Best Friend is our school's substitute librarian when the regular librarian is off track. Every day I go eat lunch with her in the library.
This week she got a massive shipment of books. They're mostly nonfiction, science books and stuff about dance. It's a magical fairy land of information in there.
As I was watching my panini heat up in the microwave I started nosing through the rack of DVDs still wrapped in plastic on the book cart.
Mel Gibson Hamlet. Olivier Hamlet. Jacobi Hamlet (and really, could Derek Jacobi be any more British?). Plus a DVD of nothing but Shakespeare soliloquys including three from Hamlet.
I already own the Kenneth Brannagh version.
I can now do that thing I've always wanted to do. Read Hamlet. Discuss Hamlet. Write about Hamlet. Do a group project on Hamlet. Show the same scene in five different Hamlets to discuss literary interpretation.
Those kids will love Hamlet if it kills them.
Weeeeeee!
I absolutely love Mel Gibson's Hamlet, I think he did a fantastic job in that role. And Glenn Close as Gertrude and Ian Holm as Polonius and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. It's a great cast who turn in a great performance. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteIf you really want to get kids interested you should have them read Tom Stoppard's 15 Minute Hamlet-- it's a riot!
ReplyDeleteThough everyone probably reads or sees Hamlet and comes away with something different, what *I* see is the story of a kid away at college who just wants to party with his pals R&G, but when his dad dies he comes home for the funeral and is faced with tons of responsibility he doesn't want.
ReplyDeleteI think that is a great doorway into the story for kids - it is exactly what they are dealing with. Eventually they are going to have to get jobs and become responsible, and who really wants to do that? Not me. Not Hamlet.
I think all of those different versions might be an interesting lesson in what an actor brings to a writer's character. Hamlet is Hamlet, the lines and story are the same. But I'm sure each actor shades it differently.
- Bill (What? No Mifune Hamlet?)
(What? No Mifune Hamlet?)
ReplyDeleteI'll see your Mifune Hamlet and raise you a Ken Russell Hamlet.
And now, I am an idiot.
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten Mifune had played a Hamlet of sorts in "The Bad Sleep Well" and just assumed we were playing Fantasy Hamlet.
Sorry.
In 4th year undergrad, I took a course (full year) studying nothing but Hamlet.
ReplyDeleteIt was too short.
Don't forget The Lion King as an easy way in!
Hamlet or Death!
ReplyDeleteCome on, it should become the title of something.
Who wrote Hamlet?
ReplyDeleteI've never seen it.
Dear God I hope that's a joke.
ReplyDeleteEven the Klingons know about Hamlet.