BEFORE: It's 2 days after the "Divergent" trilogy, and I've made my choice, I've picked my path to October 1, so I can now un-mark all the films on my list that were possible choices for today, and there were 118 of them. Now I can focus on the films that represent potential paths AFTER the horror chain, because very soon I'm going to have to choose that path, and make sure that it's one that gets me to Christmas. Also, I need to decide which Christmas-based films I"ll be watching this year, and then link to them - I was kind of hoping the chain would give me a clue here, like maybe a path would just present itself, but unfortunately it may not be that easy. I may just have to choose two or three Christmas films that link together or have a little mortar in-between, and then force the linking to comply. That's a bit harder but I've done it before, I can probably do it again.
Naomi Watts AND Clive Owen carry over from "The International". Originally this film was part of this chain, then I cut it, but without it, the next back-to-school film was scheduled for Sunday. Monday would make a little more sense, because kids go to school on Mondays - so "Ophelia" is back in, but the other film I cut is still out. It looked boring, anyway.
THE PLOT: A re-imagining of "Hamlet", told from Ophelia's perspective.
AFTER: I know I'm posting very very late tonight (or rather, tomorrow morning) because this is my Saturday film, to push that back-to-school film to Monday (also, bonus, to get Clive Owen his third film for the year, qualifying him for the year-end countdown) but sure, I've got two reasons. First, I went to the theater today, not to work, but to catch a screening of a certain horror comedy that's going to slide RIGHT into my October horror chain. It was only playing today, a special screening for the college kids, so it was either watch it today or pay like $9 later, so considering I spent $5 on the subway and $7.50 on snacks, I may have come out on the losing end of that deal. BUT I'll get to post once in October having already seen the movie, and that could save me some valuable time right around NY Comic-Con.
So that was half the day gone, then when I came back and started typing the post for "Ophelia", i accidentally hit control-Z too many times and deleted the entire post where I keep track of who's been in multiple movies for the year. Like, months and months of typing, gone in a flash. Sure, I have a back-up, but it was from the middle of July, so I had to spend three hours adding all the information for the multiples since the Rock Hudson documentary, that was like 55 movies ago, so it took some time, especially for those docs that had ENORMOUS casts. I couldn't call up a version of that document from earlier today, because Blogger had already auto-saved the blank file. Umm, yeah, thanks, Blogger for not letting me load an earlier version of a post. Sure, this is why I keep back-ups, but usually no more than three or four back-ups in a calendar year. OK, so I've done two months worth of typing today, so I'll try to keep this concise.
This is a re-telling of "Hamlet", and if you don't know that story backwards and forwards by now, well, then maybe skip this one. Tom Stoppard wrote a play called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", which was the Hamlet story re-told from the point of view of two minor characters who pop in and out of the action in Shakespeare's play. So (I assume) he had to write a bunch of new stuff that told the audience what they were doing when Shakespeare wasn't using them, they go off on a boat or something, they have instructions from the King to kill Hamlet, but then of course, they can't because he's needed in Act III.
This is the same idea, only it's based on a book where another author, Lisa Klein, wrote from the P.O.V. of Ophelia, Hamlet's love interest and a lady-in-waiting at Elsinore who eventually drowns herself, and is at various times thought to be mad, or in love, which are really sort of the same thing, as in they both make you not think clearly and they both may make you want to kill yourself. So obviously that author set out to give us a new take on that character, maybe she wasn't crazy, maybe she was just in love. Or vice versa, take your pick, maybe. But there's a chance to give a more modern take on the character, and maybe Shakespeare didn't have the best angles when it came to writing female characters, right?
To do this, though, the movie kind of has to bend the familiar play over, backwards and sideways, to accommodate some new elements. For starters, there's a secret wedding between Hamlet and Ophelia (this seems a little borrowed from "Romeo & Juliet" and Ophelia here gains knowledge of a potion that can help someone pretend to be dead (also borrowed from "Romeo & Juliet", if I remember correctly). To bring that potion stuff into play, this story adds a twin sister for Queen Gertrude, called Mechtild, and she lives in a cave down under the castle, she was persecuted for having a miscarriage (clearly the work of the devil) and guess who the father was, yep, Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, the new king. So he slept with both sisters, maybe this explains why he was attracted to his brother's wife but this does NOT excuse his behavior.
So there's a good half-hour of new material where we learn Ophelia's backstory, how her mother died and Polonius didn't really know how to raise a daughter, so Gertrude took her as a lady-in-waiting, but this way she got to learn girl stuff and how to dress like a proper royal servant, also how to deal with bullying and how to get ahead in the royal court, by kissing up. Later, as an adult, the Queen sends Ophelia to get her healing tonic from Mechtild, and she's passed by a mysterious cloaked figure who is also visiting the healer for a potion, then she sees an apparent ghost or spectre on the castle parapets. The next day, King Hamlet is dead from some poison, and the word is sent for Hamlet to return home, and basically then we're all caught up at the start of the familiar play.
Ophelia is obviously given a lot more to do here than usual, like she figures out where Claudius got the potion from, and she clues in Hamlet, who might not have been able to figure that out otherwise. And she probably spends more time with Hamlet in this version than she does in the original, so there's more time for them to make wedding plans. Ophelia seems to be everywhere and knows all, which represents a different take. Also, since here she married Hamlet it's a much bigger blow when she finds out that Hamlet accidentally killed Polonius, her father, thinking he was the king. Her husband killed her father, yeah, I don't know how you justify that one, but it so much more noticeable here.
Horatio then breaks the news to her that Hamlet has been banished to England, also that the king instructed his guards, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to make sure he's thrown off the boat before he even gets there. Again, Ophelia just happens to be in the right place at the right time to learn all the important details of the plot. A little too convenient.
After she confronts King Claudius with her knowledge of his prior relationship with the Queen's twin sister, the King locks her up, but she escapes and then pretends to be crazy, but it's just a cover so that she can take the potion, pretend to drown herself and then have Horatio dig up her grave, and she's FINE, really. A quick haircut so nobody will recognize her, and then she can be hanging around in the background during the rest of the play. After her resurrection, she meets up with Hamlet again and proposes that they run away together, but Hamlet is too single-minded on getting revenge against Claudius for the death of his father. So this kind of explains why Hamlet let himself get drawn into a duel with Laertes, who was not his equal in fencing at all, but as we all know, the King poisoned Laertes' sword so he only had to scratch Hamlet, and that would be the end of the prince.
At some point before the whole cast dies from either poisoned swords or non-poisoned swords or suicide, Ophelia leaves. Smart girl, who wants to be caught up in all the madness of the rest of the cast killing each other? It's almost like she KNEW what was going to happen, that everyone would die and King Fortinbras from the next country over would invade at the worst possible time, here he enters along with the new character, Mechtild, so maybe they were in league with each other all along? It's tough to say.
Anyway, if you dig Ophelia and you think maybe she wasn't represented very well in Shakespeare's play and left the world a bit too soon, then this may be the story for you. But that sound you hear is probably Shakespeare scholars who won't stop complaining about the liberties taken here. I think perhaps the language was affected the most, with everything here said in plain, modern English, so we're missing the big Hamlet soliloquies, and even Polonius' best advice to his son, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend" turns into, "oh, right, don't borrow money, or lend it." Somehow, that's just not the same.
And apparently there was some kind of minor scandal when the publicist for this film was paying people to write positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Also starring Daisy Ridley (last seen in "The Bubble"), George MacKay (last seen in "Marrowbone"), Tom Felton (last seen in "Message from the King"), Devon Terrell (last seen in "Barry"), Nathaniel Parker (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Dominic Mafham (last seen in "The English Patient"), Rupesh Tillu, Daisy Head (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Sebastian De Souza (last seen in "Fair Play"), Noel Czuczor, Martin Angerbauer (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Mia Quiney, Anna Rust (last seen in "The Brothers Grimm"), Jack Cunningham-Nuttall, Calum O'Rourke, Angela Nwagbo, William Ray Roberts (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Stewart Kenneth Moore (last seen in 'Unlocked"), Ivo Hanel, Talia Brizman
RATING: 5 out of 10 flower petals for the Queen's bath
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