Hamlet: Branagh's Bildungsroman
by Mark J. Cassello
Preceded by a fortuitous
series of events that brought together an extraordinary cast for an highly unusual
project, the realization of Kenneth Branagh’s lifelong dream to bring a
full-text edition of Hamlet to the
screen was accompanied by the normal obstacles inherent with financing any
project of this magnitude. Branagh admits that “the perpetual reluctance of film
companies to finance Shakespeare had frustrated each attempt” (Branagh
xiv). Couple the studio’s
reluctance about the commercial viability of Shakespeare to a late twentieth
century audience with Branagh’s desire for a full-length adaptation of
the work, and the diametrical opposition of these two forces becomes strikingly
clear.
Without disclosing the
precise factors led to Castle Rock Entertainment’s 1995 agreement to
finance this bold project, Branagh gently hints that the studio hoped to also
release an “abridged version at a more traditional length” (Branagh
xiv). Compare Hamlet’s modest production budget of $18,000,000 with other
contemporary films like Braveheart,
which although shot on location, cost $72,000,000 to produce and Branagh’s
feat becomes even more astounding (“Braveheart”). In 1996, his ambition became a reality
with the
theatrical release of the full three hour and 58 minute version
of Hamlet. The spectacle of the final product is
inarguably lush and lavish—the sets, costuming, and score almost
overwhelm the senses. However, rather than simply dissecting a particular scene or
exposing how this incarnation exploits the medium of film to convey any
particular interpretation, by exploring the details of Branagh’s biography,
I will instead trace his journey from the conception of this project to its
realization, and by doing so, reveal how his personal journey influenced the
development of his portrayal of Hamlet.
Branagh admits that he had
developed “an obsession” with Hamlet that began at the age of
eleven: “I first encountered Hamlet
when Richard Chamberlain, T.V.’s Doctor Kildare, played that title role
on British television” (Branagh xi).
With his curiosity sufficiently piqued, Branagh discovered a copy of
“an old L.P. record, lying (unused) in a corner of the English Department
Stock Room” (Branagh xi).
Later he would hear this record, featuring Olivier’s ‘To Be
Or Not To Be’ soliloquy, in his class, and although he admits that he
knew nothing of “fardels” or “bodkins” he was still
very interested in the play.
At age fifteen, incited by
a “television serialization of Robert Grave’s I, Claudius” that starred Derek Jacobi, Branagh, spotting an
advertisement in a local paper, quickly ordered tickets for a performance
featuring Jacobi in the lead role of Hamlet
at the New Theatre, Oxford. This
performance was a pivotal moment in Branagh’s life; as people have for
hundreds of years, he connected with the character Hamlet in a very personal
way: “It [the performance]
made me reflect on my relationships with my parents, the prospects of my
adolescent love affair. It set my
heart and my head racing” (Branagh xii). “I was amazed by what a great
thriller it was. I didn’t
understand it all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be
effecting my body—I got the shakes at times—I thought about it all
the way home on the train” (“To Be”). His love of Hamlet soon developed into a love for acting in general, and by age
eighteen he had become a member of the Royal Academy of the Performing Arts
(RADA); it was here that Branagh’s ambitious affability was transformed
into what his stock broker and financial benefactor, Stephen Evans, describes
as an uncanny ability to “schmooze people” (“Branagh
V?”) —the very quality he would later need
to make the full-text film production of Hamlet
a reality. In
1979, at the age of eighteen, Branagh wrote a letter requesting an interview
with Derek Jacobi. Commenting on
this interview with the very young Branagh, Jacobi recalled:
In ’79 I was playing it [Hamlet]
again at the Old Vic, and I got a letter from a drama student at RADA saying
could he come interview me and talk about Hamlet. This boy arrived, and we talked about
Hamlet. He said he wanted to play
it himself while he was at drama school and he did. (“To
Be”)
Following his interview with Jacobi, Branagh continued
researching the role by studying the films of Olivier and Kozintsev before he
made his first attempt at the role (Branagh xiii).
Branagh’s consistently
improving skill of persuasion was now focused on RADA’s principal Hugh Crutwell whom he lobbied for permission to stage a
performance of Hamlet at the dramatic
school (“Branagh V?”).
Hoping to win the lead role, Branagh would have to read for the part in
front of the president of RADA, Sir John Gielgud, who, since 1930, had played
the role more than 500 times (“John”). In a very self-effacing description of
the audition, Branagh explains that he did the “rogue and peasant
slave” soliloquy so badly that Gielgud came over to the “quaking
student” and told him that he was going “far too quickly, far too
quickly” (“To Be”).
Despite his shaky audition, Branagh secured the role and with it, his
first taste of its physical demands which he referred to as, “massive
physical exertion culminating in a complicated fight that an exhausted actor at
the end of the play would happily do without” (Branagh xiii). He played the role, but he had not yet
developed any true understanding or vision of Hamlet’s character.
Branagh left RADA and by
1984 had become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; this time playing
the role of Laertes, he was able to experience Hamlet from a different perspective. Observing the performance of Roger Rees,
Branagh was able to learn a great deal about the character: “I was able to observe much more
clearly what is said about him by others, and worry less about the
Prince’s own words” (Branagh xiii). However, the invaluable experience
gained during his tenure with the Royal Shakespeare Company could not offset
his increasing unhappiness “with the RSC’s bureaucratic
organization and stuffiness, and in 1987, quit to form the Renaissance Theatre
Company with his friend David Parfitt” (“Biography”). Understanding the pressure that would likely
accompany such a dramatic move, Branagh worked quickly to give his fledgling
company credibility. Once again
relying on his persuasive skill, Branagh lured both Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench
into directing an entire season at the Renaissance Theatre Company.
In 1988, Branagh’s
reunion with Jacobi brought them together for the first time in a performance
of Hamlet. With Jacobi directing and Branagh in the
title role, this incarnation of the Prince of Denmark would mark another
lackluster portrayal for Branagh: “I was unready. I produced a hectic Hamlet, high on
energy but low on subtlety and crucially lacking depth. I was aware that something Jacobi
himself had brought effortlessly to the role was life experience”
(Branagh xiii).
Resigned to wait until he had gained the experience necessary to
bring sufficient depth to his portrayal, Branagh would not return to the role
until four years later.
The 1992 production for BBC
radio assembled a veritable “greatest hits” of the performers of Hamlet that included, among others,
Branagh, Jacobi, and Gielgud (Donovan).
In addition, the cast also included Richard Briers as Polonius, a role
he would reprise in the 1996 film.
This performance, Branagh’s first encounter with the “full
text” of the play, allowed the actors to focus on the understanding and
delivery of the language of the play (Branagh xiii). In addition, this new medium allowed
Branagh to gain a firmer understanding of the character of Hamlet and provided
him his first opportunity to direct the play. This radio performance anticipated the
Winter 1992 full text production of Hamlet
by the Royal Shakespeare company—the one that would finally crystallize
Branagh’s interpretation of the character and lead to the 1996 film.
According to Samuel Crowl,
“The production was significant because it represented Branagh’s
fourth essay of the title role (all by the age of thirty-two) and reunited him
with the team of Noble and Crowley” (Crowl). This was important because the earlier
effort of Branagh and this team led to the successful stage, and later film,
production of Henry V. This time, his portrayal was markedly
different from his earlier “hectic” Hamlet as well as those of his
contemporaries: “Branagh’s Hamlet was remarkably polite, sincere,
and mature in contrast with a series of manic, neurotic
or passively crippled Hamlets that dominated British productions of the play in
the 1980s” (Crowl). Finally approaching a sense of satisfaction with his Hamlet,
Branagh’s vision of a film production of the full text edition of the
play was becoming more vivid:
“I longed to allow audiences to join Fortinbras on the plain in
Norway, to be transported, as Hamlet is in his mind’s eye, back to Troy
[…] I felt that all my experience with the play and with Shakespeare was
leading in one direction” (Branagh xiv).
However, before he would
realize his vision of a film adaptation of Hamlet,
Branagh would have to recover from a devastating professional blunder that
plagued his career and overshadowed his breakthrough success of Henry V. The major obstacle facing the creation
of any film is procuring adequate financing, but following the success of Henry V, a project completed with a
piecemeal $4,000,000 budget, and Much Ado
About Nothing, Branagh’s enthusiastic
ambition was matched by the studio’s equally enthusiastic financing for
his first major
Bitter from his experience
with the major studios and the unforgiving press, Branagh, refusing many
generous offers, used over a $1,500,000 of his own money to finance the very
personal project In the Bleak Midwinter. The film is “about a ragtag
theatrical troupe attempting to put on a production of Hamlet in a provincial
English town” (Stein).
Written and directed by Branagh, this cathartic film seems to probe the
terrain underlying his own obsession with Hamlet:
“Why do we want to put on a 400 year old play about a depressed
aristocrat? That’s the
question that the film looks to answer, about how all these terminally luvvy
types with modern problems can all find meaning both in the play itself and the
putting together of it” (Bandyopadhyay). The cast included Nicholas Farrell and
Richard Briers who would both play Horatio and Polonius respectively in
Branagh’s Hamlet. This film also revealed the obstacles,
both creative and financial, that he would soon encounter in his own
production.
So continued a cycle of
life imitating art and vice versa, deciding how to best fund and stage his own
production like the characters in In the Bleak Midwinter,
a emphatic and resolute Branagh returned to Hollywood to locate funding for his
full-text film version of Hamlet. Branagh explains, “There were
plenty of takers who said if you do it at half the length and half the budget
then we will give you the money” (“Kenneth”). Schooled by his shortcomings on Frankenstein, but wise from the
successes of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, Branagh
approached Castle Rock Entertainment with the following pitch for his ambitious
Hamlet: “it begins like Jaws (with
horrible suspense), and ends like stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf going in
for the kill. Even the advertising
promises ‘more artificial snow than in Dr. Zhivago’”
(“Magnificent”). The
necessity of Hollywood power brokers to explain complex works of literature in
terms of a “catch phrase” certainly poses a problem for purists
like Branagh: “The studios
want to reduce the subject absolutely, so the can sum it up in one
sentence” (Katelan). His
pitch worked, and yielding to his enthusiasm, Castle Rock Entertainment
relented by providing an $18,000,000 budget for the four hour film.
Returning to his greatest
asset, his personal charm, Branagh assembled a stellar cast that became a
reunion of a disparate collection of actors, many of whom had helped shape his
portrayal of Hamlet. The limited budget
of the project meant that “all the actors worked
for much less than their usual fee” (Katelan). His cast included Briers and Farrell
from In the Bleak Midwinter, as well
as American actors like Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, and
Jack Lemmon—most of whom had been personal acquaintances of Branagh. He also cast Sir John Gielgud and Derek
Jacobi once again uniting almost a century of Hamlets. Commenting on his inclusion in the cast,
Jacobi explained: “It’s
like the whirligig of time it seems the right thing that we’re back to this
particular play together” (“To Be”). Aside from the actors, Branagh also
employed his former principal from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Hugh Crutwell, as an objective critic of the performance of each
take. With the financing
guaranteed, his screenplay written, and cast assembled, after a twenty year quest, Branagh was ready to begin filming.
In hindsight, the events of
Branagh’s life appear almost providential—a prophetic soul like
Hamlet himself—we wonder what events have been
precipitated by Branagh’s actions and what events are merely
coincidence. Vacillating
between his artistic goals, and the need for commercial success, Branagh
references this dichotomy while agonizing over how to shoot the “To Be or
Not to Be” Soliloquy: “Well, he’s in two minds in the speech,
I can only assume that this is good…the kind of mental state of the
character kind of mirroring the mental state of the egomaniac making the
film” (“To Be”).
Perhaps this simple statement summarizes the draw of the character; Hamlet’s complexity represents an
uncompromising metaphor of life, love, death, grief, and vengeance. Although Branagh feels intimately
connected to this character, Hamlet belongs to everyone. He admits: “This may not be the
definitive Hamlet, but the tights are hung up and the fluffy white shirt is in
the wardrobe never to be brought out again. It’s a
good feeling. And this is the last
fucking time I will act and direct at the same time” (Katelan). His film represents a pinnacle of
artistic achievement, an event that occurs only once in a lifetime, an assembly
of talent honed and united for a single purpose. His caustic words mask purposelessness that follows the
end of a long journey; only time will reveal if Branagh has truly exorcised the
demons of his obsession with Hamlet.
Works
Cited
Bandyopadhyay, Reba. “Kenneth Branagh: The Panico Workshop Benefit.” Daily Telegiraffe. 8
December 2004
<http://members.tripod.com/DailyTelegiraffe/branaghpanicohamlet-benefit.html>.
“Biography:
Kenneth Branagh.” Barnes and Noble. 7 December 2004
<http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/Biography.asp?ctr=579225>.
Branagh,
Kenneth. Introduction. Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Screenplay, Introduction
and Film Diary. By William
Shakespeare.
“Branagh
V? (long).” Anecdotage. 8 December 2004
<http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=6099>.
“Braveheart.” Reel Insider. 7 December 2004
<http://www.reelinsider.com/braveheart.html>.
Crowl,
Samuel. “Hamlet ‘Most
Royal’: An Interview with Kenneth Branagh.” Shakespeare
Bulletin Fall 1994. 8 December
2004
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6261/Articles/rscham.html>.
Donovan,
Paul. “Baby Grand Old Man.” Sunday Times 19 April 1992.
7 December 2004
<http://www.branaghcompendium.com/artic-sunt92.htm>.
Hamlet. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Prod. David
Barron. 1996. VHS. Castle
Rock Entertainment, 2000.
“John
Gielgud.” Free Home Pages. From Baseline’s Encyclopedia of
Film. 7 December 2004 <http://theoscarsite.com/whoswho4/gielgud_j.htm>.
“Kenneth
Branagh: Screen Prince.”
Katelan,
Jean-Yves. “To Be or Not
Mister B?” Premiere:
“Magnificent
Obsession.” The Scotsman. 15 February 1997. 9 December 2004
<http://www.branaghcompendium.com/artic-scotsman97.htm>.
Stein,
Ruthe. “Midwinter: A Reflection of Branagh” San Francisco Chronicle. 18 February 1996. 9 December 2004
<http://www.branaghcompendium.com/artic-mwtsf.htm>.