Michael Almereyda Hamlet Comparison

676 Words2 Pages

The existence of art demands the existence of criticism. Wherever one creates, another is there to examine what has been made. While the artist may chafe at this reality, healthy criticism has pruned the art world for generations, helping to produce the harvest of creation that benefits us today. Shakespeare, if not the most, is certainly one of the most evaluated playwrights of all time. In the following essay, this role of critic will be expressed by comparing three different topics between two film versions of Shakespeare’s classic Hamlet. The two film versions include Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet from 2000 starring Ethan Hawke and Bruce Ramsay’s Hamlet from 2011 also starring Bruce Ramsay. The first topic to be discussed will be the setting …show more content…

However, a viewer would be hard pressed to know this from the film itself, needing to consult outside sources to confirm this. Outside of the occasional aesthetic nod to the era, information is scarce concerning the exact time and place of the movie’s setting. As will be discussed later in this essay, Ramsay cut Hamlet’s script generously. In the vacuum created by his edits, Ramsay neglected to give the novel environment any real significance. The setting of this version of Hamlet is little more than window dressing for Ramsay’s interpretation of the classic play. Compare this then to Almereyda’s version of the Bard’s longest play which was set in the era contemporary to the year of its release. Almereyda does a chilling job at presenting a bleak, modern environment, capturing the sense of melancholy present in the text. His transformation of the kingdom of Denmark into a business corporation allows for the element of competition and warfare to stay relevant in the plot. This contrasts with Ramsay’s interpretation which almost completely removed the political element instead of adapting it to the setting chosen for the …show more content…

As previously mentioned, Ramsay’s interpretation leaves much of the original plot out from his film. Ramsay trimmed almost everything regarding politics from the story, making the focus solely on the drama unfolding between the families. This does make some things confusing, like Laertes’ return at the end of the play. As in the original play Laertes, with the help of his father Polonius, asks the permission of the king to return to France since the coronation is finished. This makes his return at the end of the movie, which takes place entirely over the course of one evening, seem forced. While Laertes fury at the death of his father is understood, how he arrived with the event having occurred so quickly before is not. The setting is pre-mobile phone and pre-internet; Laertes knowledge of the event seemed to be predicated on Ramsay’s need to end the

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