From the Vaults: Michael Almereyda's Hamlet
Hamlet (Michael Almereyda, 2000)-
According to the Internet Movie Database, Michael Almereyda's 2000 re-imagining of Hamlet is the twenty-second feature film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy to be theatrically released in the United States. Though no statistics could found on the matter, it is likely safe to also assume that Almereyda's production is the first to feature Fortinbras as a corporate shark with a knack for hostile takeovers and an image of Hamlet's Ghost walking straight through a Pepsi One machine. Set in a blue-tinged version of contemporary New York City, its title character reconceived as a montage-based filmmaker with a modernist bent, the content of Almereyda's film achieves a synchronicity with its singular form that is undoubtedly unique among its fellow Hamlets. Despite its gestures at storytelling, the film is less a committed adaptation of Shakespeare than a meta-project about the pleasures, difficulties, and peculiarities of adapting Hamlet in a modern world of high-stakes finance and filtered communication.
Almereyda has given his setting a starring role, and the New York of his imagination is neither glamorous nor tawdry, but rather enigmatic and tinted in shades of midnight blue. For a film of such obvious twenty-first century "art school" stock, the camera is surprisingly patient: shots take their time to linger on a subject and unwind, and changes seem to come more from function and necessity than overzealousness. Parts of the film do make generous use of odd camera angles, including one street scene that would seem to have been shot from the height perspective of a medium-sized dog. In another scene, inside a poolroom, we are kept a few yards away from the action. Later, we get a vision of Ophelia through Hamlet's apartment peephole. And images on top of images abound: televisions in the background; full-body reflections in pools, mirrors and washing machines; surveillance camera shots; the burning of Polaroid pictures. That communication is so heavily layered/filtered in this world would come as no surprise to anybody who lives in it, but hearing a few lines from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over speakerphone, along with "get thee to a nunnery" voicemails from Hamlet, has a startling and transformative effect on Shakespeare's language. All of Hamlet's soliloquies are presented through Ethan Hawke's voiceovers, which play underneath images of a distraught, withering Hamlet, including a "To be or not to be" set in a Blockbuster video store lit with harsh, fluorescent tones. While there are no instances of electronics enhancing genuine communication between characters, neither is there any sign that things would be better face-to-face. Almereyda isn't betting the house (or the budget) on any half-hearted notion that contemporary man is doomed by each beep of the cell phone battery or hum of the modem. Rather, he's pointing out that the ease and fluidity of expression today is as hazy and incomplete as the Prince of Denmark's understanding of the world, and that any attempt to fully stage the play would probably be doomed under the circumstances.
The film both luxuriates in and feels confined by the trappings of this wealth, and swanky locations are mined more for their hidden corners than anything else. Ultimately, though, the film does not wish to render a verdict on corporate America--- it wants merely to steal its ruthless, exhilarating, high-stakes energy for the sake of flair and mood. It has these effects, but at its core this is still a brutal story of family betrayal that happens to have a backdrop in a large New York company.
This is a Hamlet that above all tells the story of itself. Though we see little of Hamlet in creative mode, we sense that he is always sizing up a situation's colors and contours so he can capture it in his mind. Many of the images within the images in this film are given ominous contexts at best: the mysterious, faded color of a surveillance camera, the lines of static on a black and white television, the combustibility of the still photographs of Hamlet and Ophelia. This emphasis accents the potency of images, but also the danger, reminding us that Hamlet is above all a dangerous play, complete with ghosts and revenges. But more than anything, we are meant to understand that Hawke's hero is meant to stand in for Almereyda, and that Hamlet the filmmaker has had the final interpretive say over Hamlet the poet. This Hamlet--- bold, vibrant, and unique among its companions--- has staged the inability to stage itself, and in so doing leaves an indelible print on the textbook of Shakespearean film.
