“I know a hawk from a handsaw”
Accounts from the Video Store Frontlines (no. 3)
By Pablo D’Stair
Of course there were many types of customer recommendation situations the serious clerk would have to field on a daily basis, each happening hard upon the other, some of them happening simultaneously and spoken over shelf-tops and down aisles, dealt with while balancing stacks of movies being reshelved, dealt with when accosted on the way to the door for a well-deserved cigarette break, dealt with even when just popping in on a day off and being recognized by a regular.
There was the general “I’m looking for something good/funny/scary/etc” which had a kind of freeform hilarity bordering on slapstick at times. There was the “Between these five, which two?” and other more complex set-ups requiring not only cinema knowledge but a keen ability to Agent Hochner a customer’s psyche, cold. But of all the situations that could come up, a Hamlet Situation was the most important to handle with erudition, aplomb, and intellectual dexterity.
A Hamlet Situation presented in various ways. Sometimes it was sudden—already in the checkout line, a customer was holding Version X (the wrong choice) and immediate administrations would be needed, consent forms to be filled out later. Sometimes it was general—the customer would be spotted holding the box to Version Y (the wrong choice, also) in a way that suggested they weren’t particularly “after Hamlet” but still needed treatment. And sometimes it was the customer specifically “needing Hamlet” for some reason and so seeking out counsel on “which Hamlet was the best Hamlet.”
No matter what, the situation was imperative-bordering-on-mortal. And for some reason there was the built in obstruction that the best Hamlet (directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Mel Gibson in the lead)—which to those in-the-know could just be labeled “the only Hamlet”—was the one that was always, with peculiar energy, argued against by customers, often in favor of the worst Hamlet (directed by Kenneth Branagh, with Branagh in the lead).
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While there were sticking points with customers for any version, it can easily be said that the customer holding the Branagh was the roughest animal and showcased the most tenacity in trying to waste their own time.
“But this one is the whole thing, right?” the customer would ask, meaning—and it was correct—that Branagh, in fact, committed every line from the written text to film.
I’d point out that another version, starring Campbell Scott, was certainly more or less “the whole thing” but was not an absolute insult to the soul of Shakespeare’s text— unable to keep from offering my take that Branagh puts in, subtly and grossly, as much to his version (through unwarranted visual additions) as most others take away by trimming text.
While it had to be admitted that the Scott version was somewhat flat and not filmed with anything that could remotely be called “cinematic sensitiveness” it at least carried a lead performance that was not odiously mugged and caterwauled. Scott’s interpretation of Prince Hamlet seemed to have a lot to do with exploring a quiet, interiorly ravaged man, as opposed to Branagh’s seemingly central desire to go out of his way to shout as many words with staccato pop as he could while at the same time trying to blink as few times as possible.
If the customer was still standing there, they were probably smiling by this point but not quite convinced to put down the Branagh. So I would quickly note that the reason I pick on the central performance moreso than the rest of the cast in that version (while their performances are almost uniformly ludicrous) is that it is Branagh’s fault they perform as they do—how could they, as artists, be expected to depict actual facets of humanity in response to a lead performance that had all the nuance and insight of a blitz-attacking Dalek?
And to put Branagh out to pasture, I would say that his film had purposely taken a grandiose filmic aspect—sweeping score, wide-filmed scenes, opulent scenery and costuming—which truly served to distance audience from the necessary intimacy the script requires. It seemed that, with Branagh, cinema was utilized to create distance from the humanistic, inward aspects of Hamlet, not to take advantage of the fact that there were no “front and rear seats” necessitating old-school vocal projections. The film was more “stagey” than were it legitimately being “staged.”
To put the fine point on this, I’d introduce the fact that there was a perfectly wonderful version of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, a version that (one) contained “the whole thing” and (two) was genuinely a filmed version of a dress rehearsal of a stage performance. In the case of Burton’s, the excessively theatric nature of his vocals, his gestures etc. was because it was a theatric rendering. This version, though, I’d say was more for someone already familiar with Hamlet and specifically thinking to watch it as a play rather than a piece of cinema.
A kind of middle ground was the version starring Kevin Kline—a stage performance, for the most part, but less like Burton’s, more in the style of the Schlöndorff film of Death of a Salesman—a kind of mix of cinema and stage with nothing leaps-and-bounds impressive about it. Either way, I’d say, push-come-to-shove Scott does the better and more interesting rendition of the gloomy Dane if the choice were between two overall lackluster renderings of Hamlet as a whole.
The customer would notice and—out of morbid curiosity if nothing else—pick up the box of the version starring Ethan Hawke. The point I’d have to allow in favor of that version was that while (like Branagh’s but more drastically) it took pride in its “changing the time and place” of the story, it at least had the decency to know it was an abysmal waste of time, not in the least bit interested in Hamlet, but only in its own postmodern contempo-faux-avant slant. It has the additional bonus of not only being a freeform hack job of the basic play script, but gleefully made the artistic decision to not only “leave out lines” but to one-up that with having actors speak the lines that do remain incorrectly, showboating (I surmise) a self-conscious hipster philosophy that “people don’t understand Shakespeare anyway, so no need to even have our actors say the words he actually wrote” and to, in fact (as in key moments like the “to be or not to be” soliloquy) literally say the opposite of them, at times.
***
At this point, I would begin extolling the virtues of Zeffirelli’s film, starting with the fact that the director and screenwriter decided, yes, to trim the script, but to do so in a way that would consciously reshape it as a pinpointed exploration of single thread of Hamlet’s interior strife without need to counterpoint or juxtapose. I’d say a flaw it did have was not utilizing the Laertes balance to the effect it could have, even considering this reduction, but I’d further that the director did seem to be conscientiously treating the piece as more pointedly existential than Shakespeare’s theatre treatment would readily have allowed—all the deletions, slight reshuffles etc. served one exact purpose, none of them willy-nilly. I’d add in to this the fact that the camera is utilized to make words meant to be private be actually whispered (naturalistically) and (again, naturalistically) to let subtleties in facial expression convey and carry bare emotion, to have moments between characters that had words on stage but could be reduced to slight posture changes on film do just that, to have moments that would naturally be simultaneous be so rather than split between two self-standing moments of dialogue etc. And I’d finish with just a general expression of my lusty enthusiasm for every performers rendition of their character—each an individual revelation, as though the film is, indeed, about them all (perhaps calling out as especially spectacular Alan Bates as Claudius and expressing my own ugly desires toward Glenn Close).
The customer would more or less be nodding through all of this and would around now interrupt me as they turned over the box and noted “This is over two hours long?”
“Yeah,” I’d say, taking the win I knew was coming, though wishing it were based on something more meritorious, “it’s about two hours shorter than the Branagh.”
And the customer would ask a few other questions such as “So Ethan Hawke isn’t even worth it?” or “But Billy Crystal is probably good in Branagh’s though, right?” and then would pause, then nod solidly and decisive, saying that “Well, if you say the Gibson version is the best, the Gibson version is what I’ll take.”
Technically, I’d said the ‘Zeffirelli version,’ but I’d not point that out to the customer, instead just give a power handshake or a high-five and walk them to the register. No need to be a dick about things, after all.
***
NOTE: I admit I never had the option of addressing the David Tenant version, but were I to have I could only in good conscience have recommended it, if at all, on the strength that Patrick Stewart delivers such a thoughtful, fresh, and human interpretation of his character—so much so I honestly would have preferred the film be called Claudius. As to the Lawrence Olivier version, no store I worked in carried it, but even if they had I’d (somewhat blasphemously) have to had recommend against it for its egregious use of voiceover and its very thoughtless rendition of Ophelia.
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Pablo D’Stair is a novelist, essayist, and interviewer. Co-founder of the art house press KUBOA, he is also a regular contributor to the Montage: Cultural Paradigm (Sri Lanka). His book Four Self-Interviews About Cinema: the short films of director Norman Reedus will be re-releasing October, 2012 through Serenity House Publishing, International.
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