Second semester! Woohoo!
In preparation for the final, Amanda and I had to look over Hamlet and figure out what scene we wanted to act out. We needed a scene with two characters, and one that could be interpreted in different ways. In the end we chose Hamlet and the Ghost, the first time they met. ("I am your father's spirit..." etc.) There were many ways we could have gone about just this one scene: Was the ghost real? How did the ghost act? How did Hamlet respond? Once we had settled on our scene, the hardest part was sticking to one main theme, because there are so many variables that we could have thrown in and drastically changed the overall idea behind it! And yet it was even harder for me to think of how we might be able to pull it off. Acting is not quite as easy as it looks, apparently.
Even just our little final presentation gave me a better idea of the work behind the movie productions. I can't imagine how hard that really must be! The directors must be able to really have a solid view of what they want. I tend to be wishy-washy with this kind of thing, thinking "oh well this interpretation is good, but the other one makes sense too," and my interpretation of the play would probably be awful and make no sense at all if I had to direct it. All of the films we watched in class seemed to have a very clear focus to them, which I now see as very impressive. (And before I stop talking about the movies, I'd like to give a shout out to the second one we watched -- thank you, film maker of that version I don't know the name of, for a rendition that was both entertaining and made sense. The setting and time period was perfect.)
Looking back at my previous course material, I have learned so much about this play it's not even funny. (Also, I've learned that I must be slightly psychic, since I predicted Ophelia's death.) It hasn't been the smoothest of rides (Shakespearean language not making sense in the read-through, frustration with characters, a few angry sticky notes about how I hated Shakespeare, Hamlet, the entire play, and annotating) and I'm not claiming to be an expert by any means, but it's grown on me. Darn you, Hamlet.
Love this post! I can really see that you put some personal voice into it. You put your personal opinion on most things and I thought that was great. I also would like to point out that Shakespeare isn't my fav, but Hamlet did grow on me. I agree that each movie had it's own point of view and it was intereesting to see the different views.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post! You made a great point about how much time and effort those making one of the movies must take. When we were working our presentation, I realized how passionate the directers must be about Hamlet to put in countless hours of research it takes to make these movies. Although Hamlet is still one of my least favorite works of Shakespeare, it grew on me as well as i learned more about it. Now that we have read. Im curious to know which of the movies you thought was the best interpretation as well as which one was the most entertaining. Keep up the good work!
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