Wednesday, April 4, 2012

How does Olivier’s film handle Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy? What is the effect of this version?How does Branagh handle this...

Olivier's Hamlet seems to be in a mental fog throughout
the whole speech. That's no doubt why it was filmed in fog high above an angry sea.
Moreover, he acts at least half asleep and rather depressed. The only real animation he
shows is when he delivers the line, "...perchance to dream." It is at that very moment
that, having already dreamily taken out is dagger, he acts as if he's just awakened,
startled, from his reverie. But even then, relatively awake, he is listless and
contemplative. He carelessly drops the dagger into the sea, and it disappears, as he
soon does, into the mist.


The entire sequence is played as
a dream within a dream, where nothing happens but in the mind.

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