Fantastic!

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This a great movie. Great acting. Great story line. Hamlet (1948) is a little better. Hamlet (1990) is also a little better. But still this is a great movie. I know a lot people who like this movie are story snobs. But I'm not. It is almost as good as Godzilla. Better then Godzilla raids again. But Godzilla raids again is still a very good movie. This movie is more fun to watch them a hockey game. In spite of what most people in my home country of Canada would say. This movie is very scary. Not as scary as Hamlet (1948). Hamlet (1990) is also scarier. But still this is pretty scary. This is very good horror movie. See it see it see it see.

A few things have been modified in the play, for example the concluding remarks by Fortinbras that have been dropped, or the fact that Osric is quite obviously a transvestite. But basically that does not change much in the content of the drama. A first crime, Claudius' incestuous killing of his own brother to seize his crown and his wife, makes it true that there is something rotten in this kingdom of Denmark. This disorder will have to be set back up properly in the traditional Skakespearian way. All protagonists will have to die. Claudius of course, but also Gertrude, the Queen, Polonius the King's counselor and the father of both Laertes and Ophelia. Then Ophelia, Laertes and Hamlet. And we mustn't forget Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then and only then will Fortinbras be able to take over (though it is reduced to two allusions to him and his disembarking but not at the end of the play) and bring back some legitimacy, hence order in that disorder. We all know that plot by heart or nearly and we all enjoy the play in the play, the ghost, Yorick's skull, immortalized by Picasso, and so many scenes and situations. The distribution of flowers by Ophelia is one of these. Yet this film is different. I guess the editing of the DVD is closer to TV editing with a lot of close-up shots of faces. But what is the most original of this film is the sensual dimension added to it. Claudius and Gertrude in bed having some kind of breakfast with quite a lot of people around, Hamlet among them: an incestuous and adulterous situation that has to be a provocation for Hamlet both in his Oedipian frustration and the betrayal he will accuse his mother later on with. The long kiss of Laertes and Ophelia is more a kiss of lovers than sister and brother. The use of transvestites for the play in the play, which was normal under Shakespeare but may look bizarre today, even in 1969. But the transformation of Osric into one transvestite is more than surprising, since his business is not that of a woman, but definitely that of man, a courtier, a messenger of the King that reveals at the same time things he should not reveal, in other words a gossip but revealing a murderous plot against Hamlet, pointing out that this attitude is suspicious in many ways in feudal times and may reveal the homosexual dimension of Hamlet and the attitudes in that direction he may incite, voluntarily or not. That dimension of the play is quite obvious beyond the political approach of the action and the psychological characterization of the characters. But I find these added elements either not enough or too much. Too much if we stick to the text written by Shakespeare. Too little if we want to reveal the deeply erotic, Freudian and perverted situation created by the first murder. But is Hamlet a pornographic play? Some may think yes. Some may think no. But there is no in between in that field. Was Gertrude the prize of the crime or was she not? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Works better on the screen than the other filmed stage productions - Kline's, Olivier's, Burton's. As others have said, very fast, staccato - even time-compressed - disconcerting extreme close-ups. Williamson at 31 isn't really too old for the mysterious prince, but somehow he looks it. Anthony Hopkins' Claudius seems apathetic, a choice I don't understand. Ophelia is pretty despite painfully dated 60s makeup, but she's also reduced to a 60s type of female - sort of knocked-on-the-head accepting smilingness through whatever storms go one around her. bleah! Gertrude is a 60s evil queen, sensual, but unsexed -- a la Snow White. argh! Horatio is much more out of place than Hamlet, much older, almost doddering in his scholarly spectacles. Interesting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - very intrusive. Hamlet v. combative. Soliloquies to the camera, a frank style I like better than voice-overs -- the actor never does much during voice-over soliloquies, so you're staring at an unmoving close-up for endless minutes. The style of direction is uneven, but perhaps purposed - sometimes alienating as in the quick back and forth cuts between two speakers, sometimes captivating as in the almost candid, home-video style of the camera movements in the soliloquies. Curiously even in the characters I don't like (Ophelia, Gertrude) the interpretive decisions are well made and intelligently, though the style is off-putting. I long for a meatier Claudius, but Hamlet should care more about the women anyway - but then we should have a meatier Ophelia. I wonder if Hamlet shouldn't be most sane when he seems mad and most mad when he seems deadly sane. Or when he thinks he is. Laertes a fool with mutton-chops. ugh!

I had to compare two versions of Hamlet for my Shakespeare class and unfortunately I picked this version. Everything from the acting (the actors deliver most of their lines directly to the camera) to the camera shots (all medium or close up shots...no scenery shots and very little back ground in the shots) were absolutely terrible. I watched this over my spring break and it is very safe to say that I feel that I was gypped out of 114 minutes of my vacation. Not recommended by any stretch of the imagination.