“Stark Raving Sane”

Almost 25 years after Stoppard exploded into the theatre world with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, he rewrote his own masterpiece and directed the 1990 film adaptation. The fact that Stoppard himself wrote the screenplay and directed, rather than another writer reworking the original play, makes all of the changes and contrasts between the play and film all the more striking.

The most noticeable change is the setting of the story. Where, in the play, we are told explicitly that R&G are “in a place without much visible character,” the film takes place in a series of lush, extravagant locations with a great deal of visual character. In the film, R&G wander continuously through the palace, from one room to another, instead of staying in place while the action comes to them, as is the case in the play; the play makes them into much more stagnant characters, since they cannot go anywhere for large portions of it. In the film, they can explore and move about. There is the same frustration, however, because no matter how much they move, they never seem to get anywhere; they continuously find themselves wandering in circles, as though in a labyrinth.

Rather than the action coming to them, they wind up stumbling into other scenes unintentionally. While in the play, they are at least important enough that the king continues to return and give them instructions, here they are even more of nobodies – all the action of Hamlet which they come across they find only through eavesdropping. Rather than carrying on an extended dialog to fill the time while they wait for someone to come in, as in the play, here they take momentary pauses from their dialog to note what’s happening around them before returning to their own pursuits. It makes the Hamlet plot seem even more periphery than before – only a temporary distraction. At other times, the film almost becomes a detective story, with the protagonists overhearing sinister whisperings and trying to work out the mystery, but of course, they never actually learn enough to solve the puzzle.

The aspect of the film which most bothered me was the changes to the tragedians and their plays. The climactic scene in which they reenact the end of Hamletwas moved far earlier in the movie, to the point where in the original play they limit themselves to merely elaborating on “The Murder of Gonzago” a bit. Instead, in the film, they go through the entire course of the play – which increases the sense of foreshadowing, but I felt severely undermined the impact of the final scene, which instead becomes just a montage of each of the court characters dying. I realize that what works on the stage cannot be translated easily to film, but I thought that much of the mystery, intricacy, and power of that scene was lost.

While I didn’t like the shuffled timing of the plays-within-a-play, in terms of the actual staging, I thought they were phenomenal. The dumb-show before the servants was extremely clever, and I loved the haunting effect of the masks used in the interrupted rehearsal. The inclusion of a play within the play-within-a-play, staged with puppets, gave me the sense that the story just kept going back deeper and deeper, repeating itself infinitely – like a fractal, or an object between two mirrors, reflected endlessly.

While I was disappointed with the way the final scene was handled, I did find the other transitions, such as between the acts or from one locale to another, to be very well done. The repeated themes of blowing paper and music, followed by a transition such as zooming in on the curtains of the tragedians’ cart and then zooming back out to show the curtains hanging in Elsinore, terrifically executed my understanding of Stoppard’s intention for the play – the instantaneous, almost magical passage of time and place were fascinating. The same could be said of the transition between Acts II and III, when Hamlet extinguishes the light near Polonius’ body and the next light to come up reveals them all on the boat. I also found it very interesting to see how much more of HamletStoppard included in this version, compared to the original, and which chunks of his original play he cut (a sizeable portion).

I thought that the Player’s part seemed rather diminished, since many of my favorite speeches disappeared. I did, however, love the development of Rosencrantz’s character. In the play, it is always tempting to categorize Guildenstern as the intellectual pompous one and Rosencrantz as the friendly stupid one, but in the film, without adding more than a few words of dialog, Stoppard used visual humor to flesh out Rosencrantz. He fiddles continuously with the ordinary objects around him, discovering as the film progresses gravity, at least one of Newton’s laws, volume, wind power, and the airplane. Instead of an idiot, he becomes an absent-minded professor figure – not oblivious to the political intrigue around him so much as unconcerned by it, considering his little discoveries far more intriguing than all the court babble. It’s not that he doesn’t understand what’s happening, so much as that it doesn’t bother him. Guildenstern becomes the opposite – too caught up in trying to figure out the court action to pay attention to Rosencrantz’s discoveries, despite the fact that ultimately they’d be better off if they stuck to R’s pursuits than G’s.

Some of the actors’ choices also bothered me slightly. I felt the film held no sense of urgency, none of the near-hysteria that appears at moments in the play. Even as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stand on the gallows with nooses around their necks (another thing which bothered me; what happened to death being something which can’t be acted, merely an exit and a failure to return?), I got the sense that they considered this all to be merely a nuisance and a minor irritant. Considering how much of the original play is devoted to dealing with the idea of death, how to confront it, and a person’s ability to process the implications of death, I thought the movie contained very little of those questions which were so fundamental to the play.

Overall, I liked the movie, but the vast differences between the film and play have forced me to wonder about my interpretation of the play. So much of what I considered to be a fundamental, crucial part of the play disappeared in the movie, which would be understandable if a second author had revised the play, but since the changes were all made by Stoppard himself, I have to wonder if I’m focusing my attention on the wrong aspects of the play. It’s definitely something to take into account as I move into the final stages of my study.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Research, Stoppard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.