Details News

May 2007

Hamlet

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Brief synopsis

Hamlet is a ghost story - so why has nobody ever told it as one?

In Fodor's Hamlet emphasis is put on the nightmarish ether of the play, setting it in a surrealistic no-man's land.

Rather than following traditional, schoolbook definitions of characters, these are ripped apart. So, for example, the traditionally weak Ophelia, is now dominated by her elder sister Polonia (normally a male comic role) who supplies her with addictive drugs to cement that control. Hamlet's father, The Ghost (normally an heroic victim) is now a vicious psychopath, manipulating his own son to gain brutal vengeance on his murderer, Claudius.

And yet not a single line is added or changed, the difference is how they are delivered - naturalistically with the emphasis on making sure an audience who may never even have heard a single line of Shakespeare accept it as though it is merely an alternative accent of English.

"ONE OF THE BEST MUST SEE MOVIES"
- GEMMA FREEMAN, FD MAGAZINE"

"A WORK OF ART AS WELL AS GENIUS"
- SARINA

"IF DAVID LYNCH MADE SHAKESPEARE IT WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS"
- PAUL WIFFEN

"A GROUND BREAKING FILM. JUST WHAT ALEXANDER FODOR DID TO ACHIEVE SUCH NATURALISTIC PERFORMANCES I DO NOT KNOW"
-Richard Stokes

Review:

"As the 42nd film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and one of three made in 2007 alone, Alexander Fodor's Hamlet faces a lot of competition, yet it manages to distinguish itself by radically reinventing the traditional characterisation without ever straying far from Shakespeare's original dialogue. Here the respectable nobleman Laertes has been transformed into a cockney thug (Wing). Hamlet's close confidante Horatio has switched gender to Horatia (Reddin-Clancy), lending the homosocial aspects of their friendship a mild sexual frisson. The Ghost (Frail), who appears only twice in the original, is here, along with two phantom children, a constantly visible background presence, always watching, waiting and manipulating from the sidelines, so that the play's more supernatural elements are brought right to the fore - with one scene in particular, set in a hotel corridor, evoking no less than the spooky chills of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). "

"Rarely has Shakespearean dialogue been so dramatically recontextualised - and, very much to the actors' credit, rarely has it been delivered so naturally."

"Fodor's film is never dull to look at. He pushes the possibilities of High Definition digital to the limits with light-saturated or colour-filtered images of an intense immediacy, as well as unusual framing and a range of technical tricks (split screens, freeze frames, CCTV-style flickerings) to glut the eye. It is nothing short of a miracle, born of talent and ingenuity, that a film with so minuscule a budget (£15,000), and shot so quickly (just 15 days), should be so visually stylish and so rich in eerie atmosphere. Even the limited sets (most of Hamlet was shot in a single room over a pub in Northern London) have been exploited to create a disorienting sense of claustrophobia that sits well with the themes of ghostly haunting and inescapable destiny. So even if Fodor's Hamlet is far from perfect, it is without question an impressive calling card."

Verdict:
Blighted but bold, this Shakespearean adaptation messes with the Dane to the ultimate disadvantage of its own narrative coherence - but it certainly dies a stylish death.

Film fact(s):
After an executive producer went mad and absconded with £9,000 of the film's already minuscule budget, many of the scenes had to be nailed in the first take.

As the Ghost, James Frail was forced to don dark sunglasses in some scenes, after the blue contact lenses he wore for the role caused bruising around his eyes.

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