Saturday, February 3, 2007
Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet the Worst? Agree or Disagree.
According to Mr. Lazarow, Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet was and still is the worst he has ever seen. He constantly rips on Branagh because his version is so bad. So Hamlet's actions may be a little excessive and his wild arm movements a little odd, but does this version really deserve the verbal bashing that it receives? Agree or disagree......
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5 comments:
When you look at the overall production level, the amount of effort and the time spent on this production it would seem that a good movie would follow. But in this case I'm going to have to agree with the "verbal bashing" by Mr. Laz of Branagh's Hamlet. The elaborate facade can't completely hide the huge differences when you compare it to the book. Sure all the same lines were used, but the meaning put into those words by these actors was far from its original intent.
So is Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet the worst? I think so..
I couldn't agree with sean more, but I wanna add some things about why this version was so bad. First thing I noticed was that at some points it seemed like he wanted to break something more than acting. I felt he tried to hard to play his part. He just needed to chill. In class we said that he was rushing his words because of the movie being so long. If Branagh had taken his time, it probably would've been a pretty decent part, but rushing changes the whole perspective of what Shakespeare was trying to get across.
I would like to respectively disagree. I preferred this version because of the detail in lighting, set design, and blocking. If you are looking for the worst production, you need to look at Burton’s version. As a matter of fact, I believed that the best production because none of the lines were cut out, the sets made me think that it was in the right setting, and I thought it was acted out extremely well.
I didn't like Branagh's version because he's freaking out. In my mind, I would never expected Hamlet to get that intense during his speech. Branagh goes beyond crazy and gets into extreme rage. There's a difference between crazy and angry and it doesnt seem like Branagh gets it. I agree with Laz but, I'm not positive that Branagh's version is the worst, because I really wasn't a fan of the Jacobi version either. But the worst is definitely one of the two.
It all depends upon how you look at this, is it by the acting or are you throwing all of it together. What I mean by that is people seem to bring the setting and scenery into how good something is so the acting could be terrible but because the scenery and costumes are so well done it can cover up the bad acting by making people look away from the wild arm movements. I think that is exactly what this version tried to do. Branagh figured that the lavished scenery and the beautiful costumes that everyone was wearing would cover up for any holes that were left in the acting. In terms of acting and portratying the lines it was absolutely horrible but in terms of scenery it was one of the best out of all of the versions that we have seen so far.
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