Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet

The story goes that Franco Zeffirelli, who had always wanted to do a film version of Hamlet, got a light bulb over his head when he saw Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, particularly the scene in which Gibson's character, Martin Riggs, puts a pistol in his mouth. It was the modern equivalent of "To be or not to be!" And thus the world was given the action-packed, briskly-paced film, released in 1990.

If Zeffirelli made the definitive film version of Romeo and Juliet, he didn't quite achieve that with Hamlet (I think it's still the Olivier version, or maybe Branagh's uncut one) but this is an entertaining attempt. The director and star team for a vigorous approach at the story of the Melancholy Dane. Even if the lead character is gripped with the inability to act, he makes up for it with his physicality, throwing fellow characters into walls and getting awfully frisky with his mother.

Another writer has noted that the film is paced like an action picture, with the average time of six seconds for each shot. Gibson spends little time brooding. Though the "to be or not to be" soliloquy is done appropriately in a sepulchre, you don't believe for a minute he would kill himself. The relationship with Ophelia (Helena Bonham Carter) has clearly been a physical one, and Gibson's acknowledgement of her death is fairly moving.

Olivier set his Hamlet in a perpetually gloomy Elsinore, but Zeffirelli opens things up, effectively using both actual castle locations and a well-done set (which was Oscar-nominated). A lot of shots have Gibson up on some walkway, perched above the action below, either to establish some kind of moral superiority or to suggest his eventual "flight of angels singing thee to thy rest."

The supporting cast is rock solid. Three of the cast--Alan Bates (Claudius), Ian Holm (Polonius), and Paul Scofield (The Ghost) played Hamlet before. Glenn Close, who is only a few years older than Gibson, plays his mother Gertrude. I could have done without their lip-on-lip kiss in the bedroom scene--this is Hamlet, not Oedipus Rex.

Zeffirelli has cut a lot of the text, but kept the essence. As with Olivier, there is no mention of Fortinbras and invading Norway, but I am happy to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were kept (although we get to see them "go to it").

I distinctly remember seeing this film at its release. The theater was full of teenage girls, as Gibson was still a heart-throb then, unlike the crank he is today. When he dies at the end, a group of girls sitting in front of me gasped, shocked and dismayed by this turn of events. I guess they didn't get around to reading the play in school. But I don't mean to say this in a rolled-eye fashion--whatever gets kids to see Shakespeare is fine by me.