Akademia Techniczno – Humanistyczna
W Bielsku-Białej
Wydział Humanistyczno – Społeczny
Kierunek studiów: filologia
Specjalność: filologia angielska
Dominika Woźnicka
Shakespeare in the World of
Technology and Cinematography –
Michael Almeryeda’s Hamlet
Nr abumu studenta: 26770
Praca licencjacka
napisana pod kierunkiem
dr Zuzanny Szatanik
Podpis promotora:
Bielsko – Biała 2008
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................3
1. The General Theory of Film Adaptation……………………………….5
1.1 A Short Introduction to the Theory of Film Adaptation………………5
1.1.1 The Hierarchy between ‘Text’ and ‘Copy’ – Roots
of Prejudices………………………………………………….6
1.1.2 From Fidelity to Transtextuality……………………………..9
1.1.3 Genette’s Proposals for Film Adaptations…………………..11
1.2 The Language of Film………………………………………………... 12
1.3 The Major Characteristics of Shakespearian Language and Drama…..18
2. Hamlet Modernized……………………………………………………..23
2.1 Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)………………………………....25
2.1.1 Something Old, Something New - Almereyda’s Vision…….25
2.1.2 Media Saturated Technology in Almeryeda’s Hamlet.............28
2.1.3 “To be, or not to be” – the Existential Dilemma……………..32
2.1.4 The Film within the Film – Hamlet’s Video The Mousetrap...36
2.1.5 “The Rest is Silence” – Shakespeare’s Words in Modern
Background…………………………………………………38
CONCLUSIONS...........................................................................................41
STRESZCZENIE..........................................................................................43
FILMOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................45
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Introduction:
In my thesis I attempt to show how the modern film techniques are used
to update and modernize one of the most famous Shakespearian plays Hamlet. Michael Almeryeda, the director of Hamlet 2000, did not decide to
change the plot or the language of the original play, and despite this fact the
modern audience can understand and appreciate the story. Furthermore, the
adaptation itself is considered as a great filmic success. I will analyse the
technical as well as substantial devices that Almeryeda uses in creating his way
of understanding of the play.
In the first chapter, I will briefly discuss the general history of film
adaptation and the most important elements of Shakespeare’s language. I will
base my considerations mainly on the introduction to cinematography written
by Robert Stam and I will summarize the most important issues in the theory
and practice of film adaptation. Specifically, I will explain the difference
between film and adaptation and provide a number of reasons why literature is
still considered to be the most significant and prized art. Furthermore, I am
going to discuss the question of fidelity and automatic difference in film
adaptations, as well as different types of transtextuality and narratology. Then,
I will explain the basic technical elements used in films, such as the mise en
scène, editing, sound, and cinematography. In the end of Chapter 1, I will
show the major characteristics of Shakespearian language and drama. Here, I
want to discuss the most important differences between Early Modern English
that Shakespeare used and Modern English, that is used in everyday life, as
well as the way Shakespeare manipulated with the language in order to achieve
specific effects on the audience. I will also say a few words about
Shakespeare’s verse – the pattern of the blank verse and the variations of the
pattern.
In the second chapter of my thesis, I will concentrate mainly on
Michael Almeryeda’s Hamlet. However, before I analyse the adaptation, I will
present a short history of Hamlet on screen. My consideration will be based on
the works written by Jorge Luis Bueno, Russel Jackson, Lynda Boose and
Richard Burt.
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. Subsequently, I will analyze Michael Almeryeda’s adaptation of
Hamlet. I will discuss the questions of fidelity and infidelity, taking into
consideration all the critical approaches to that matter analized in Chapter 1.
Then, I will discuss the matter of language in this adaptation, as it is very
special and unique, even in the sphere of cinematography. I will preoccupy
myself not only with the words but also with other ways of transmitting the
motifs of the play used by Michael Almeryeda. I am going to concentrate on
the technical devices at the beginning and then move to the plot itself. My own
analyzes will be based on critical essays written by such authors as Diana
Handerson, Katherine Rowe, Peter Donaldson etc. Then. I will discuss the
process of updating of the characters, settings and motives as well. In the end,
I will summarize the whole argument and the main points of my theses.
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1. The General Theory of Film Adaptations
There are many different theories of film adaptations nowadays. As the
art of film is becoming more and more popular, a lot of diversified approaches
to this subject are created. In fact, film should be now treated by the critics as
an art equal to music, literature or painting. This new art is constantly
developing and changing and, because of that, new critical theories appear.
However, many of those critics do not want to admit that film can express
something useful and important and still consider literature as superior to film.
On the other hand, there are those who strongly believe that literature and other
arts cannot be compared to each other as they use totally different tools to show
the same thing.
In this chapter, I will explain the theoretical background of
film adaptation and cinematography in general.
1.1 A Short Introduction to the Theory of Film Adaptation
In the following section of the first chapter, I will show and explain the
most important features of film adaptations. I will base my own considerations
mainly on the work by Robert Stam titled “The Theory and Practice of
Adaptation,” as I believe it exhaustively presents the complicated theory of
adaptation.
It is very important to learn the difference between a film and an
adaptation. According to Robert Stam, “A film is in fact a form of writing that
borrows from other forms of writing.”1 A book uses written words to
“transmit” the message to the reader, while a film uses images instead of
words. Therefore, film can be put at the same level as written works – they
only differ in the medium they use. A film is fully individual – it tells a totally
new and independent story (as the book itself). An adaptation, apparently, does
not create anything new – it retells a story created by somebody else. Making a
good adaptation requires not only the individual creation of a screen-play but
also the reading of a book before that. The story showed in an adaptation may
1
Robert Stam, “Introduction: Theory and Practice of Adaptation,” Literature and Film: A
Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, ed. R. Stam and A. Raengo (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005) 2.
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be changed or modified by the screen-writer who does become a writer and a
creator but, at the same time, it is based on the previous experience of another
writer/creator. In Stam’s terms, novel and adaptation are twins, “[...] or
adaptation can be considered as a parasite, hybrid, or evidencing split
personality.”2 In fact, a novel itself survives and evolves through its adaptation.
Quoting Darwinian biological theory that evolution means mutation and
modification, we can classify an adaptation as a mutation of a source novel. As
Stam claims, adaptations “adapt to” changing environments and changing
tastes, as well as to a new medium, with its distinct industrial demands,
commercial pressures, censorship taboos, and aesthetic norms.
1.1.1 The Hierarchy between ‘Text’ and ‘Copy’ – the Roots of Prejudices
Adaptation critics, as Robert Stam claims, used to be very moralistic in
their “readings” of film adaptation. It was expected that a film adaptation
would be a faithful visualization of a source book. Because of this, terms such
as “infidelity”, “betrayal”, “deformation”, “violation”, “bastardization”,
“vulgarization” and “desecration” were widely used. The first, basic problem
was that criticism attempted to look only on the things that were lost from the
original text, but it seemed to ignore everything that had been gained. The
binary opposition between film and text that was established a long time ago is
quite difficult to deconstruct even nowadays. According to Stam there are
many roots of prejudices that are “responsible” for this hierarchy.
The first root of prejudice “derives from priori valorization of historical
anteriority and seniority, that is, that older arts are necessarily better arts […]
The venerable art of literature
television”3
is seen as superior to the younger art of
Therefore, one reason why literature is always perceived as
superior is the fact that it is relatively older. Literature has some general
historical priority to cinema. The fact that the written word helps people to
express their thoughts and ideas seems to be deeply rooted in human psyche.
Furthermore, novels as such always have the specific priority to their
adaptations. Even today it is considered that the fidelity to the original source
2
3
Robert Stam, 3
Robert Stam, 4
6
determines whether the adaptation is successful or not. Clearly, an adaptation is
not interpreted and analyzed as an individual work of art but as a visualization
of a source text.
The second source of prejudices “derives from the dichotomous
thinking that presumes a bitter rivalry between film and literature. The writer
and the film-maker, according to an old anecdote, are “traveling in the same
boat but they both harbor a secret desire to throw the other overboard.”4 In this
almost Darwinian struggle, the most significant features of art as such are lost.
The filmic text and the literary text are not analyzed in terms of art; they are
tried to be judged and the final decision about the winner has to be made. Leo
Tolstoy saw film as “a direct attack on the old methods of literary art” which
forced writers to “adapt to the new medium.”5 Even today, sophisticated critics
of “visual culture,” such as W.J.T Mitchell, speak of the “protracted struggle
for dominance between pictorial and linguistic signs.”6
The third source of prejudice takes its roots in a phenomenon called
iconophobia. It is the cultural prejudice against the visual arts, which can be
traced not only to Judaic-Muslim-Protestant prohibitions of given images, but
also to the Platonic and Neoplatonic depreciation of the world of phenomenal
appearance. Generally, it was believed that all kinds of visual arts and mass
media were corrupting the audience through dangerously delusional fictions.
Even nowadays, such sophisticated film-literate theorists as Fredric Jameson
see the filmic image as “essentially pornographic,”7 since it demands that we
“stare at the world as though it were a naked body.”8 Therefore, film and other
visual media seem to “threaten to collapse of the symbolic order, the break
down of the literary fathers, patriarchal narrators.’9
The valorization of the verbal, which is typical of cultures rooted in the
sacred world of the “religions of the book,”10 can be seen as the fourth source
4
Robert Stam, 4
Cecile Star, Discovering the Movies, quoted in Kamilla Elliot, “Rethinking the Novel/Film
Debate” (unpublished manuscript) 53
6
W.J.T Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,1980) 43
7
Robert Stam, 6
8
Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (London: Routledge, 1992) 1
9
Ella Shohat, “Sacred World, Profane Image: Theologies of Adaptation,” A Companion to
Literature and Film, ed. R. Stam and A. Raengo (New York: Blackwell, 2007) 32
10
Robert Stam, 6
5
7
of hostility to film and adaptation. Many littérateurs reject films based on
novels. Many historians reject films based on history. Many anthropologists
reject films based on anthropology. The main problem here, is the valorization
of the written word which is seen as privileged medium of communication.
A fifth source of prejudices is anti-corporeality which is “a distaste for
the unseemly ‘embodiedness’ of the filmic text; the ‘seen,’ to recycle a
venerable pun, is regarded as obscene.”11 Film offends through its “reality.” In
a film inescapable materiality, fleshy enacted characters and real locals and
palpable props can be seen. Looking for a title for her essay, Virginia Woolf
describes film spectators as twentieth century “savages,” whose eyes
mindlessly “lick up” the screen.12 Novels are absorbed by the mind’s eye
during reading, while films – by the means of other senses, which are
considered less valuable.
The myth of facility – the notion that films are suspiciously easy to
make and suspiciously pleasurable to watch – is a sixth source of prejudices. In
fact, it is only an illusion. On the production side, this myth ignores the
diversified talents and efforts required to make films. On the reception side, it
ignores “the intense perceptual and conceptual labor”13 such as the work of
iconic designation, visual deciphering, narrative inference and/or construction.
A seventh source is “a subliminal form of class prejudice, a socialized
form of guilt by association.”14 The cinema, perhaps even unconsciously, is
perceived as degraded by the popular mass audience with its lower-class
origins in vulgar spectacles like sideshows and carnivals. According to Stam,
the final source of hostility to film and adaptation is the charge of parasitism.
“Adaptations are seen as parasitical on literature, they borrow into the body of
the source text and steal its vitality.”15 A faithful film adaptation is seen as
unattractive, because of its lack of originality and freshness. An unfaithful film
adaptation is seen as
upbraided and shameful betrayal of the original.
Therefore, according to Robert Stam and his “The Theory and Practice of
Adaptation” the adapter can never win.
11
Robert Stam, 6
From „Pictures,” included In “The Moment and Other Essays,” quoted in Elliott,
„Rethinking the Novel /Film Debate” p.55
13
Robert Stam, 7
14
Robert Stam, 7
15
Robert Stam, 7
12
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1.1.2 From Fidelity to Transtextuality
First of all, the very term “fidelity” has a controversial meaning
nowadays. According to Robert Stam, the fidelity discourse asks very
important questions about the filmic recreation of setting, plot, characters
themselves and the style of the novel. In fact, terms like “infidelity” or
“betrayal” mirror personal feelings and opinions of the reader/spectator. It is
the audience who realizes that a given adaptation was badly made and does not
substantiate what was appreciated in a source novel or that some adaptations
are indeed better than the others. One very important question has to be asked,
namely, what “fidelity” really means. Should the filmmaker be absolutely
faithful to the plot in every detail? That could mean that every adaptation based
on a novel would last for more than 20 hours. Simply adopting a novel without
changing it, as Alain Resnais suggests, is like “reheating a meal.”16 Those
questions lead to another very important aspect which is called “the automatic
difference”17.
The first problem that should be taken into consideration while
analyzing the question of “fidelity” or “infidelity” is the specificity of the
media that is used. Every kind of media: film, novel, photography and painting
requires different methods and sources to be used. The demand of fidelity
ignores the very process of film-making, the important differences in modes of
production. The writer needs only some time, an idea, a pen and a paper, while
the film-maker requires usually high budget. A novel is normally produced by
one person only, while a film requires a group of specialists. Filmmaking and
adaptation require thousands of choices on performance, budget, locale,
format, props etc.
Moreover, there are such issues as available talent or
censorship. All this has its impact on what can be seen on the screen. For all
these reasons, fidelity in adaptation is literally impossible. A filmic adaptation
is automatically different and original due to the change of the medium. Even
the fact that shots have to be edited, generates an “automatic difference”18.
16
Robert Stam, 16
Robert Stam, 16
18
Robert Stam, 16
17
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Furthermore, cinema is both a synesthetic and synthetic art. A film is
synesthetic in its capacity to engage various senses, such as sight or hearing,
and it is synthetic in its “anthropological hunger to devour and digest and
change antecedent arts.”19 While novels have only the one entity – a character,
films have both a character and a performer.
If the terms “fidelity,” “infidelity,” “betrayal” were inadequate tropes,
other, more appropriate, terms had to be invented. According to Robert Stam,
adaptation theory by now “has available a well-stocked archive of tropes and
concepts to account for the mutation of forms across the media: adaptation as
reading, rewriting, critique, translation, transmutation, metamorphosis,
recreation, transvocalization, resuscitation, transfiguration etc.”20 Adaptations
typically mingle literary and cinematic genres. Henry Luis Genette proposes
the term “transtextuality” instead of the term “fidelity.” Transtextuality refers
to “all that which puts one text in relation, whether manifest or secret, with
other texts.”21 According to Genette, there are five types of transtextuality.
The first type of transtextuality is called intertextuality and signifies an
effective co-presence of two texts in the form of quotation, plagiarism and
allusion. The intertext can be oral or written. The second type of transtextuality
is paratextuality, which is the relation within the totality of a literary work. In
general, paratextuality includes everything that “surrounds” the text, such as
titles, prefaces, postfaces, epigraphs, dedications, illustrations, etc, as well as
all materials that are close to the text: posters, trailers, reviews, interviews etc.
All those paratextual materials, in fact, help to reshape one’s understanding of
the text itself. The third type of transtextuality is metatextuality, which is
connected with the critical relation between one text and another. The
commented text can be either factually mentioned or silently evoked.
Metatextuality refers to the entire tradition of rereading and rewriting of the
source novels. One novel can be seen and understood from many different
positions through the ages. That is why many different adaptations of the same
source texts are created and tell the same story from many different
perspectives.
19
Robert Stam, 19
Robert Stam, 25
21
Robert Stam, 27
20
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The fourth type of transtextuality is archtextuality which refers to ‘the
generic taxonomies suggested or refused by the titles or subtitles of a text.’22
Usually, adaptations take over the title from the original novel. However, many
directors rename their adaptations. Sometimes, the change of a title at the same
time suggests the change in content. Sometimes, it is done to demonstrate the
new, “fresh” point of view of the filmmaker.
The final type of transtextuality, due to Robert Stam, is called
hypertextuality. It is a relation between one text (called hypertext) to an
anterior text (or hypotext) which the former text transforms, modifies,
elaborates or extends. In this sense, filmic adaptations are those hypertexts
which transform, modify and change their hypotexts during the process of
edition, selection and actualization.
1.1.3 Genette’s Proposals for Film Adaptations
While analyzing filmic adaptations, the importance of narratology or, in
other words, the mechanisms of narrative, have to be dealt with. Film
narratologists have extrapolated three of Genette’s principal categories taken
from his “[…]double shema engaged by novelistic fiction, i.e. the realation
between the events recounted and the manner and sequence of their telling.”23
These categories are: order, duration and frequency.
The issue of “order” refers to questions on linear versus non-linear
sequence. The story can proceed from the beginning to the end or the sequence
of actions can be reversed and disrupted. Changing the linear sequence of
action may involve such “anachronisms” as prolepses (flashforwards) and
analepses (flashbacks) further divided into external and internal analepses and
mixed analepses.
“Duration”
deals with all the complex relations between time of
discourse – the time it takes to read a novel or watch a film - and the time a
fictional event really lasted. Gentette’s useful concept of “narrative speed”
may be used here. Genette proposes a norm called “constant speed” to suggest
a relatively normal speed of events in relation to which is called “fast” and
22
23
Robert Stam, 30
Robert Stam, 30
11
“slow” speed. The maximum speed, where some actions are completely
dismissed, are called “elipses,”24 while the minimum speed, where the fiction
stops, is called a pause.
Frequency refers to the relationship between how many times an event
occurs in the story and how many times it is narrated in the textual discourse.
According to Genette, there are four major types of narration: singulative
narration where one event is told one time, repetitive narration where one event
is recounted many times, iterative narration where an event that occurred many
times is mentioned once, and finally homologous narration where an event that
occurred many times is told many times as well.
Moreover, adaptation brings up some issues not mentioned by Genette.
Comparative narratology is the issue here. It asks some very important
questions such as why events from the novel’s story were eliminated/added or
changed in the adaptation. Some adaptations remain close to the original text,
some of them are completely changed and modified. Some novels are retold in
the adaptation form the point of view of the main hero, while others use
secondary characters in order to gain a new perspective. A comparative
narratology of adaptation also examines the ways in which adaptations add,
eliminate, or condense characters.
1.2
The Language of Film
All forms of communication have their own language. The language of a
novel, a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, and a film can be analyzed. The
language, as a medium of communication, has been analyzed for many years.
In fact, the language of film helps one to understand why it is possible to make
several versions of one story. For instance, Roman Jacobson claimed that
every language consists of several factors which are involved in
communication. Every act of communication must have the addresser, context,
message, contact, code, and addressee.25 A film also “communicates” and its
language consists of codes and conventions. Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell and Jan
24
Robert Stam, 31
Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," Style in Language, ed. T. Sebeok.
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960) 367
25
12
Udris in their essay “The Language of Film,” say that codes are “particular
methods for communicating meanings and conventions are the ways in which
those codes are usually used.”26 They continue: “The language of film is used
(usually) to tell stories. A film’s form is determined by the ways in which the
story is told by the film and is a combination of style and content. The content
is structured by the narrative and style is shaped by the film techniques
employed.”27 In fact, every film production can be divided into three parts:
preproduction, production and postproduction. The preproduction includes
scriptwriting. The production stage is when actual filming takes place. The
postproduction includes the editing of filmed material. Different film
techniques which help to shape the style of the film, can be defined by four
terms: mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound. I will discuss each of
these techniques on the basis of the essay written by Abrams, Bell and Udris.
The term mise en scène, originally developed in relation to theatre, can be
literally translated as “putting on the stage.”28 When talking about film
production it can be translated as “putting within the shot.”29 The way a film is
created influences the way a film is perceived by the audience. It creates a
“visual meaning,”30 and that is why it is extremely important what a shot
consists of. There are several elements covered by mise en scène: setting,
props, costume, performance, lighting, colour and composition.
The setting provides the space in which all other elements of mise en
scene are placed. The setting itself also produces meaning and it signifies
certain things. Props are inanimate objects placed within the setting, which
may be used to strengthen the effect of the scene, or they may make the
environment in which the action takes place. Costumes help to create
characters in the film. “They can place an actor within a particular historical
period, indicate social class and lifestyle, and even determine what is possible
and what is not.”31 All three categories also indicate the genre of a film.
26
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, “Chapter 2.6: the Language of Film,” Studying Film,
(London: Arnold, 2001) 92
27
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 92
28
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 93
29
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 93
30
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 93
31
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 94
13
The next important category is “performance.” It is all that an actor does
on the stage, which produces a certain meaning. Not only words are important
but also gestures, face expressions and moves, that may indicate different
emotional states such as anger, confidence, uncertainty etc. Lighting
illuminates all elements mentioned above and, at the same time, it also
becomes an element of the shot. Lighting is usually divided into two main
categories: high key (balanced) lighting and low key (chiaroscuro) lighting.
Illumination exposes detail and provides visual information. Color has been
believed to show mood. However, as well as indicating the psychological
effect, colors can also symbolize emotions and values, and, therefore, they
produce meanings in a text. The arrangements of all those elements within the
shot is defined as composition. Abrams, Bell and Udris claim that:
Symetrical composition places elements of a similar shape and size in
similar positions on either side of the shot. Asymmetrical composition
achieves an overall balance by having each side of the shot generally
equate with the other in terms of areas of visual significance. A balanced
composition is usually regarded as visually pleasing as opposed to
unbalanced composition, which may make us feel uneasy or
uncomfortable. 32
Mise en scene is concerned with all the elements that are placed within
the shot, and “cinematography” refers to recording of these elements. There
are several important ingredients of cinematography, such as framing, shot
size, length of take, camera movement, camera angle, and depth of field.
Framing refers to the edges of a shot and determines what is to be excluded and
what is to be included. There is a close link between mise en scene,
composition and framing. However, framing is only realized when the shot is
filmed through the camera lens. Shot size is determined by framing. Shot sizes
are closely related to the narration and progression of scenes. There are many
possible options of shot sizes: extreme long shot (ELS), long shot (LS), mid
shot (MS), close-up (CU), and extreme close-up (ECU). The length of take is
connected with the duration of a shot. Different kinds of narration require
different lengths of take. It is very important, as it shapes and defines the genre
of a film. For instance, the narrative requires long takes in order to give the
32
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 97
14
audience time to familiarize themselves with the setting. An equivalent to a
long shot in a novel is a developed and detailed description of an action, a
person or a situation.
Camera movement is closely tied with the length of take. There are four
main types of camera movement: “in a pan shot the camera rotates horizontally
around a fixed position (often used to follow movement), a tilt shot moves the
camera vertically around a fixed position (typically used to indicate height), a
tracking shot involves a horizontal movement of the camera in which it
changes location[…], a crane shot enables the camera to be raised and lowered
and moved horizontally.”33 Camera angles also provide different meanings.
Usually, the camera angle is horizontal, at the eye level. This is how usually
people communicate and the same relation is tried to be mirrored within the
shot. However, there are also high camera angles and low camera angles that
indicate specific meanings. High camera angle can be used to give the overall
view of the situation and the low camera angle may indicate the position of a
character in relation to something else. The last aspect of cinematography is
called “depth of field.”34 A camera may focus on a small part of what is in the
scene or on the whole scene. Shallow focus is concentrating only on one
element of the shot, and field photography or “deep focus”35 shows everything
form foreground to background.
Editing is the final stage of film production. It involves selections and
putting shots together to form the completed film. One of the possible choices
on film editing is “continuity editing.”36 It is a way of editing that allows the
audience to forget that they are watching a film. They are fully engrossed in
what they see. Annette Kuhn writes: “Continuity editing establishes spatial and
temporal relationships between shots in such a way as to permit the spectator to
‘read’ a film without any conscious effort, precisely because the editing is
invisible.”37 The most important issue in continuity editing is that one shot
logically leads to the next. There are several techniques that make it possible:
movement and speed of editing, shot size, shot/reverse shot editing, eye-line
33
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, The Language of Film, ch.26, 100
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, The Language of Film, ch.26, 103
35
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, The Language of Film, ch.26, 103
36
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, The Language of Film, ch.26, 105
37
Annette Kuhn, “Women’s Pictures: Cinema and Feminism,” The Cinema Book, ed. P. Cook
and M. Bernink, London: British Film Institute, 1999) 40
34
15
match, match on action, cutaway shots, cross-cutting, the 180 degree rule, and
the 30 degree rule.
To make such a “transparent editing” possible, it is very important that
the locations, props, actors and movement in one shot are consistent with
everything that had gone before. The use of variety of shot sizes is also very
important. Shot sizes not only help the viewer to concentrate on the specific
item in the scene, but also to create a logical progression within the scene.
“Editing also helps to clarify situations by joining together shots from different
angles to provide us with different perspectives, thereby creating a fuller
understanding.”38 “The shot/reverse shot editing”39 provides an understanding
of the spatial relationship between the characters and also gives information on
movement and facial expression. Most of the dialogs and interactions between
characters require eye-line match in order to maintain the continuity in editing.
In other words: the direction in which the character looks has to be marked by
the position of the object they are looking at. “Match on action”40 provides
additional information about an event. Different shots of the same action (from
different angles or of different size) are taken together in order to fulfill the
action. A cutaway shot may be edited into a scene. This kind of shot is not
usually directly related to the action, but there is some indirect link. “A
cutaway shot”41 also gives a totally different perspective on what is happening
within the scene and helps to understand it better by directing viewers’
attention to more important details.
Cross-cutting is commonly used to build
suspense. It consists of
editing together shots of events in different locations which are expected
eventually to coincide with each other. There are also some important rules
connected with editing. The 180 degree rule specifies that a camera should not
“cross the line”42 of action when two shots are edited together. The 30 degree
rule indicates that if two shots of the same location or action are edited
together, then either the camera should move position by at least 30 degrees or
the shot size should radically change. There are also some alternatives to
38
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 105
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 105
40
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 106
41
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 106
42
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 107
39
16
cutting. The usual convention is to use a fade from black and fade to black to
end and begin the scene.
Another form of editing is called discontinuity editing. In discontinuity
editing there is no smooth flow of the shots that are edited together. Although it
destroys the continuity of the shots, it is often used as a positive device to
achieve a certain effect. There are four main ways to achieve discontinuity
editing: montage, graphic match, symbolic insert edit, and freeze frame.
Montage is the best known way of discontinuity editing. Here, the shots that
are edited together do not flow smoothly – instead they clash, they conflict
with each other. “Graphic match”43 consists of linking shots containing similar
visual content such as shot size, movement, shapes, and composition.
“Symbolic inert editing”44 describes a shot which is edited in between other
shots and which indirectly represents something else. One final technique is the
freeze frame. It creates discontinuity by stopping the shot for some time – the
moving image comes to a standstill.
Sound is very important at all stages of film production. Film is both
visual and an aural medium. The most important sounds within a film are the
dialogues between the characters. There are also many different sound effects
such as, for instance, those created by the character’s movements and they also
provide the audience with a lot of useful information. Sound is a medium that
helps the film to communicate. There are seven basing sound techniques that
are used in a film production, which I will briefly present in the following
section of my work.
Sound originating from the filmic world is known as diegetic sound.
Typically, this consists of dialogue and sounds created during an action,
including background and ambient noises. Non-diegetic sounds have their
roots in non-filmic world such as music or voice-overs. The use of sound
effects is also commonly used in a film production. The sound effects are very
significant because they can be regarded as signs which produce meaning just as visual elements are signs. Ambient sound is what is heard when there is
no dialog or movement. It is a kind of a background sound. A soundtrack
(music) is usually essential for a film because it creates mood and strengthens
43
44
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 108
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 108
17
emotions. Voice-overs are typically used to “anchor the meanings in a film and
give guidance to the audience.”45 Usually the sound we can hear in a film
directly responds to what we can see on the screen. This kind of sound is called
parallel or appropriate sound. The contrapuntal sound works against what we
see on the screen. The technique called sound bridges helps smooth over the
edit point between two shots.
The language of the film is very significant to understand its message
correctly. It is not only important what we can see on the screen but also the
way in which we can see it. Moreover, not only is visual effect important but
also the sound which creates mood and directs the viewer towards important
details.
1.3
The Major Characteristics of Shakespearian Language and Drama
Reading and, moreover, understanding Shakespeare nowadays is a very
difficult issue. David Cristal in his “The Language of Shakespeare,” says:
“Reading a text is a meeting of minds; and when the minds are separated by
400 years of linguistic change, we must expect some difficulties.”46 The first
trap a reader can encounter is the problem that one usually brings a text to
his/her own language and often forgets about the fact that language is
constantly developing. There are even more obstacles. Some of them are very
obvious: a reader sees a word and does not know what it means. Another kind
of difficulty is much more complicated, because it is hidden. One sees a word
and he/she is convinced that he/she knows it, yet it used to mean something
very different in the past. These words are often called false friends. There are
false friends not only in the vocabulary but also in the pronunciation and
grammar, or in the way characters are talking with each other. Editorial notes
may be very helpful in such a case, however, usually there is not enough place
to explain all important points separated by the period of time. The “easiest”
way to decode a message is to decide whether this usage of language is typical
or not. Yet, in the case of Shakespearian plays, it is difficult to make such a
45
Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris, 111
David Crystal, “The Language of Shakespeare,” Shakespeare: an Oxford Guide, ed. S. Wells
and L. Orlin (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004) 67
46
18
decision. In order to appreciate and understand Shakespeare’s writings we must
also understand the rules of language itself. As the twentieth-century poet
Robert Graves once said, “a poet […] must master the rules of English
grammar before he attempts to bend and break them.”47 This principle applies
to pronunciation, vocabulary and discourse and not only to a poet but to any
writer.
There are three “levels of familiarity,” or, in other words, three types of
difficulty connected with Shakespearian plays. First, there are some words that
were used in old or middle English and are used nowadays. These words are
not problematic at all, as the reader can easily figure out what the meaning is.
There are also some words and expressions that are quite difficult to
understand when they appear without the context. They sound unfamiliar and
the reader cannot guess the exact meaning. However, with the use of context
and cotext, the real meaning can be decoded. What is also very important is the
fact that sometimes the lack of understanding is caused by the lack of the
encyclopedical knowledge and it is not a matter of a change in language. The
third type of difficulty is intermediate between these two extremes, where “at
one level we understand well enough, and at another level we do not.”48 In
order to gain a full understanding, the systematic work and disentangling the
types of difficulty a reader can find there are necessary.
In any language there are some expressions and words that are old (i.e.
archaisms) and some that are new (neologisms). It is very significant to
remember that language is not homogeneous. Furthermore, Early Modern
English was a period of extraordinary dynamic change in language. There were
thousands of words and expressions borrowed from French, Latin or Greek that
became a part of the English language. Shakespeare himself used some words
that seemed to be old-fashioned even for his contemporaries. “Several take us
all the way back to Middle, or Medieval, English.”49 Furthermore, Shakespeare
played with language, broke the rules to achieve a desirable effect. David
47
David Crystal, 68
David Crystal, 69
49
David Crystal, 71
48
19
Crystal says: “Shakespeare seems not to have much liked pompous language,
for several of his major characters poke fun at linguistic affectation.”50
What is more, a range of social situations in Elizabethan England had
been linguistically distinctive. Today, there are such types of English as
scientific, advertising, or broadcasting language, therefore there was legal,
religious and courtly English which in speech represented “different degrees of
formality, intimacy, social class, and regional origins.”51 In Shakespearian
plays, social class and position may be traced from the way people address one
another – the titles they use, “their insults and their oaths.”52
In fact, we know a lot about Middle English because of studying
Shakespeare. “Examining the way an author manipulates (bends and breaks)
linguistic rules gives us insights into the nature of the rules themselves.”53 The
reasons why the author manipulates language are also very significant. It is
always a matter of choice of an author : to use or not to use a linguistic form.
An author can manipulate with grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation as
well.
In the case of grammar, the use of “thou” vs. “you” is very interesting.
In Old English, “thou” was singular and “you” was plural. In the Middle
English “you” began to be used as a polite form of the singular. It was common
to use the form “you” by inferiors to superiors, and “thou” in return. Though,
when an author suddenly changes from “thou” to “you,” there has to be some
hidden meaning. The way in which characters switch from one pronoun to the
other shows their attitudes and relationships.
Usually, the choice of vocabulary is not accidental. Of course, there are
cases when it is not a matter of choice, but of the specific area an author wants
to describe. In such a case, the terms “automatically follow.”54 However, in
most of the situations, there is a choice between one word and another. The
question is also why there was a fashion for inventing the new words. ‘The
answer has to lie in the value of the extra syllable to make the word suit the
50
David Crystal, 71
David Crystal, 72
52
David Crystal, 73
53
David Crystal, 73
54
David Crystal, 73
51
20
rhythm of the poetic line (the metre), which at this point in the speech is
proceeding in a very regular manner, ten syllables at a time.”55
Pronunciation, or the importance of rhythm is also worth to be
mentioned here. Sometimes, the presence or absence of one extra syllable
motivated the choice of the an author. Every change in the verse could be
noticed by an audience. Even a brief pause could be meaningful. Shakespeare
was breaking the rules and in this way he was creating a new kind of language.
‘The Shakespearian linguistic legacy is not in the number of words he used, but
in the way he used them.”56
I will also discuss the matter of the verse in Shakespearian plays. The
definition of verse may be useful here: “Verse may be defined as a succession
of articulate sounds regulated by the rhythm so definite, that we can readily
foresee the results that follow from its application. Rhythm is also met with in
prose, but in the latter its range is so wide, that we can never anticipate its flow,
while the pleasure we derive from verse is founded on this very anticipation.”57
Normally, a listener can trace the rhythm and he/she unconsciously desires it to
follow. If the rhythm fails or changes it can be easily noticed. Despite the fact
that some Shakespearian works are rhymed and some unrhymed, all of them
are rhythmic. Sometimes, it is derived from the metre, “the measured
arrangement of sounds in the poetic line, or simply, the beat.”58 Metre in verse
creates meaning. Paul Russel explains it in the following way: “First, all meter,
by distinguishing rhythmic from ordinary statement, objectifies that statement
and impels it toward a significant formality and even ritualism […] The second
way a meter can ’mean’ is by varying from itself: […] departures from metrical
norms powerfully reinforce emotional effects.”59 To understand Shakespeare’s
poetry, the pattern itself and the variation of the pattern have to be taken under
consideration.
Shakespeare favored unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, for
dramatic speech. The adjective “blank” in “blank verse,” signifying an absence
or lack, establishes one of the defining characteristics of the form, the absence
55
David Crystal, 75
David Crystal, 77
57
Edwin Guest, A History of Engslish Rhythms, ed. W. Skeat (London: Kessinger Pub, 1882) 1
58
Russ McDonald, “Shakespeare’s verse,” Shakespeare: an Oxford Guide, ed. S. Wells and L.
Orlin (Oxford: Oxford UP,2004) 79
59
Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form ( New York: Random House, 1965) 12
56
21
of rhyme. An iamb is a two-syllable unit of sound, with the first syllable
unstressed and the second stressed. Iambic pentameter is a rhythm that had
been associated with “the natural rhythm of the language.”60 It is a kind of
rhythm that is reliable, predictable which sounds natural. The animating factor
in Shakespeare’s poetry is the “tension between the iambic pattern and
opposition to its regularity.”61 Changing the pattern is not only a matter of
sound effects, but also of the introduction of some important changes in
meaning. It is visible especially in Shakespearian dramatic speeches. In every
line of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter the regularity is present, but it is not
absolute. There are not two lines that would be identical. Each line is
distinctive, and it depends on the semantic sense of the words and the delivery
of the actor. Syllabic inversion is another kind of variety in the blank verse: the
normal opposition unstressed – stressed is reversed to stressed – unstressed.
Russ McDonald explains the effect that is created by such an inversion: “[…]
obviously the iambic feet before and after the trochee are affected because the
normal alternating relation is violated.”62 Shakespeare consciously used these
tools. A speaker who forcefully breaks the regular pattern “accentuates the
word or phrase that causes the rupture”63 and, in this way, he/she gives a
special meaning to the inverted foot. Shakespeare knew many linguistic tools
to change the medieval pattern. According to Russ McDonald some of them
are: the headless line, in which the initial unstressed syllable is eliminated, the
short line, in which the omission of two or three feet “brings the speaker to an
emphatic halt, the alexandrine, a line with six full feet.”64 Therefore, not only
the pattern itself is important for the meaning but also variations of this pattern,
which reverse or totally change the previous meaning.
60
Raymond Chapman, “The Treatment of Sounds in Language and Literature,” Oxford
Companion to the English Language, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998) 496
61
Russ McDonald, 83
62
Russ McDonald, 87
63
Russ McDonald, 87
64
Russ McDonald, 87
22
2. Hamlet Modernized
Modern directors of film adaptations usually decide to update and
modernize their versions of original texts. In fact, the demands of the
contemporary film market and preferences of the audience leave them no other
choice. Nowadays, it is assumed that not many people would be interested in
watching another faithful adaptation of Shakespearian play. For instance, when
Al Pacino was creating his own vision of Shakespearian Richard III, he first
asked a few by-passers what they know and understand about the
Shakespearian language. Surprisingly enough, almost nobody was able to tell
anything about the Bard and his works. The modern adaptators are aware of
the fact that Shakespearian language is complicated enough for contemporary
viewers, and that their main task is to mach the words with the action and the
action with the words. It is the simplest rule for any film director, however, it is
particularly difficult in the case of adaptations of texts from other epochs.
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, in his essay titled “Baseless fabric” vs.
“Potent Art”: Towards new perspectives on Shakespeare cinematic revisions,
analyzes the difficulties every director has to deal with, in order to produce not
only a good adaptation but also a good film. He claims that “The director’s
artistic choice is essential. His interpretation is based on imagery and ideas, on
textual meaning turned into images, on suiting the words to the action of the
screen without abandoning the text, on offering a negotiation between the
rights of the texts and his own rights as interpreter.”65 The choice is not easy.
The boundary between fidelity and infidelity, or interpretation and overinterpretation, is very thin. Departing form the text is not a problem itself. The
problem lies in the necessity of conveying the proper message of the original
text, and, at the same time, creating a prized work of art. James Griffith says
that “the real issue remains quality, not quantity. If a film lacks certain events
or characters, it becomes a more or less serious problem relative to intended
effects; it is not a problem by definition.”66
65
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, “’Baseless Fabric’ vs. ‘Potent Art:’ towards new perspectives on
Shakespeare cinematic revisions,” Re-Interpretations of English. Essays on Literature, Culture
and Film (II), ed. B. Crespo Garcia (Coruńa: Universidade de Coruńa, 2004) 20.
66
James Grifith, Adaptations as Imitations: Films from Novels (Newark: N.J.:U of Delaware,
1997) 67
23
That is why the directors, like, for example, Almereyda or Taymor,
decide to prevent as much as possible from the original text, but, at the same
time, they modernize and make the whole story more comprehensible, by
bringing the text to the viewer and not the other way round. The art of cinema,
as any other form of art, has its own rights and rules, which I described in the
first chapter of my thesis. Mark Thornton Burnett emphasizes the fact that
cinema has a great influence on Shakespearian plays (and other old texts that
are being adaptated) and claims that “Cinema […] has begun to sound the
death-knell of the Bard’s entrenched status and, even if his influence is courted,
the filmic tragedies also acknowledge Shakespeare’s new guise as a name, an
image, a textual trace, a collocation of signifiers.”67 In fact, the plays of
Shakespeare cannot be analyzed any more in the old manner. By using the
advanced techniques and modern devices in their adaptations, the directors
began a new trend in understanding and interpreting Shakespeare, and these
trends and currents are changing the viewer’s perception of the play as a whole.
According to Katherine Rowe, leaving the text behind is a very popular
praxis among modern adaptators nowadays. In fact, it is easier to change not
only a setting and characters, but also modernize the language, vocabulary, the
way of speaking and pronouncing words. However, what is more difficult but
at the same time more prized as well, is not changing the source text, but
accommodating it to modern times, and despite leaving the text unchanged,
making it fully comprehensible on the audience. Thornton continues his
thought and states that “every Shakespearian film adaptation reveals a nostalgic
tendency, a desire to update the past in the idiom of the present.”68 In the
following chapter, I am going to analyse Almereyda’s adaptation of Hamlet
and, what is more important, I am going to focus on the devices and techniques
he uses to create an adaptation that combines both original Shakespearian tone
and universalism which makes the play timeless.
67
Mark Thornton Burnett, “Contemporary Film Versions of the Tragedies,” A Companion to
Shakespeare’s Works, ed. J.E. Howard and R. Dutton (London: Blackwell, 2003) 282
68
Mark Thornton Burnett, “Contemporary Film Versions of the Tragedies,” 281
24
2.1 Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)
Michael Almeryeda’s Hamlet is considered by many critics to be the
most modern version of the old Shakespearian play. For instance, Mark
Thornton Burnett claims that “Of all of the films of the tragedies produced in
the 1990s, it is […] Almeryeda’s Hamlet that most convincingly refracts the
forms and effects of modernity.”69 Indeed, in his adaptation Almeryeda uses all
the modern techniques and technologies to fully and comprehensibly convey
the message of the tragedy. I am going to analyse many different concepts of
this adaptation, such as the technical devices Almereyda uses here, the way he
manipulates with the modern technology to achieve a certain effect, and also
the changes he made in the creation of characters and settings. It is very
significant that he did not decide to change any word from the original play,
and despite this fact an audience may have the impression that the script was
written by a contemporary writer. According to Jan Kott, “the genius of Hamlet
consists in the fact that the play can serve as a mirror. An ideal Hamlet would
be one most true to Shakespeare and most modern at the same time.”70
Anybody who wants to make a good adaptation of this play, must find
the consensus between the language of Middle Ages and the language of
modern reality. However, Almeryeda himself said that the only rule he tried to
follow while making this adaptation was suiting “[…] the action to the word,
the word to the action.”71 In the next subchapter, among other things, I will
depict the differences between the original play and the adaptation.
2.1.1 Something Old, Something New - Almereyda’s Vision
There are many of different adaptations of Hamlet play (naming for
example Olivier’s or Branagh’s versions as the most famous ones) and
hundreds of different critical approaches to this story. T.S. Eliot noted that
“Hamlet is like the Mona Lisa, something so overexposed you can hardly stand
69
Mark Thornton Burnett, “Contemporary Film Versions of the Tragedies,” 277
Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (New York: Norton Library, 1964) 52
71
Michael Almereyda, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Screenplay Adaptation (London:
Faber, 2000) 10
70
25
to look at it.”72 In fact, the modern viewer deals with Hamlet even more often
than he/she thinks. There are some filmic versions of Hamlet that do not
directly refer to it in the title itself, but use its main plot (for instance The Lion
King – the story known to almost everybody). However, not everybody is
aware of the fact that many very popular films have their roots in the original
Shakespearian tragedies.
Lynda E. Boose and Richard Bure call this
phenomenon “Hollywoodization of Shakespeare”73 and as examples mention
such films as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Action Hero or Renaissance
Man.
However, instead of diminishing the value of the adaptation as
“another” Hamlet’s film, the universalism of the message of the original play
should be taken under consideration. The most special and unique feature of
this play is the fact that its message has been valid and “alive” since
Shakespearian times till nowadays. Almeryeda himself explains that
“masterpieces are definably
masterpieces because they have a way of
manifesting themselves in our everyday lives.”74 Furthermore, masterpieces are
timeless, and the problems they raise are not limited only to one single
generation. However, the task of a director who decides to adapt a masterpiece
of literature, is very challenging and difficult. According to a number of critics,
Michael Almeryeda is the one who most successfully conveyed the original
message in a modern and updated manner.
Michael Almeryeda literally “translates” the original story into
nowadays world. Thus, he moves Hamlet to 20th century Manhattan, changes
Denmark Kingdom into modern Denmark Corporation “as there is nothing like
a worldwide image corporation to be the contemporary background of the
essential topics of Shakespeare’s text: corruption, chaos, decay and doubts.”75
The modern audience feels comfortable from the very beginning of the film, as
the background is so well known that they can “move” to that world without
72
Michael Almereyda, Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Screenplay Adaptation (London: Faber,
2000) 8
73
Lynda E. Boose and Richard Burt, “Totally Clueless? Shakespeare goes Hollywod in the
1990’s,” Shakespeare, The Movie: Popularizing the plays on film, tv and video, ed. L.E. Boose
and R. Burt (New York: Routladge, 2002) 8
74
Michael Almereyda, 8
75
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, “’Baseless Fabric’ vs. ‘Potent Art:’ towards new perspectives on
Shakespeare cinematic revisions,” Re-Interpretations of English. Essays on Literature, Culture
and Film (II), ed. B. Crespo Garcia (Coruńa: Universidade de Coruńa, 2004) 20
26
any great effort. In fact, the film presents their own world, the reality they live
in and all the problems and injustices connected with that world. If the story
was to be given some level of familiarity, Almeryeda did not have any other
choice. He had to “translate the Danish kingdom into a multimedia corporation,
and […] watch the story unfold in penthouse hotel rooms, sky-level office
corridors, a coffee shop, and an airplane, the Guggenheim museum.”76
Almeryeda himself explains his choice by claming that “The chief
thing was to balance respect for the play with the respect for contemporary
reality – to see how thoroughly Shakespeare can speak to the present moments,
how they can speak to each other.”77 Instead of trying to bring the audience to
the original text, Almereyda brings the original text to the audience by
interpreting the play through the “lenses” of modernity. Almeryeda continues
his thought and says that his “[…] main job, anticipating work behind the
camera, was to imagine a parallel visual language that might hold a candle to
Shakespeare’s poetry. There was no wish to illustrate the text, but to focus it,
building a visual structure to accommodate Shakespeare’s imagery and
ideas.”78 Therefore, the main preoccupation of the director was to
accommodate, and even to “domesticate” Shakespearian language by putting it
in the frame of contemporary reality.
Corruption, decay of moral values, cheating and lying, violence, and
lack of humanity in fact, create the background for everyday life. What could
be considered as shocking in Shakespearian times, is not shocking today
anymore. Because of that fact, Almereyda not only showed all those things
which Shakespeare wanted to reveal to his contemporaries, but also the dangers
and traps waiting for modern individual if the situation will not change. What
Almeryeda does, is creating the universal Every Man named Hamlet. In fact,
he represents every individual human being, who is not able to deal with the
cruelties and injustices of the world and is looking for the solitude and
understanding. For the first time in the history of Hamlet’s adaptations the hero
is a young man, not an experienced and older person, like in Branagh’s or
Olivier’s versions. This helps to comprehend the hesitations and uncertainties
76
Michael Almereyda, 10
Michael Almereyda, 10
78
Michael Almereyda, 10
77
27
Hamlet undergoes. Also in the original play, Hamlet is created as an young,
inexperienced and even naïve persona sometimes. Ethan Hawke, filmic
Hamlet, claims that it was very easy to identify with the personage of the
young Prince, because of the fact that many of Hamlet’s peers “feel lost and
drowning under the weight of their parents’ judging eye.”79
Moreover, the reality we live in nowadays is a perfect background for
the problems Shakespeare himself wanted to reveal. The word in which
injustice and corruption is something completely natural and normal is a very
good frame for a young person who does not match to that pattern. Hamlet
feels the best when he is isolated from that spoiled reality and the rate race. In
his adaptation Almeryeda wanted to prove that our everyday world is not very
different from the corrupted Denmark, which seems to be a prison for an
individual and sensitive human mind. The director himself says that placing the
action in the contemporary world is “another way to touch the core of Hamlet’s
anguish, to recognize the frailty of spiritual values in a material world, and to
get a whiff of something rotten in Denmark on the threshold of our selfcongratulatory new century.”80 Despite the fact that much time passed since
Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, the problems he mentions there are still valid
and important nowadays.
2.1.2. Media Saturated Technology in Almeryeda’s Hamlet
Almeryeda uses a lot of different techniques to modernize and
“domesticate” his vision of Hamlet. The most important and visible one, is the
usage of many different technologies and modern media to convey the
meaning. Katherine Rowe, in her essay concerning the importance of memory
in Hamlet, states that “in fact, Almereyda’s film probes both the strengths and
limitations of different memory technologies, including photography, film, and
digital video. The film also serves to remind us that these media, like earlier
forms of artificial memory, are historically composite technologies that
incorporate multiple stances towards remembering – technophilic, nostalgic,
79
Ethan Hawke, “Introduction,” ed. Michael Almereyda, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A
Screenplay Adaptation (London: Faber, 2000) 13
80
Michael Almereyda, 11
28
skeptical – often at the same time.”81 The memory is one of the basic themes
in the original play itself. Hamlet is asked to “remember” all the injustices and
cruelties that are happening in front of his eyes. He is asked not to forget whom
he is and what kind of destiny he has. He is asked to remember that he is not
able to change his own fate, as he is entangled in the reality he wishes he could
escape from.
In the original play, this act of remembering is transferred through
“words, words, words.”82 Correspondingly, Almeryeda chooses images,
images, images. Hamlet is, in fact, surrounded by images that help him not to
forget about his unavoidable fate. From the very beginning of the film, we see
Hamlet with his private video camera, and from that very first moment till the
end of the movie he is going to use it as his own, private medium of
recollection. According to Frow, memory serves as “construction under
conditions and constrains determined by the present [rather than] the repetition
of the physical traces of the past.”83 Memory is a tool which is all the time
updated and shaped by the present experiences. The memories themselves do
not remain always the same, they are perceived by one through the perspective
of different present situations. Hamlet is a story constructed from the memories
and recollections which by themselves are nothing more than just memories.
Only seen through the perspective of the present, they develop and change their
meaning. Hamlet’s video narratives take over the role of the memories in
Almeryeda’s version. According to Katherine Rowe, “the media allegory in
Almeryeda’s Hamlet focuses more narrowly on technologies of memory. His
preoccupation is the way film and video mediate past experience, both for the
individual and the community.”84 What Shakespearian Hamlet would convey
by the usage of words, Almeryeda’s Hamlet conveys by the usage of images.
However, the main purpose of those recollections is not to give the
audience the idea about the past events, but to give them a perspective for the
present, because “Hamlet’s videos create narratives of the past not for the
81
Katherine Rowe, “Remember Me: Technologies of Memory in Michael Almereyda’s
Hamlet,” ed. R. Burt and Lynda E. Boose, Shakespeare The Movie II: Popularizing the plays
on film, tv, video and dvd (London: Routledge) 43
82
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 18
83
John Frow, Time and commodity culture : essays in cultural theory and postmodernity,
(Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1997) 228
84
Katherine Rowe, 46
29
purpose of accurate retrieval but in response to present interests and desires.
The formal features of film and video supply a cognitive grammar for the mind
as it stores and recombines the traces of the past.”85
In fact, it is not history
that Hamlet looks for in his own video creations, but the deeper understanding
of the present and “a connection between collective experience and his own
loss.”86 This complex set of media technologies, genres, and practices are not
only there in the film to serve as an addition to the updated modern setting, in
which technology is ubiquitous, but also as “nuanced ways that are central to
the meaning of the film and to its interpretation of Hamlet.” 87
Despite the fact that Shakespeare’s original story may seem distant to
the modern media saturated technology, these two competently correspond to
each other. Peter S. Donaldson explains this connection by claiming that
Hamlet has “presented a wide range of contemporary media on screen,
reframing or ‘remediating’ them as elements of cinema and thus creating a
multi-leveled idiom that recalls Shakespeare’s habit of drawing metaphors
from book and manuscript production as well as from the theater.”88 Courtney
Lehmann also admits that the media technology is constructing the specific
meaning and showing the way Almeryeda reads Hamlet himself.
What is also very significant here, is the usage of pixelvision camera,
instead of the regular one.
The history of pixelvision itself creates some
specific background for the understanding of the film and helps to comprehend
the way in which a hidden, additional meaning is presented. Pixelvision
cameras were first created as a children toy - a very simple cameras that
allowed one to record some scenes and directly after that to watch them on a
small camera screen. The specific quality of the “grainy” image was later
appreciated by the alternative filmmakers, who were particularly interested in
“its peculiar and unpredictable rendition of contrast, and its shimmering
distortions of direct light or highly reflective surfaces.”89 Pixelvision is not a
very popular art form nowadays, especially since the cameras have not been
85
Katherine Rowe, 46
Katherine Rowe, 47
87
Peter S. Donaldson, “Hamlet among the Pixelvisionaries: Video Art, Authenticity, and
‘Wisdom’ in almeryeda’s Hamet,” ed. D. Henderson, A Concise Companion to Shaksepare on
Screen (Oxford:Blackwell Publishing, 2006) 217
88
Peter S. Donaldson, 216
89
Peter S. Donaldson, 218
86
30
produced for a long time. Despite not being very popular, they provided artists
with new possibilities of creating a specific, yet very spontaneous and
unpredictable meaning. Peter S. Donaldson claims that “pixelvision was
designed for authenticity effects and its history serves as one more reminder of
the role of social and technological construction in narratives of artistic
naiveté.”90 By giving Hamlet PXL 2000, Almeryeda once again proves that his
choices are not accidental at all. Later in his essay, Donaldson explains this
idea and states that: “As a childern’s toy [the pixelvision camera] is appropriate
for Hamlet’s family memories; at the center of a sophisticated suite of
recording and editing tools it links Hamlet to the director’s own work in
alternative cinema.”91 It cannot be forgotten that apart from being a seriously
confused young man, Hamlet is also a filmmaker, and his video recordings are
not only series of family memories, but also small works of art.
Hamlet’s private video diary, which always varies from white to black,
stands in a direct opposition to the vividly colored world of the contemporary
Manhattan. From the very beginning of the film, we see Hamlet speaking to us
through the lenses of his own camera. Hamlet himself is experimenting with
his camera, he is a filmmaker who wants to achieve the best possible effect,
and, on the at the same time he is a lost individual who tries to gain some
distance by watching himself speaking. The first words that praise the creation
of the human being are contrasted with Hamlet’s ironic tone of voice and
images he presents. He says:
What a piece of work is a man.
How noble in reason,
How infinite in faculties.
In form, in moving,
How express and admirable.
In action, how like an angel.
In apprehension, how like a god.
The beauty of the world,
The paragon of animals. 92
Explosions, cartoon monsters, atomic bombs, war machines are representing
the “beauty of the world” indeed. From the very beginning it can be noticed
90
Peter S. Donaldson, 223
Peter S. Donaldson, 219
92
Hamlet, II, ii, 15
91
31
that Hamlet is imprisoned in the contemporary world of corruption and
advertisements, colorful logos and fast-moving lifestyle. Mark Thornton
Burnett says that “Almereyda’s Hamlet declares its engagement with market
forces throughout. The film abounds in logos and advertisements, with the
prominence of ‘Key Food’ and ‘Panasonic’ functioning to indicate a moment
defined by the need for product placement.”93 The video solitudes provide a
kind of springboard for Hamlet’s tired mind which is unable to get used to that
“beauty.”
Peter S. Donaldson also mentions “the opposition between Hamlet as a
filmmaker and the corporate media system associated with The Denmark
Corporation.”94 Hamlet as an alternative filmmaker breaks the rules, goes
beyond the limitations of domesticated culture and creates his response to the
imprisoned human mind. The problem with this mode of resistance is that both
Hamlet and Almeryeda are entangled into the system they try to resist. This
brief black-and-white scenes created by Hamlet at the beginning contrast with
the previous scene picturing the vivid city centre and the scene that follows it.
Mark Thornton Burnett also claims that “Both the motif of the prison and the
film’s late capitalist signifier come together in technology, in the variety of
communicative equipment at the present historical juncture.”95 Contemporary
Hamlet is imprisoned in the world of capitalism and media corporations which
seriously endanger the freedom of thought, while original Shakespeare was
imprisoned in the world of corrupted Denmark. Almereyda very convincingly
depicts the original meaning by overexposing the motif of limitations that
human being has to overcome all the time.
2.1.3 “To be, or not to be” – the Existential Dilemma
Almereyda’s genius fully manifests itself in the most famous Hamlet’s
“to be, or not to be” scene. Donaldson says that “Almereyda’s version of the
speech is more resolutely and literally depressive than Shakespeare’s.”96
Indeed it is so, mainly because of the fact that words are this time accompanied
93
Mark Thornton Burnett, 278
Peter S. Donaldson, 217
95
Mark Thornton Burnett, 278
96
Peter S. Donaldson, 218
94
32
by images. Almeryeda creates a specific background for the famous sequence
by using the Buddhist concept of “interbeing.” While Hamlet is watching
seductive positions of Ophelia recorded by his PXL2000, while in the
background Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the Buddhist theory which claims
that the word “to interbe” is an alternative to the word “to be,”
“[…] because it is not possible to be by yourself. You need other
people in order to be. You need other beings in order to be. Not only
you need your father, mother but also your uncle, brother, sister,
society. But you also need sunshine, river, trees, air, birds, elephants
and so on. So it’s impossible to be by yourself alone, you have to
interbe with everyone and everything else. And therefore ‘to be’ means
‘to interbe’.” 97
The later shots of his own suicide “positions,” are intertwined with eroticized
close-ups of Ophelia. Through the images, Almereyda shows the mental
process Hamlet undergoes. He has to decide whether “to be” or “not to be.”
Looking at Ophelia, he considers the option of “interbe” – yet not with
everybody, only with her. The sexual moment recorded by the video tape and
ancient wisdom in the background, create a specific opposition between
tradition and modernity, between living and “interbeing” with the others, and
closing oneself in one’s own world. Donaldson notices that “What he takes
from the discourse of “interbeing,” then, is a sense of the importance, indeed
the urgency, of breaking out of his solitude and “inetrbeing” with one person,
whereas Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of a relationship to immediate family,
society, ‘elephants’,
and indeed, with ‘everything and everyone else.’”
98
Therefore, Hamlet did not completely understand (or did not want to
understand) the theory as a whole. But even this half reading of the message
produces a change in Hamlet’s perception: “[…] hearing [the doctrine] in the
context of reviewing his memories of Ophelia, he foregoes the isolation of his
video-suffused bedroom/editing suite and moves towards sociability,
abandoning for a moment the simulacra of electronic media for pen, paper, and
a solitary table in an all-night diner where he writes poetry intended to be
delivered to Ophelia face to face.”99 For a while, Hamlet leaves his own small
97
Hamlet, dir. Michael Almereyda, perf. Ethan Hawke, DVD, Double A Films, 2000
Peter S. Donaldson, 226-227
99
Peter S. Donaldson, 228
98
33
world, and decides to go to the society (identifying it with the person of
Ophelia). The teaching first narrows Hamlet’s mind to Ophelia, but when this
test fails, Hamlet decides that “not to be” at all is the best alternative to “to be.”
In Donaldson words, “Hamlet has misheard, misrecognized the
message.”100 Hamlet lives in his own closed world. It is worth to notice that
almost all the time Hamlet looks at the world through glass – the lances of his
PXL2000, the sunglasses. Furthermore, the viewer may have an impression
that Hamlet is closed in the kind of “the bell jar,” that he separates himself
from the reality and corrupted modernity. He feels safe, closed in his world of
digital cameras and alternative cinema, where no rules have to be obeyed. The
first moment when he decides to participate in this world, is when he opens the
glass door of his balcony to let the ghost of his father in. With this symbolical
gesture, he lets the whole hated reality into his mind, as well. Mark Thornton
Burnett also notices that: “These hard interiors and exteriors suggest that
communing with the self is directly related to the breakdown of organic social
communities; the rigidity of the film’s glass surfaces incarnates the unfeeling
quality of its human relations. In this connection architectural glass goes handin-hand with camera glass, with the secular economy that marks our identity as
a transparent property.”101 The overwhelming forces of the market seem to
“swallow” heroes.
From the very beginning, Hamlet has a problem with communicating
with other human beings and this communication problem is later transformed
into the problem of understanding the others. In fact, Hamlet rarely
communicates with the others face to face. All kinds of techniques are used:
from recording his own thoughts on an answering machine to sending faxes
and communicating through the video images. “Hamlet suggests that language
is no longer the propriety of the individual subject: it can be taken over by
technology and ventriloquized.”102 Indeed, in Almeryeda’s adaptation, the
characters speak through technology: pictures, newspaper articles, videos etc.
When Hamlet’s test with Ophelia fails, he seems to be convinced all
kinds of communication are always destructive for the freedom of human
100
Peter S. Donaldson, 228
Mark Thornton Burnett, 278
102
Mark Thornton Burnett, 279
101
34
mind. Hamlet gives his famous monologue in a very specific place – the videorenting store. By doing that Almereyda underlines the importance of video
technology in the life of a young filmmaker (the same relation is reflected in
Shakespearian’s Hamlet obsession with words and writing). Moreover,
Almereyda also depicts the state of Hamlet’s mind. The scene is located in the
section of action films. The hesitating words of Hamlet are accompanied by the
explosion scenes in the background, which signify the black thoughts of the
main hero and may serve as the announcement of what will happen in the end.
However, what was initially intended by Almeryeda was quite different from
the final scene. The monologue was to begin in the Whitney Viola Museum,
and his “Slowly Turning Narrative” was to stand as a background for the first
Hamlet’s words. Whitney Viola himself explains the main idea of his “Slowly
Turning Narrative” video exhibition as : “the ephemerality of the self, its
connectedness to the world, its persistence as a center of meaning [and where]
the entire space becomes an interior for the revelations of a constantly turning
mind absorbed with itself.”103
In fact, Hamlet stands in the middle of “Slowly Turning Narrative,” and
the words that accompanied the exhibition: “The one who finds, the one who
meets, the one who waits, the one who dives” could have been a very
convincing background for the entangled and lost mind. However, because of
some technical obstacles, this idea could not have been realized and finally the
whole scene takes place in Blockbuster video-renting store. Peter S. Donaldson
comments on the result of such a change in the original script: “The ‘to be or
not to be’ speech is therefore more bitter, less connected to his own
filmmaking, and unconnected to video installation art. Instead, Hamlet is more
despairingly absorbed in lamenting the injustices of the world.”104
Furthermore, the bitterness of the explosions and killing scenes provides an
additional depressive accent that enforces Hamlet’s misunderstanding of the
creation of the world and his final resignation of attempts to comprehend it.
The words delivered in this background stand in opposition to his first
103
Bill Viola, “Video Black: The Mortality of the Image,” ed. D. Hall and S. J. Fifer,
Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art (New York: Aperture, 1994) 47
104
Peter S. Donaldson, 233
35
“rehearsals of the lines in his Pixelvision suicide attempts.”105 It’s time to take
some “action” and move from the imagined world of recorded monologues to
the real world. It is also worth noticing that the sequence in the Blockbuster is
the first sequence delivered directly to the audience, without the usage of a
video camera. For the first time Hamlet says directly what he thinks and
decides; that this is the highest time to act and react instead of merely
observing the facts. This central scene serves as a turning point in both
Almeryeda’s adaptation and Shakespeare’s original play, and here Shakespeare
genuine and hypnotic words are also accompanied by the shots, that by
themselves convey the central message of the scene.
2.1.4 The Film within the Film – Hamlet’s Video The Mousetrap
Hamlet is a filmmaker and that cannot be forgotten at any time. His
“abilities” and “talent” are revealed in his version of The Mousetrap. In the
original play the audience is offered a play within the play. In Almeryeda’s
adaptation a film within the film is offered instead. In fact, from the very
beginning of the film, the audience is prepared for this central moment when
the consciousness of the King- Murderer is caught. Hamlet is making his small
alternative works of arts, combining many different techniques to achieve some
artistic effects. Mark Thornton Burnett also claims that: “In his version of The
Mousetrap allusive motifs and passages articulate Hamlet’s abrasive
confrontation with contemporary ideologies.”106 Indeed, The Mousetrap is not
only the actual trap laid for the King, but also a small masterpiece of
alternative cinema and, at the same time, it serves as a critique of modern
reality. Burnett continues his thought and adds that: “The film, one might
argue, is used intertextually, since it sparked off a crisis in the culture of
censorship, which resulted in a landmark court decision to allow explicit
sexuality to reach a national audience.”107 In his film, Hamlet uses the collage
technique and variety of different filmic scenes from family films, horror and
105
Peter S. Donaldson, 233
Mark Thornton Burnett, 280
107
Mark Thornton Burnett, 280
106
36
criminal films, historic films, nature photography and even early pornography.
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonoso comments on this scene in the following way:
“Images are Hamlet’s world, his way of expressing himself, his
memory. Through a composite of images he explains the meaning of
the whole Mousetrap sequence. The film/video needs no text or actors
to perform the action. […] Almereyda drastically cuts a great deal of
the original text but he brilliantly manages to keep the images, the
ideas, the meaning of this scene within the overall narrative structure of
the play. The Mousetrap scene was designed to offer the representation
on the stage of what the Ghost has narrated in order to puzzle Claudius:
‘the play is the thing/wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.’ In
Almereyda’s perspective, it is the image, the collage, the film/video
what captures the conscience of Denmark Corporation’s CEO. The
effect is the same Shakespeare wanted to obtain.” 108
Yet, Almereyda again modernized and updated the famous sequence; he
achieved the same originally intended effect, but the whole scene is more
understandable and clear for the contemporary audience who is much more
accustomed to the filmic stories than theatrical productions. Katherine Rowe
supports this point of view and claims that the technological experience used in
the film “[…] is not for Hamlet to transcend mediating technologies but to
inhabit them in a way that is fully portable and transmissible to others.”109
The Mousetrap is, however, not fully legible for all the characters in
the story. The audience who is incorporated into the plot, and the King who is
aware of what he had done, are able to comprehend the message hidden
underneath different images. “The Mousetrap generates strong individual and
collective responses in Hamlet’s onscreen, theater audience […], ”110 Rowe
claims, and at the same time admits, that those responses are not only
connected with the instant message of the film, but also, even more strongly,
with the individual experiences and tastes. Rowe also claims that “Home video
technologies […] are now so individuated that we really have no idea if we
can go around handing our version of the past to someone else – as Ophelia
does her photographs – and expect it to be legible.”
111
The personal
experiences recorded on the video or photography may not be fully
understandable to anybody but the author. That’s why Hamlet does not use
108
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 23
Katherine Rowe, 52
110
Katherine Rowe, 52
111
Katherine Rowe, 52
109
37
actors, text or even scenes from his own video diary – he remains neutral by
using well-known, or at least quite popular, film selections.
2.1.5 “The Rest is Silence” – Shakespeare’s Words in Modern
Background
Almeryeda’s story is connected with images, films, photography and
technology. The final scene of the film is very interestingly interpreted by
Almeryeda and is “crucial for the resolution of the play’s dramatic tension.”112
This last scene is filtered by the technological vision, that in fact is dominating
in the film. The fight between Hamlet and Leartes is called by J.L. Alonso as
“humorous technological metaphor,”113 because of the fact that they are “wired
and every movement is tabulated on an electronic score counter.”114 Almereyda
decides to combine the two appearances into one to make Hamlet say his last
speech, while lying badly hurt on the floor:
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in
pain. To tell my story.
The rest is silence. 115
The first four lines are taken from Hamlet’s first textual appearance, and the
last one can be found at the end of his second textual appearance. Jorge Luis
Bueno notices that “Almeryeda summarizes both to create a pause between ‘To
tell my story’ and ‘The rest is silence.’”116 In that pause he offers another
filmic collage – at this time serving as the strain of Hamlet’s memories and
creating the actual story he wants to be transferred. Again, images, black and
white fragments form the whole movie, selections from Hamlet’s life, in which
“memory and reality merge through recollections that seem to be seen through
a video-camera monitor,”117 dominate the scene. This is the last artistic
112
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 24
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 24
114
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 24
115
Hamlet, V, ii, 380-395
116
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 24
117
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 24
113
38
performance Hamlet dedicates to his audience. After Hamlet declares “the rest
is the silence,” no more images or words are offered.
The very end of Almereyda’s adaptation offers a surprise that in fact is
very matches to the whole ideology of the film. Almereyda prepared a final
shot that offers a perfect match with the general perspective and style he has
adopted. After Horatio laments Hamlet’s death and says: “Now cracks a noble
heart. Good night, sweet prince”118 – the image falls into black and the next
shot offered shows a TV screen. The newscaster is announcing Fortinbras’
ascension to the throne of Denmark Corporation. The words used for this
narration are taken from a few characters: Fortinbras, an ambassador at the end
of the play, and the Player King in The Mousetrap play. Jorge Luis Bueno
Alonso sees this ending as “[…] the summary of the whole movie through the
contemporary visual mass media.”119 The newscaster says:
This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,
What feats is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot 120
So bloodily hast struck? The sight is dismal;121
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours,
Their ends none of our own. 122
However, that is not the final idea Almereyda had. A few seconds after the
words are announced by the newscaster, the very same words appear on a
teleprompter. Almereyda offers his own explanation of his final choice:
“Additional lines were lifted from the Player King’s speech, sagely
quoted in Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare and the Invention of The
Human. Proffessor Bloom starts his book with these lines, and makes a
convincing case for their centrality in Shakespeare’s skeptical view of
things. When Mr. Macneil (the newscaster) suggested we feed him the
text on a teleprompter, it made perfect sense to end this image-saturated
movie with a final shot of words. Shakespeare’s words, ascending a
glowing screen. Safe to say they’ll survive a deluge of further
adaptations, images and ideas, until silence swallows us all.”123
118
Hamlet, V, ii, 397
Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, 25
120
Hamlet, V, ii, 371-373
121
Hamlet, V, ii, 374
122
Hamlet, V, ii, 213-215
123
Michael Almereyda, 143
119
39
Almeryeda’s film from the very beginning was “obsessed” with images, as
Shakespeare’s play was “obsessed” with words. Almereyda again rearranges
the setting by providing the audience with the TV news, which is so wellknown and domesticated in nowadays world.
All in all, locating the play in the modern world of technology, is a very
convincing way of showing the corruption and decay of moral values, contrast
between identity and fate, love and death, “the division between thought and
action,”124 which all are very vivid problems present in nowadays reality. The
clash between the archaic language and modern technology, did not create an
obstacle to understand the message correctly. On the contrary, it creates “an
esthetic progressivism,”125 as Katherine Rowe calls it. According to Angela
McRobie, there is nothing wrong or strange about modernizing and updating,
or, as she says, “recycling the culture.”126 Quite the opposite, such an
adaptation of the old themes and motives (yet not old-fashioned or out-of-date)
creates “[…] a vibrant critique rather than an inward-looking, second-hand
aesthetic.”127 Almereyda’s adaptation makes it easier to understand
Shakespeare and also modern culture and social problems contemporary people
have to deal with in everyday lives.
124
Katherine Rowe, 43
Katherine Rowe, 43
126
Angela McRobie, “Postmodernism and Popular culture,” ed. L. Appignanesi
Postmodernism: ICA Documents 5 (London: ICA, 1986) 57
127
Angela McRobie, 57
125
40
CONCULSIONS
The art of film adaptations, and cinematography in general, is a
relatively new art, and that is why (as I mentioned at the beginning of my
thesis) it is sometimes not perceived as a valuable work of art, in comparison to
literature. However, the perception is changing and new critical approaches are
created towards literature on screen. Angela McRobbie claims that “the
ransacking and recycling of culture, and the direct innovation to other texts and
other images, can create a vibrant critique rather than an inward-looking,
second-hand aesthetic.”128 There are many choices a director has to make while
creating an adaptation of literature and, at the same time, there are many
factors that take part in assessing the artistic value of that adaptation. In fact,
neither literature nor regular films have to deal with such matters as fidelity vs.
infidelity, or interpretation vs. over interpretation. That is why, creating a
prized adaptation is a very difficult aim for any, even a brilliant, film director.
Not only is an adaptation judged for its artistic values but also for the
faithfulness and correct transferring of the message of the source text.
Many directors, such as for instance Michael Almereyda, decide to
update and modernize their adaptations, even despite of the fact that they use
very old or even antique source texts. Michael Almereyda created a new setting
for Shakespearian words. He adapted the modern setting to the original
message, and, in spite of not changing any word from the original, he gained a
full understanding of the modern audience. By placing the action in the
modern, contemporary reality, he achieved the effect of his work being
comprehensible and, at the same time, prized for its artistic values. The way he
manipulates the camera, lets a viewer to be overwhelmed by the realism and
universalizm of the story line, without noticing the old-fashioned language.
Directors such as Almereyda, or Julie Taymour (Tytus Andronicus) prove that
there is no need of changing Shakespearian language, as it is meaningful and
can be easily understood when accompanied by the suitable images. Suiting
words to the action and the action to the words is the rule that guarantees the
success. As easy as it may seem, the directors are not always able to achieve
128
Angela McRobie, "Postmodernism and Popular Culture," Postmodernism: ICA Documents
5. Ed. L. Appignanesi (London: ICA, 1986) 57
41
this effect. Creating faithful representations of the, for instance, medieval texts
would not be as enthusiastically taken as the updated versions of the old
stories. Only in this way, the universalism and timelessness can fully manifest
themselves. Shakespearian stories remain actual and vivid, even if the setting
and characters are moving with the times. Russell Jackson in his work claims
that:
In filmic terms, the most conservative Shakespeare films are
those which adopt as many features of a given play’s structure
and language as possible, while adapting them to the accepted
rules of mainstream cinema in continuity editing, clarity of the
character and story, and intelligibility of speech. The most radical
seek to achieve the play’s ends by using as fully a possible the
medium’s ability to juxtapose images and narrative elements, to
superimpose one element of the narrative upon another, shift
point of view and register, and disrupt the sense of a coherent
world seen clearly. In such films the original’s form and methods
are not respected, but replaced. 129
The director indeed has a choice – to adjust to the common and traditional
stream of film adaptations which preserve as much as possible from the
original, not only in the case of language used but also characters and settings,
or he/she can decide to create a new vision of the source text. Despite the risk
of not being appreciated as a groundbreaking work of art, many directors
successfully persuade the viewers to their point of view and create the new
understanding of the old (and usually also well-known) words. Hamlet, in fact,
has been adapted many times in many different ways, but Almereyda is the
first who made Shakespeare so accessible for the contemporary audience.
129
Russell Jackson, "From Play-Script to Screenplay," The Cambridge Companion to
Shakespeare on Film, .ed. Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 15
42
STRESZCZENIE
W dzisiejszych czasach, sztuka filmowa jest jedną z najprężniej
rozwijających się sztuk. Jednakże nie tylko filmy, lecz również adaptacje
filmowe dzieł literackich stają się coraz bardziej popularne. Niektóre z tych
adaptacji wzbudzają jednakże niemałe kontrowersje. Jednym z autorów,
którego to przeniesienie na szklany ekran stanowi niezwykle trudne wyzwanie,
jest Szekspir. Każdy reżyser, który podejmuje się tego zadania, musi zmierzyć
się z licznymi problemami, które napotka na swojej drodze. Musi też podjąć
wiele decyzji, które mogą mieć decydujący wpływ na to, czy jego/jej adaptacja
zostanie zaakceptowana, a co za tym idzie, doceniona przez współczesną
publikę. Może on/ona pozostać wiernym oryginalnemu tekstowi, bądź
zmodyfikować go. Może pozostawić głównych bohaterów w ich pierwotnej
scenerii, lub przenieść ich do współczesnej. Co więcej, adaptacja filmowa
podlega dużo surowszej ocenie krytyki, gdyż nigdy nie jest to dzieło
indywidualne i niezależne – zawsze bazuje na wcześniej napisanym, zazwyczaj
znanym i cenionym, dziele literackim.
Celem mojej pracy było ukazanie sposobów i technik unowocześniania
tekstów literackich w adaptacjach filmowych, a konkretnie adaptacji Hamleta
Williama Szekspira. W pierwszym rozdziale mojej pracy, omówiłam krótko
historię adaptacji filmowych i rolę kinematografii we współczesnej historii
sztuki. Wieloletnia „rywalizacja” pomiędzy literaturą i filmem jest kolejnym
ciekawym problemem we współczesnej teorii sztuki. Film automatycznie różni
się od tekstu pisanego, choćby poprzez to, iż zupełnie inne środki przekazu
używane są do jego tworzenia. Ażeby dobrze zrozumieć wyraz artystyczny
43
dzieła filmowego, powinno się również zapoznać z podstawowymi elementami
mise en scene130, z technikami używanymi podczas montażu filmu oraz
dobierania ścieżki dźwiękowej. Język, którego Szekspir używał pisząc swoje
dzieła, jest powszechnie uznawany za stosunkowo skomplikowany i
archaiczny, dlatego też opisałam i wyjaśniłam najważniejsze cechy tego
języka, oraz podstawowe różnice występujące pomiędzy współczesnym
a
XVI-to wiecznym językiem angielskim.
Po wyjaśnieniu wszystkich elementów niezbędnych do zrozumienia
sztuki filmowej, zanalizowałam jedną z najnowszych adaptacji Hamleta –
adaptację autorstwa Michaela Almereydy Hamlet 2000. Szczególną uwagę
zwróciłam tu na techniki, których używa Almereyda w celu przeniesienia XVIto wiecznego dramatu we współczesne realia. Zanalizowałam również trzy
sceny najważniejsze nie tylko w oryginalnym tekście, lecz również w tejże
adaptacji. Zmiany, które wprowadził reżyser są znaczne, a pomimo tego owe
sceny nie tracą ani na swojej wartości, ani na wyrazie artystycznym. Warto
jednak zauważyć, iż Michael Almereyda nie zdecydował się zmienić ani
jednego słowa z oryginalnego tekstu. Można więc zaryzykować twierdzenie, iż
uzupełnił on tylko te słowa obrazami. Interesujący jest również sposób, w jaki
ukazuje on głównych bohaterów. W odróżnieniu od wielu innych adaptacji
tego dramatu, na przykład tych autorstwa Kennetha Brannagh’a lub Laurenca
Oliviera, Almereyda decyduje się na możliwie najwierniejsze odzwierciedlenie
słów Szekspira. Na samym końcu mojej pracy, zamieściłam krótkie
podsumowanie głównych wątków i problemów w niej poruszonych.
130
Są to wszystkie elementy, które znajdują się w kadrze filmowym, jak Np. sceneria,
rekwizyty, kostiumy, gra aktorska, oświetlenie, kolorystyka, bądź też kompozycja i aranżacja
w/w elementów.
44
FILMOGRAPHY:
Hamlet. Dir. Michael Almeryda. Perf. Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Sam
Shepard, Bill Murray, Julia Stiles. DVD. Vision, 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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