Not a FIlm

Saturday -

Hamlet

- not a film version, the live staging by Bell Shakespeare. Okay, that doesn't really belong in a film blog, except to say this. I have yet to see a film of Hamlet that has been able to get it right. Film approaches to Shakespeare seem to fall into one trap or other: either they concentrate on recreating a particular view of the world at the time of Shakespeare (usually a romanticised one, quite unlike Shakespeare's own cynical take) or they put all their effort into not doing this and determinedly planting the story in another time. But the focus on setting, and responding to Shakespeare by where you set him, misses the point for me.

Hamlet isn't about Denmark, or anywhere else. It's about life and death. Specifically it's about Shakespeare's own son's death - the boy, Hamnet, went at eleven, his life's story hardly begun - and Will's grief and frustration sears through the script. This latest Bell production, with its highly physical performances and heartfelt music contrasting against the bleakness of the set and the downward spiral of the storyline, drove home the sense of intense and fleeting vitality that is the heart of the story. I've not yet seen a film manage this.

Although I'm sure one could... if, for example, someone out there was prepared to offer me a budget : )