'HAMLET' MOVIE by Kenneth Branagh is based on original play 'HAMLET' by William Shakespeare .
1] How faithful is the movie to the original play?
- Ghost scene : two times ghost of Father Hamlet appears in the play
- Bed chamber scene : meeting between Hamlet and Gertrude
- Play within the play scene
- Prayer scene : Claudius’s guilt ridden soul
- Nunnery scene : Meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia
- Grave digging scene: burial of Ophelia
- Duel between Hamlet and Laertes: the ending of the play
ONE another big change was that HORATIO reading newspaper. 😆 Mirror scene was really creative and good one.
2] After watching the movie, have your perception about play, characters or situations changed?
⇒YES, after watching the play my perception about GERTRUDE was changed, before that I believed strongly that Gertrude is also involved in King Hamlet's murder but after that I don't found any proof of Gertrude's involvement.There was one more perception about Hamlet's situation was changed; I could not get Hamlet's Melancholy during play reading but in movie I getting it clearly.Dialogues make more powerful images in movie than book.
3] Do you feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons?
4]Do you feel ‘catharsis’ while or after watching movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons?
⇒Yes,I also felt 'CATHARSIS' while or after watching the movie.Catharsis in my simple words emotions of pity,fear,love,care ,hate and anger etc.There are many scenes when I felt catharsis some of them I am sharing here.
"It seems madam nay it is"
⇒ If I get opportunity to make movie; I will give same power to female as well as male. second I will establish Gertrude as a queen of Denmark rather than Claudius. Third one is I gave philosophical touch to the character of Ophelia and Rosancrantz and Guildenstern .
⇒In the beginning of the movie, camera rolls over the statue of King Hamlet out side the Elsinore castle. The movie ends with the similar sequence wherein the statue of the King Hamlet is hammered down to the dust. Perhaps Kenneth Branagh wants to say that 'Revenge' is not the right / moral answer. It was King Hamlet who wanted his murder to be avenged and thus the fall of his statue signifies the fall of an empire. His urge to revenge brought in catastrophe not only on his family but on entire nation, Denmark.I also believes same that revenge never give good fruits.
9]While studying the play through movie, which approach do you find more applicable to the play? Why? Give reasons with illustrations.
⇒YES, after watching the play my perception about GERTRUDE was changed, before that I believed strongly that Gertrude is also involved in King Hamlet's murder but after that I don't found any proof of Gertrude's involvement.There was one more perception about Hamlet's situation was changed; I could not get Hamlet's Melancholy during play reading but in movie I getting it clearly.Dialogues make more powerful images in movie than book.
3] Do you feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons?
⇒ YES,I felt 'aesthetic delight'. There are many scene where I felt aesthetic delight but my favourite was; when Hamlet killed Claudius. and also in graveyard when Hamlet expressed his feelings to Ophelia:
I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum,
I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum,
4]Do you feel ‘catharsis’ while or after watching movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons?
⇒Yes,I also felt 'CATHARSIS' while or after watching the movie.Catharsis in my simple words emotions of pity,fear,love,care ,hate and anger etc.There are many scenes when I felt catharsis some of them I am sharing here.
- First scene of movie; symbol of Hamlet and also statue of former King Hamlet where camera speaks about greatness , power and imperialism.
- Hamlet's melancholy : his mental condition and confusion of philosophical mind,
"It seems madam nay it is"
O, that this too too
solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
- I strongly felt catharsis during Nunnery scene : in this movie this scene depicted with very famous dialogue spoken from hamlet's mouth.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
5] Does screening of movie help you in better understanding of the play?
⇒ YES, screening of movie helps me in better understanding of the play. First let me be honest that I never heard about the story of HAMLET in my U.G. I got awareness about this play's story during lectures only then later on I read story but I was not very much clear and after watching movie my agnosy converts in to cognizance.I strongly believes that watching something is far better than reading.And so it is really helps me.
6] Was there any particular scene or moment in the movie that you will cherish lifetime?
6] Was there any particular scene or moment in the movie that you will cherish lifetime?
⇒ I think there are many scenes or moments in movie which I could never forgot in my life.
-Play with in the play = Priam and Hecuba’s tell , All conspiracy
-Ophelia's suffer
-Unnecessary deaths
-Plonious's funny behaviour
-Plonious's funny behaviour
-laerties's Anger
-Ghost scene
-and my most favourite Grave digging scene.
But there is only scene which I will cherish lifetime is Grave digging scene :Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to-
↣“get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death.
↣He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death.
7] If you are director, what changes would you like to make in the remaking of movie on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?
-Ghost scene
-and my most favourite Grave digging scene.
But there is only scene which I will cherish lifetime is Grave digging scene :Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to-
↣“get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death.
↣He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death.
7] If you are director, what changes would you like to make in the remaking of movie on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?
⇒ If I get opportunity to make movie; I will give same power to female as well as male. second I will establish Gertrude as a queen of Denmark rather than Claudius. Third one is I gave philosophical touch to the character of Ophelia and Rosancrantz and Guildenstern .
I also include current problems of society and humanity into it.I will remove Ghost scene and instead of it I create new idea to reveal the truth.I will fill other one lack of movie which is pirate scene.
8]In the beginning of the movie, camera rolls over the statue of King Hamlet out side the Elsinore castle. The movie ends with the similar sequence wherein the statue of the King Hamlet is hammered down to the dust. What sort of symbolism do you read in this? (Clue: In Book IX of 'Paradise Lost', Satan reflects on his revenge motive: "But what will not ambition and revenge; Descend to? Who aspires must down as low; As high he soared, obnoxious, first or last, To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils." Is it not King Hamlet's ambition to avenge his death responsible for the downfall of his kingdom which is symbolically pictured in last scenes?)
8]In the beginning of the movie, camera rolls over the statue of King Hamlet out side the Elsinore castle. The movie ends with the similar sequence wherein the statue of the King Hamlet is hammered down to the dust. What sort of symbolism do you read in this? (Clue: In Book IX of 'Paradise Lost', Satan reflects on his revenge motive: "But what will not ambition and revenge; Descend to? Who aspires must down as low; As high he soared, obnoxious, first or last, To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils." Is it not King Hamlet's ambition to avenge his death responsible for the downfall of his kingdom which is symbolically pictured in last scenes?)
⇒In the beginning of the movie, camera rolls over the statue of King Hamlet out side the Elsinore castle. The movie ends with the similar sequence wherein the statue of the King Hamlet is hammered down to the dust. Perhaps Kenneth Branagh wants to say that 'Revenge' is not the right / moral answer. It was King Hamlet who wanted his murder to be avenged and thus the fall of his statue signifies the fall of an empire. His urge to revenge brought in catastrophe not only on his family but on entire nation, Denmark.I also believes same that revenge never give good fruits.
9]While studying the play through movie, which approach do you find more applicable to the play? Why? Give reasons with illustrations.
⇒ In very beginning I will show here how many approaches are supposed to be apply.
⏩{Oedipus complex “motivates Hamlet’s delay by identifying him with Claudius, through whom he has vicariously accomplished the Oedipal feat of murdering his father and marrying his mother” }
BY →Norman Holland.
from :The Shakespearean Imagination
In above lines we can see that what NORMAN HOLLAND and ERNEST JONES told about HAMLET. Our protagonist of play Prince HAMLET was victim of psychic mind and surprising fact was that He thought that he was controlling his own mind. 😂
But I found Psychological strongly inside Hamlet let me show,
⇛ OEDIPUS COMPLEX : Love for Mother and HATE for Father.
⇛ MELANCHOLY OF HIS MIND : To be or...,O, that this too too solid flesh would melt etc.
⇛ MISOGYNY : Hatred for females
⇛ MACHBETHIAN AMBITION : he wanted to be King and so waits for an opportune time - may be natural death of Claudius or attack by Fortinbras .
All above are part of Psychological study in which Hamlet proved himself as a psychic, and that's why I found Psychological Approach more applicable to the play.
10] Which of the above mentioned approaches (in Pre-viewing task) appeals you more than other?Why? Give reasons.
⇒ Feminist approach appeals me more than other,because I felt that OPHELIA and GERTRUDE are one of us (Female)who are victimized by male dominated society from more then thousand years and here in HAMLET both are humiliated by Protagonist ;"so called Scholar university student" HAMLET, who has very high moral sense, who was educated philosopher. Ophelia also victimized by his father as well as her brother.Ophelia was used by her Father and Claudius as a pawn.
REFERENCE : Welcome: Worksheet - 'Hamlet' Movie Screening
- HISTORICAL&BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH
- MORAL PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH
- FORMALIST APPROACH
- PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
- MYTHICAL APPROACH
- FEMINIST APPROACH
- CULTURAL STUDIES
⏩{Oedipus complex “motivates Hamlet’s delay by identifying him with Claudius, through whom he has vicariously accomplished the Oedipal feat of murdering his father and marrying his mother” }
BY →Norman Holland.
from :The Shakespearean Imagination
⏩{Prince of Denmark suffered from the Oedipus complex – ‘an undue and unhealthy attachment of a son for his mother which is apt to be morbidly suppressed and cause great mental distresses’}
BY →Ernest Jones
FROM :Hamlet and Oedipus
In above lines we can see that what NORMAN HOLLAND and ERNEST JONES told about HAMLET. Our protagonist of play Prince HAMLET was victim of psychic mind and surprising fact was that He thought that he was controlling his own mind. 😂
But I found Psychological strongly inside Hamlet let me show,
⇛ OEDIPUS COMPLEX : Love for Mother and HATE for Father.
⇛ MELANCHOLY OF HIS MIND : To be or...,O, that this too too solid flesh would melt etc.
⇛ MISOGYNY : Hatred for females
⇛ MACHBETHIAN AMBITION : he wanted to be King and so waits for an opportune time - may be natural death of Claudius or attack by Fortinbras .
All above are part of Psychological study in which Hamlet proved himself as a psychic, and that's why I found Psychological Approach more applicable to the play.
10] Which of the above mentioned approaches (in Pre-viewing task) appeals you more than other?Why? Give reasons.
⇒ Feminist approach appeals me more than other,because I felt that OPHELIA and GERTRUDE are one of us (Female)who are victimized by male dominated society from more then thousand years and here in HAMLET both are humiliated by Protagonist ;"so called Scholar university student" HAMLET, who has very high moral sense, who was educated philosopher. Ophelia also victimized by his father as well as her brother.Ophelia was used by her Father and Claudius as a pawn.
REFERENCE : Welcome: Worksheet - 'Hamlet' Movie Screening
