At the
Movies Big, long 'Hamlet' plus 'Secrets and lies'
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
Kenneth Branagh's production of the uncut text of "Hamlet"
(Castle Rock) is easily the longest picture of the month -- four hours, with a
brief intermission two-thirds of the way through. Many will prefer to wait for
the two-and-a-half-hour version, which will open soon. Branagh shouldn't have
had his hair dyed, but it's unfair to ask him to be Laurence Olivier. Besides,
it's the only chance you'll ever get to hear all of Shakespeare's lines in a
movie theater. This impelled my Swiss daughter-in-law to exclaim, "France and
Germany have nothing like it. Racine and Goethe don't project that
passion!"
As a long-time drama teacher, I salute the future classroom
possibilities of this "Hamlet." One could stop the video to learn how the plot
threads are connected, and ask students to decide what cuts they would make in
their own hypothetical productions. But there is irony in Branagh's project.
Everything makes me believe that Shakespeare himself would have dropped
hundreds of lines and radically reconceived his play if he had been asked to
translate "Hamlet" to the screen.
Unlike some academic drones, Shakespeare was no victim of
bardolatry and was quite content to make his plays up out of bits and pieces
from popular genres, in this case exploiting the fashion for revenge tragedy.
He was careful not to lose contact with his unruly, popular audience. The best
Shakespeare movie will surely come from directors -- like Orson Welles and
Olivier -- who have developed such an intimate familiarity with the plays that
they can exercise a magisterial freedom, seeing them freshly in film terms.
In contrast, Branagh is caught between a false ideal of textual
fidelity and a hectic anxiety that his audience needs to be titillated by
earthquake special effects or the awkward use of stars like Jack Lemmon and
Gerard Depardieu in bit parts. Worse, he undermines the text he pretends to
honor by quick visual inserts in the middle of speeches, pictorializing bits of
exposition, including a shot of Hamlet as a child, amused by Yorick's clowning,
or -- against the evidence of the text -- showing Ophelia and Hamlet in sexual
dalliance.
Branagh's production succeeds, nevertheless, by making sense of
the convoluted subplots of the original, always severely truncated in the
theater and in earlier film versions. His own performance as Hamlet doesn't
bring out the character's melancholy depth but is serviceably energetic, and
his reading of "O that this too too solid flesh might melt" should encourage
lazy moviegoers to attempt further decoding of Shakespearean syntax. Derek
Jacobi is outstanding as the usurper, Claudius. Julie Christie and Kate Winslet
are good as Gertrude and Ophelia. Billy Crystal is an enjoyable gravedigger.
I was less happy with the choice of Blenheim Castle as Elsinore
even though it allowed for impressive cinematography, by Alex Thomson, in
outdoor scenes and the huge hall where Claudius first holds state. One of the
problems of rethinking Shakespeare for the movies is that the plays establish
their shifting locations through poetry and are never circumscribed by
household furniture. The 19th century furnishings of Blenheim make the tragedy
seem petty and give the exaggerations of the climactic fencing match between
Hamlet and Laertes a touch of the absurd. Such cavils, however, only suggest
that I have an unrealizable cinematic Hamlet in my mind. I remain grateful for
the ambitious gallantry of Branagh's new version.
Jane Campion's "Portrait of a Lady" (Gramercy) shows a
talented director exercising a healthy freedom in adapting a classic novel. The
purists are wrong to deny her the right to do so, but the film's Isabel Archer
(Nicole Kidman) is less interesting than Henry James' heroine. The movie never
projects a sufficient sense of Isabel's potentialities for us to consider her
later entrapment as more than another sad story of a bad marriage.
Campion makes her feminist intentions clear in a prologue in which
contemporary young women comment on the act of kissing. Then, in the opening
scene, Isabel rejects a marriage proposal from the wealthy Lord Warburton and
walks nervously over the grounds of Gardencourt, her uncle's English estate.
She has defied social expectations by spurning a "successful" marriage, but the
movie doesn't spend enough time to establish why her dying uncle (Sir John
Gielgud) would encourage his tubercular son, Ralph (Martin Donovan), to marry
Isabel, or why Ralph might want to participate vicariously in his cousin's
quest for freedom. Ralph gets his father to change his will and leave Isabel a
fortune so that she can follow her large hopes, though even in the novel one is
right to suspect that her belief that she can do anything she wants contains
the seeds of tragedy.
Campion's desire to make a feminist "Lady" is undermined by
stressing Isabel's fear of her own sexual longings. After she dismisses a
second suitor (the American Caspar Goodwood), the camera finds her swooning at
the imaginary importunities of three male admirers.
When Isabel goes to Italy, she is quickly maneuvered by Madame
Merle (Barbara Hershey) into the orbit of the self-centered aesthete Gilbert
Osmond (John Malkovich). A striking seduction scene follows.
Campion has a strong cinematic sense, and gets fine work from
Donovan and Hershey as well as the mannered performance she wants from Kidman.
The photography of Stuart Dryburgh leaves us with memorable images of
Gardencourt, Rome and Florence, and of Isabel alone in front of an avenue of
poplars.
Far more successful is Mike Leigh's highly original "Secrets
and Lies" (October Films), which won the 1996 Palme d'Or at Cannes. Leigh
develops his scripts in collaboration with his actors, who go through a long
rehearsal period in character, improvising much of the material that will
become part of the final, fixed script. His films provide a close look at
lower-middle class English life, revealing -- without cynicism -- a largely
static and dreary world that is also absurdly humorous. His new movie should
finally earn him a broad international public, since its generosity of spirit
and strong emotions connect with basic concerns about family relationships.
Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn) is a large-hearted Cockney
mother with two illegitimate daughters. During the course of the action, she
discovers that the first, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), whom she gave away
at birth, is black. Such a twist could easily have led to sensationalism or
sentimentality, but "Secrets and Lies" takes a more complex and rewarding
course.
Cynthia at first resists seeing Hortense, a skilled optometrist
who is in mourning for the foster mother who brought her up. Though Hortense is
upset at what seems like a mistake when she begins to search for her birth
mother, her inner calm enables her to persist in a difficult and initially
unrewarding quest.
Both actresses are superb in very different roles. Though some
will resist the emotional roller coaster performance by Brenda Blethyn, most
will be overwhelmed with laughter and compassion by the time Cynthia confesses
her "secret" at a birthday party for her younger daughter, Roxanne (Claire
Rushbrook).
By the time we get to this uproarious and painful climax to the
movie, it's clear that Leigh isn't some pedantic sociologist presenting a
thesis on class and race. He builds his plot casually, first showing Cynthia
and Roxanne working at menial dead-end jobs, then cutting to Cynthia's
photographer brother, Maurice (Timothy Small), and his sad, middle-class wife
(Phyllis Logan), and finally moving on to observe Roxanne's harsh rejection of
her mother before involving us in Hortense's puzzled quest.
There is a hilarious sequence in which Maurice patiently
encourages reluctant couples to pose for photos. It supports Leigh's
unflinching yet sympathetic observation of people who badly need each other
even when they are ill-matched.
Cynthia and Hortense work through the nervousness of their first
meeting. Though there are shocks for both, they begin to appreciate their new
discovery.
As in any Leigh film, the ensemble work is splendid. Though Brenda
Blethyn has the most memorable role and should be a strong contender for
Academy Award honors, all the actors are so convincing that "Secrets and Lies"
often seems like a documentary. Though we go through a demanding emotional
workout, the movie manages to end on a note of hope. Its secret lies in the
director's sympathetic realization of how near to tragedy our everyday
encounters can be, even when they remain comic.
National Catholic Reporter, January 17,
1997
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