- Sensibility: Tragically sensible. It captures an ancient, and harsh reality with great reasonableness. Only moment that gives pause is Agnes' initial reaction and behavior to the play.
- Cinematography: The camera work is the highlight of the film. The shot-making gives the film a beauty and enhances its spirituality and mysticism. The interplay of the narrative scenes and the natural elements gives the film a transcendental quality that makes the story feel more real, personal, and relatable. Production design and costuming are simple, effective, and mostly period-accurate. Makeup and hairstyling are also excellent, giving the actors a stressed or youthful or aged or sickly or vibrant look just when it is needed.
- Energy: The beginning is a bit choppy, but it is in an attempt to create an unforgettable atmosphere for the remainder of the film.
- Narrative: A tragedy about perhaps the greatest English tragedy ever written. It's ancient, archetypal, religious, mystical, heart-breaking, and inspiring. The film has a literal and metaphorical historicity to it that gives it a magical quality and universal appeal. The film avoids heavy original dialogue, because it knows the greatest story-telling lies within Shakespeare's writings and the film-making techniques. The lines that it does create however, hold
great meaning throughout the film, particularly "look at me" and a call to action for a son's bravery. Only critique is that, with knowledge of the play Hamlet, the elements of the text are obviously cherry-picked for the tragic effects of the film. However, penalizing a brilliant film for interpreting and conveying a text in a different way is foolish and is more about maintaining an egotistical reverence for the original text than analyzing the film.
- T-Points: The film received five bonus points: one for a scene of a birth in the forest, one for a resurrection in a mother's arms, one for a tragic death, one for a post-mortem conversation between husband and wife, and one for a rendition of Hamlet with the ghost of the father and the death of the son.
This might be the saddest film I've ever seen. The first two times I saw it I wept for most of the back half of the film. In some ways, this film is a perfect Thanksgiving film, gratitude being one of many emotions I felt
after viewing this film.
Number of Watches: 2
