Hamlet (1996 Film) Kenneth Branagh

Box office

Hamlet was not a success at the box office, mostly due to its limited release. The film earned more than $90,000 in its opening weekend playing on three screens. It made more than $30,000 in the Czech Republic, and more than $545,000 in Spain. It ultimately played on fewer than 100 screens in the United States, bringing its total gross to less than $5 million on a budget of $18 million.[2]

Critical response

Hamlet received positive reviews. It currently holds a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 57 reviews. The consensus reads: "Kenneth Branagh's sprawling, finely textured adaptation of Shakespeare's masterpiece lives up to its source material, using strong performances and a sharp cinematic focus to create a powerfully resonant film that wastes none of its 246 minutes."[3]

Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film four stars out of four, comparing it to Laurence Olivier's lauded 1948 version, stating, "Branagh's Hamlet lacks the narcissistic intensity of Laurence Olivier's (in the 1948 Academy Award winner), but the film as a whole is better, placing Hamlet in the larger context of royal politics, and making him less a subject for pity."[4]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times also praised both Branagh's direction and performance, writing, "This Hamlet, like Branagh's version of Much Ado About Nothing, takes a frank, try-anything approach to sustaining its entertainment value, but its gambits are most often evidence of Branagh's solid showmanship. His own performance is the best evidence of all."[23]

The New York Review of Books praised the attention given to Shakespeare's language, "giving the meter of the verse a musician's respect";[24] Branagh said that his aim was "telling the story with utmost clarity and simplicity".[25]

Some critics, notably Stanley Kauffmann, declared the film to be the finest motion picture version of Hamlet. Online film critic James Berardinelli gave the film a four-star review and declared that the Branagh Hamlet is the finest Shakespeare adaptation, rating it as the best film of 1996, the fourth best film of the 1990s, and one of his top 101 favourite films of all time, saying, "From the moment it was first announced that Branagh would attempt an unabridged Hamlet, I never doubted that it would be a worthy effort... I have seen dozens of versions of this play, and none has ever held me in such a grip of awe."[5]

The film did have its detractors, however. Lloyd Rose of The Washington Post called it "the film equivalent of a lushly illustrated coffee-table book".[26] Desson Thomson wrote of Branagh's performance that "the choices he makes are usually overextended. When it's time to be funny, he skitters over the top. When he's sad or touched, he makes a mechanical, catching noise in his throat."[27]

John Simon called Branagh's performance "brawny" and "not easy to like" and said that Branagh's direction used "explicitness where Shakespeare... settled for subtlety or mere suggestion".[28]

Leonard Maltin, who gave the film a positive three stars in his Movie and Video Guide (and gave the Olivier version of Hamlet four stars), praised the cinematography by Alex Thomson, but stated that "Branagh essentially gives a stage performance that is nearly as over-the-top as some of his directorial touches".[29]

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet ranks number 3 on the Rotten Tomatoes list of Greatest Shakespeare Movies, behind Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985, based on King Lear), which ranks in second place, and Branagh's Henry V (1989), which ranks in first place.[6]

Accolades