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The fatal problem with this Hamlet is that there is nothing interesting or intriguing about its central character. Hawke's prince skulks around with the charisma of a limp dishrag, muttering his lines with a breathy flatness that goes beyond melancholy and approaches semi-consciousness. When in an opening scene, he leaks out the lines "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew," I thought, "Too late, buddy—you're already a puddle!"
This is no modernist intellectual, pacing darkly through the streets with brows knit in a philosophical agon. This Hamlet is emptied, exhausted; he appears so confused and impotent in action as well as thought that his occasional outbursts seem neither mad ness nor anger, but merely inexplicable aberration. This Hamlet neither generates plot nor analyzes events around him; he merely sags. Frankly, I was relieved when Laertes finally shot him, and he drifted off to "the undiscovered country" as we watched his life pass before his eyes (really!) in black-and-white video clips.
Unfortunately, the other characters are diminished to near-cipher status as well. Bill Murray's performance in the role of Polonius, though praised in some reviews, I thought squashed by the over all pallor of the film's human interaction. Laertes, played by Liev Schreiber, and Ophelia, played by Julia Stiles, offer the few scattered moments of emotional intensity in the film. I found myself grateful that at least Claudius (played by Kyle MacLaughlin) stands up straight.
Is this failure inevitable in postmodern treatments of Shakespeare, or of any story? Can a filmmaker represent the fragmenting self, the dissolving of coherent personality, the exhaustion of passion and honor and the lapsing into cynicism, bewilderment, and vulgar power-plays, and still create something entertaining and even … meaningful?
Yes. Sort of. Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet takes an approach similar to Almereyda's, but manages to avoid some critical miscalculations. For one thing, Luhrmann's film combines a radical visual concept with a corresponding, coherent interpretation of the play that retains some dramatic interest. As with Almereyda's film, the setting is a post-civilization fantasy city, a cluttered pastiche of cultural dregs. In this case, Romeo and Juliet lay their scene in the scuzzy resort city of Verona Beach. (The movie was filmed in Mexico City and Veracruz.) The conflict between the noble houses of Montague and Capulet has little to do with honor or ritualized gestures of rivalry. Instead, the violence clearly refers to modern gang warfare, and is so sub-bestial as to be cartoonish—an idea Luhrmann conveys with ridiculously speeded-up camera work in the opening, semi-comedic scenes.
In fact, all the secondary characters in the film verge on the cartoonish. Juliet's dad is an abusive drunk, her mother a vacuous victim, lusting after Paris. Tybalt is a snarling Latino machismo machine, and Mercutio a mentally unstable, druggie cross-dresser. The party scene in Act 1 becomes an utterly perverse bacchanalia.
But amid this mania, Romeo and Juliet find in each other a center of calm humanity. Luhrmann depicts this by slowing down the pace to a dreamy float when they meet, buoying their scenes with a lush orchestral soundtrack and amber, soul-style vocals, and by associating them with a water motif throughout—the famous balcony scene takes place mostly in Juliet's backyard pool, for instance. Water, in fact, nicely represents the paradox of love so hammered on in Shakespeare's text: a striving for life and serenity, shadowed precipitously by danger and death.
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