To be or inter-be?

>> Digital Hamlet kicks the Bard into the 21st century

by JULIET WATERS

Despite the Wall Street setting of Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, there are only two moments when modern English intrudes on Shakespeare's original text. One is when a tone-deaf gravedigger hollers Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" during Ophelia's funeral. The other is a video clip of a pond-side lecture by a Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, elaborating on his concept of "inter-being." Aloneness in this world is actually impossible, explains the eerily happy sage, once we realize our inevitable connection to all things. "To be has to inter-be."

But it's a painful task for Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) to inter-be with anyone these days. His father (Sam Shepard) is a ghost who, after updating Hamlet on the details of how he was poisoned by his younger brother, disappears into a Pepsi machine. His mother, Gertrude (Diane Venora), a socialite given to black ostrich-feather hats and moments of Jacqueline Suzanne-ish fragility, has married her husband's murderer only months after his death. And his uncle/step-father, Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan), is a slick, Wall street CEO, chairman of Denmark Corporation and everything that Hamlet is not.

This Hamlet is a digital videomaker, younger by far than any previous film Hamlets. As he broods around town in yellow sunglasses with the earflaps of his Peruvian knit hat pulled low, his incestuous uncle is reading headlines in U.S.A Today that announce "Denmark threatens Fortinbras." As he ponders the age-old question "to be or not to be?" in the action aisle of Blockbuster, then isolates himself with 20 videos in his stylishly squalid loft at Hotel Elsinore, his unstable girlfriend Ophelia (Julia Stiles) walks precariously along the edges of swimming pools. When our navel-gazing hero has a moment of emotional clarity with his navel-baring love, he discovers she's been wired by her sycophant father, Polonius (Bill Murray).

Style is as heavy as substance in this dark, visceral portrayal of a soulless, though gorgeous New York. Almereyda tries to maintain the feel of low-budget, indie filmmaking by shooting in Super16mm, but the inner sanctums of the Big Apple haven't looked this expensively-designed since Eyes Wide Shut. And Hawke, for all his hip quotient, bears a surreal resemblance to a skinny, flakier Tom Cruise with crooked teeth.

Still, this clash of contexts works in many ways to revitalize a play that's been adapted to film 40 times. The visual references to global technology and contemporary malaise in Clinton-era America adds an interesting layer of ambivalence. The question used to be, "Is Hamlet going mad, or just pretending?" Now it's whether Hamlet is deeply tortured, or just a bogus over-privileged brat playing with guns and taunting his elders with perverse video experiments. And while Shakespeare's contemporaries might have wondered what happened to the soul after an untimely murder or suicide, we wonder if anyone here--including Hamlet--has a soul.

No actor in the film pulls off a tour-de-force, with the possible exception of Bill Murray, whose ease with Shakespearean language and heartbreaking, sweet Polonius is an incredible surprise given his normally glib talking roles. Hawke has the look, but not really the depth to pull off a truly complex interpretation of the melancholy prince.

Yet, with all its flaws, the film is mesmerizing from beginning to end. A weird but compelling testament to Shakespeare's endless capacity to inter-be. :

Hamlet opens Friday, May 2