Hamlet Movie Scene Comparison Act II, scene 2 is the longest scene in Hamlet. In this scene, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern come to the King, Voltimand and Cornelius report the message from Norway, Polonius suggests to Claudius and Gertrude the reason of Hamlet’s madness, Hamlet calls Polonius a “fishmonger”, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern bring in the players, Hamlet decides to let the players play the Old King’s murder. Scene 2 is divided into sub-sections in a way to present the plot and the theme more clearly. The “fishmonger scene” refers to the part from Polonius’s explanation of Hamlet’s madness “Your noble son is mad” (2.2.92) to the end of Hamlet and Polonius’s first interaction “except my life” (2.2.210), initiates Hamlet’s actions on revenge and vouchsafes how other characters view his “madness”. This essay will compare the actors’ gestures and line arrangements from directors Kenneth Branagh and Franco Zeffirelli to depict the different effects in Hamlet’s madness. First, the actors’ gestures between Kenneth Branagh version and Mel Gibson version show differences to the interpretations of Hamlet’s madness. There are not many gestures in the Kenneth Branagh film, which can mean something. When Polonius talks to Claudius and Gertrude, also when he talks to Hamlet, he does not have obvious big body movement, but instead just standing straight, walking steadily, behaving perfectly like a honorable and educated man; Hamlet as the noble son of the King and Queen, and the respectable prince of Denmark, however, has many big and dramatic gestures while responding to Polonius’s questions. Here, regardless of our general impression about Polonius being too verbose and distracting, he in fact seems very much like a reasonable man. This remark does make total sense of why Claudius and Gertrude believe in Polonius about the cause of Hamlet’s madness at first, which suggests to the audience that Hamlet has successfully enacted the madness and dissembled his real goal. Significantly different to the Kenneth Branagh version, Mel Gibson version’s gestures shift from revealing Polonius being fair and Hamlet being dramatic to Polonius having a rather cunning expression and Hamlet being in “real madness”. For example, when Polonius talks to Claudius and Gertrude in the Mel Gibson version, he constantly uses hand gestures and looks around, with his back-hunching outlook, his actions are very different than that of in the Kenneth Branagh movie. However, this interpretation of Polonius also has a stunning effect on the characterization, especially when he later talks to Hamlet, who is also performed very differently than that of in the Kenneth Branagh version. When Hamlet first appears in scene, he is carrying a stack of books on his right shoulder and trying to flip the page with his left hand, that he just basically rips off the pages instead of nicely flipping them. Hamlet here is acting his madness to everybody including Claudius and Gertrude whereas in the Kenneth Branagh version he only reveals the madness to Polonius. As Polonius comes in the room and starts interacting with him, Hamlet seems to act even eerier: he calls Polonius to climb up the ladder, then he throws the crumbled paper at Polonius while describing the book, and at last he pushes the ladder to let Polonius fall when saying “if, like a crab, you could go backward”. All these gestures of Mel Gibson explicitly disclose how Hamlet does not care about Polonius at all, and here Hamlet seems to be in real madness rather than just acting. Overall, actors’ gestures in Kenneth Branagh movie imply that Hamlet is acting while in Mel Gibson movie show that Hamlet is truly mad. Besides actors’ gestures, the directors of both films also use different line arrangements for Hamlet that lead to various interpretations of Hamlet’s madness. Director Kenneth Branagh chooses to keep all the lines from the original text in the same order, and with every single word included. Branagh here wants to cling to the original play and presents Hamlet’s characterization in at least the similar way of how Shakespeare wanted him to be. “These tedious old fools!” (2.2.212) is a clear indication in the movie showing Hamlet is acting, but this indication points out no further information about Hamlet’s revenge. Therefore, the decision to keep the original is to tell the audience about Hamlet’s “well-planned” revenge and unauthentic madness, which foreshadows the ironic outcome at the end. The line arrangements in the Mel Gibson film, in contrast, appear to be very different in an interesting way. Many lines are shifted around and abbreviated to create different meanings, different moods, and different characterizations, combining to display Hamlet’s madness. Particularly the part where Claudius asks Gertrude “Do you think ’tis this?” (2.2.149), in the original text Gertrude answers “It may be; very like” (2.2.150), but in the Mel Gibson movie, Gertrude replies “I doubt it is no other but the main: / His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage” (2.2.56-57). In the original text, this response should be what Gertrude thinks before Polonius reads the letter. However, this line arrangement reveals that Gertrude does not trust Polonius at all because she does not consider Polonius’s explanation in her response at all. Instead of being muddled, Gertrude in the Mel Gibson Hamlet is way calmer and actually thinking, not being misled easily. In addition to the previous example, there is another example during the interaction between Hamlet and Polonius, as Director Franco Zeffirelli tends to abridge the lines a lot and change their orders. When Hamlet describes the book, Zeffirelli inserts Polonius’s aside “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!” (2.2.203-204) right after “together with most weak hams” (2.2.196) and “All which, sir” (2.2.196). This insertion makes the conversation more natural as the frequent use of long monologues in a daily conversation is not common, meanwhile also portrays how Hamlet discomforts Polonius; with the absence of “These tedious old fools!” in line 212, Zeffirelli is stating that Hamlet is in real madness. Branagh and Zeffirelli’s line arrangements reveal their different interpretations on Hamlet’s madness ––– Branagh thinks Hamlet is still calm in the “fishmonger scene” whereas Zeffirelli believes he is truly mad. To conclude, both actors’ gestures and line arrangements from Kenneth Branagh movie and Mel Gibson movie demonstrate different interpretations of Hamlet’s madness. In general, Kenneth Branagh tends to slowly change Hamlet into real madness while Franco Zeffirelli directly regards him as being mad. Why are these changes significant? Since they affect the entire plot thematically by presenting different moods; the changes give the audience altered understandings about Hamlet’s madness. Mel Gibson’s gestures and Franco Zeffirelli’s directions portray a more dramatic and impactful effect than Kenneth Branagh’s, as they reveal strong and positive attractions to the audience.

Work Cited

Hamlet. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh. Castle Rock Entertainment, 1996. DVD.
Hamlet. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. Mel Gibson. Carolco International N.V, 1990. DVD.