. What David gets so dazzlingly right in this film is the entirely private moment of a soliloque on camera. "
“In a speech like 'To be, or not to be', in which the character is involved with such an interior dialogue about, really, whether to live or die, it was wonderful to be able to get really close up. [… ] It's exciting for David not to have to say the line in order to reach 1500 people in a big theater. And to be able to be quite quiet and intimate and simply talk through the speech, if you like. "
Broadcasting and dissemination
It was first broadcast on December 26, 2009 on BBC Two . In the United States, the first broadcast was on April 28, 2010 by PBS as part of their theater series Great Performances (episode 35x09, running time 183 minutes). The British regional code corresponds to that in the rest of Europe, so the original DVD is available in German-speaking countries and can be played without any problems.
The BBC subsidiary 2 | entertain took over the distribution of the film after the television broadcast in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It has been available on DVD since January 4, 2010 and on Blu-Ray from April 19, 2010. It was released in both formats in the United States and Canada on May 4, 2010.
Bonus material included includes senior stakeholder interviews, making-of segments and a full three-hour audio commentary by Director Greg Doran, DP Chris Seager and co-producer Seb Grant. Subtitles (original English text) are also available for better understanding.
occupation
- David Tennant : Prince Hamlet
- Patrick Stewart : King Claudius / King Hamlet (ghost of Hamlet's murdered father)
- Penny Downie: Queen Gertrude
- Mariah Gale: Ophelia
- Peter de Jersey : Horatio
- Edward Bennett: Laertes
- Oliver Ford Davies : Polonius
- Sam Alexander: Rosencrantz / Second gravedigger
- Tom Davey: Guildenstern
- Mark Hadfield: Gravedigger
- John Woodvine: actor (King)
- Ryan Gage : Osric / Actor (Queen)
- Samuel Dutton: Dumbshow -König
- Jim Hooper: Dumbshow Queen / Priest
- David Ajala: Reynaldo / Dumbshow - Poison Killer
- Keith Osborn: Marcellus
- Ewen Cummings: Barnardo
- Robert Curtis: Francisco / Prince Fortinbras of Norway
- Roderick Smith: Voltemand
- Andrea Harris: Cornelia
- Ricky Champ: Lucianus (actor)
- Riann Steele: Lady in waiting
- Zoe Thorne: lady in waiting
reception
The Hamlet production, and in particular Tennant's portrayal of the Danish Prince, were received extremely positively by theater critics.
Charles Spencer, theater critic for the Daily Telegraph , described the Hamlet production as one of the best Hamlet productions he had ever seen, and Tennant as " an actor of extraordinary courage and charisma who has made a persuasive claim to true greatness ".
The famous theater critic Michael Billington OBE also described the Hamlet production in the Guardian under the heading “ David Tennant is the best Hamlet in years ” as “ one of the most richly textured, best-acted versions of the play we have seen in years [... ] that bursts with inventive detail. "He praised and Tennant as" a Hamlet of quicksilver intelligence, mimetic vigor and wild humor: one of the funniest I've ever seen "( a Hamlet of lively intelligence, mimetic vigor and exuberant comedy: one of the funniest images I have ever seen ). He describes Stewart's Claudius as “ superb ” and later as a “ supremely composed, calculating killer ”. His only criticism were small but “absolutely logical” changes by Greg Doran to the scenic order ( To be, or not to be before the play in the play ) and the removal of the short passage, “ where Hamlet says to Horatio, 'Since no man knows of aught he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be. ' Thus Tennant loses some of the most beautiful lines in all literature about acceptance of one's fate. ”
In his review of the parallel Shakespeare comedy Love's Labor's Lost , Billington added the following to his perception of Tennant two months later: “Tennant, more than any other actor in this production, shows a capacity to handle Shakespeare's language with sensitivity. At times he falls too easily into the current Stratford habit of joshing the audience and playing off front-row spectators. But you could hear a pin drop during Berowne's great paean to passion and the power of love over academic study. When Tennant tells us that 'Love's feeling is more soft and sensitive than are the tender horns of cockled snails', it is with the breathless urgency of a man who sees the image he is describing. And when, at the last, Berowne is enjoined by his lover to spend a year visiting the speechless sick, Tennant displays real shock at the idea one can 'move wild laughter in the throat of death'. It is a performance that confirms Tennant's Shakespearean status. "
On behalf of the BBC and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the play was filmed in the summer of 2009 with the same cast and broadcast on December 26, 2009 on BBC Two . The three-hour television film was watched by 900,000 viewers that day, a success rate that drove the BBC to produce more Shakespeare films and documentaries for 2012.
Chris Seager (Director of Photography) received a BAFTA nomination for Best Cinematography and Lighting (Fiction and Entertainment Category ) in 2010 .
At the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards in the same year, David Tennant received a nomination for best actor . The award is actor-related, not work-related and in that year related to his performances in the Hamlet film as well as in his final five Doctor Who special episodes in excess length .
Following its US premiere on PBS , Patrick Stewart received a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a TV Movie at the 62nd Emmy Awards . The award went to David Strathairn for his performance as Dr. Carlock in HBO - biopic You're not alone on Temple Grandin .
The film was also nominated for the Gold Derby Award as a Special Class Program in 2010 .
In April 2011 the UK's Royal Mail issued a stamp with Tennant as Prince Hamlet to celebrate the RSC's 50th anniversary.
Web links
- Hamlet in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Archived program information on the BBC homepage
- Program page on the BBC homepage
Individual evidence
- ^ Tennant's London Hamlet sells out in hours. In: The Guardian. September 12, 2008, accessed October 21, 2017 .
- ^ What to say about ... Love's Labor's Lost. In: The Guardian. October 10, 2008, accessed October 21, 2017 .
- ^ Tennant back on stage as Hamlet. In: BBC News. January 4, 2009, accessed November 23, 2010 .
- ^ A b "Shakespeare would have been a great film writer, I have to say. All we are going to do is apply ourselves to this extraordinary play that has been around for four hundred years and respond to it as actors, a director, a creative team in the 21st century. [...] I think it is a thriller. And I hope the detail and the excitement of the stage production is conveyed on the screen. [...] What we wanted to do is not to, if you like, make a good archive of the stage production. It was part of a process which I had begun with Illuminations on a production of Macbeth with Harriet Walter and Antony Sher . And that was about trying to capture something of the spontaneity and the immediacy of the stage performance on film. […] Hamlet holds a mirror up to nature. He says to his mother that he will show her a glass ['You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.'] The sense of mirror seemed to capture something for us which, we thought , could work. [...] In a speech like 'To be, or not to be', in which the character is involved with such an interior dialogue about, really, whether to live or die, it was wonderful to be able to get really close up. [...] Elsinore seems to be a place of hyper-surveillance. “- Director Greg Doran in a DVD interview
- ^ "When it was clear that David Tennant and Patrick Stewart were going to star in a production of Hamlet for the RSC, it felt like that might be a production that we could engage one of the broadcasters to support. It wasn't that much of a gamble, partly because of the cast, but particularly because of Greg Doran as the director. Greg is a great Shakespearean director. Greg's also somebody who makes productions sort of very accessible for audiences. ”- Producer John Wyver in a DVD interview
- ↑ David Tennant brings Hamlet to TV for Christmas In: The Times, December 20, 2009. Archived from the original on June 15, 2011. Retrieved on May 4, 2018.
- ↑ Great Performances: Hamlet In: PBS .org
- ^ Charles Spencer: David Tennant as Hamlet at the Novello Theater. In: The Telegraph. January 8, 2009, accessed May 6, 2011 .
- ^ Michael Billington: From Time Lord to antic prince: David Tennant is the best Hamlet in years. In: The Guardian . August 6, 2008, accessed May 6, 2011 .
- ↑ Michael Billington: Theater review: Love's Labor's Lost, The Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon. In: The Guardian . October 9, 2008, accessed October 6, 2017 .
- ^ The play's the thing for 900,000 Hamlet viewers on Boxing Day . In: The Guardian. December 29, 2009, accessed January 18, 2011 .
- ↑ BBC plans 2012 Shakespeare season. In: BBC News. September 21, 2010, accessed January 18, 2011 .
- ^ Royal Mail marks the Royal Shakespeare Company's 50th year. In: BBC News. April 12, 2011, accessed April 15, 2011 .