William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Excellent product! Excellent service! The DVD arrived within a few days, much sooner than I expected and the price was lower than if I'd purchased it from a local dealer!

My husband and I were thrilled when we learned that this Hamlet had come out on DVD. We're big fans of Branagh's version of Henry the Fifth, and we thought that an uncut Hamlet with a Branagh who had, surely, been maturing as an actor since his great performance in the earlier film would be an occasion not to be missed.

It was a horrible disappointment. Branagh, the man who turned Henry the Fifth into a drama that ordinary people could watch as the gripping and complex historical drama that it is -- and who, rare among British-trained actors, actually spoke the part as though Henry were a man speaking to men -- does Hamlet largely as a Royal Academy rant with set piece rhythms and the sort of pentameter "recitation" that one gets from any college Shakespearean who knows the play as a cultural Sacred Cow.

The key to Branagh's success in Henry V was that one could send one's children or neighbor to the movie certain that they'd UNDERSTAND EVERY WORD that Hal was saying. (The rest of the play was beautifully cast as well, and Branagh directed it in a way that made everyone's language come through crystal clear, as real speech being uttered in situations of real moment. Only the Pistol, who mugged and "acted" ceaselessly, was a pain in the neck.) We still remember telling friends who are not "literary" or "intellectual" to go to it -- that they'd enjoy it, as we said, just as a movie. Everyone thanked us afterward, sincerely and gratefully.

That Branagh -- both the actor and the director -- has disappeared forever, apparently. The attempt to "cinematize" Hamlet, full of gimmicks and wide-pan shots to try to get across a notion of exterior space, is a total failure, so contrived and lame that it's embarrassing. The scene where, in the play, the ghost speaks from beneath the stage -- "old mole," "truepenny" -- is done outside, with ground cratering and smoking and belching like something from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The "sumptuous" interiors are straight Masterpiece Theater sets, meant to give American -- and, these days, British -- viewers a feeling of "culture." There are some heavy breathing sex scenes with Ophelia intercut to suggest that . . . what? That it's possible to intercut heavy breathing sex scenes in a film of Hamlet, one supposes. (This works totally contrary to the text, making nonsense of Laertes' warning to his sister. It's just dumb: "creative directing," heaven save us.)

I don't suppose there's any way to persuade the 300+ reviewers who thought this was just the most wonderful production of Hamlet ever to give us our money back, and the DVD people clearly aren't going to do it, so we'll write it off as a loss. But it's with a terrible sense of betrayal by the people who were willing to gush about a Hamlet this bad.

A footnote. Just to persuade ourselves that the world hadn't gone entirely mad, we got out the 1964 Richard Burton theatrical version and watched it right after consigning Branagh to the dustbin.

The Burton version has all the terrible limitations of a play filmed in technologically primitive terms forty years ago. The sound quality is abysmal. The black-and-white photography of the minimal stage setting is ghostly and washed out, sort of like watching old silent films that have been remastered from deteriorated prints. The (American) audience, just thrilled to be at a performance of the Great English Dramatist William Shakespeare, has the unspeakable habit of APPLAUDING virtually every speech longer than four lines (!). Some members of the cast (Gertrude, Laertes) are painfully hard to watch.

And yet, with all of that, Burton brings off a performance of Hamlet that brings chills even to those who know the play by heart and have seen scores of live performances. It's lucid, unpredictable, and controlled from within by a conception of Hamlet's character that, once its sense begins to dawn on you, shows you that it was always there in the words but that you'd never seen it as a possibility. In comparison, Branagh's Beach Boy performance -- meaning his bleached blond hair -- looks like that of a kid in a high school play. It is sad.

The most powerful rendition of our beloved Hamlet and the most usable format for the classroom! Teaching three different classes and being able to cue up to the spot we left off sets the most organized tone! Anyone need copies of VHS versions?

Our family has been reading and really, studying Shakespeare over the last few years. We have read Hamlet several times and seen several versions of Hamlet. Kenneth Branagh's is absolutely marvelous. The filming is wonderful and sumptuous. The sets and places they filmed are like poetry for the eyes. During the filming, they even got a snow storm which fit in with what they were doing. The actors are all wonderful. Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet is excellent and Kate Winslet as Ophelia is marvelous. This is the only Hamlet film that has the entire play. The only fault I find is the scene where Hamlet is seeking his father's ghost and is in some wooded place. To me, that part seems bizarre and created more to interest young people who are unable to be attracted to mere dialog, even if from Shakespeare. The DVD of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet is a steal at any price.

I have been waiting for this version of Hamlet to be presented on DVD for many years. It is worth the wait. An extraordinary cast, wonderfully vivid photography and Shakespeare. Who could ask for more?