Non-Lethal Weapon
The most immediately obvious irony associated with this version of Shakespeare’s play is the casting of Mel Gibson. An actor who at the time was noted primarily for playing Mad Max and appearing in the Lethal Weapon film series, he was at that stage of his career typically identified as an “action hero.” This is ironic in light in the history of Hamlet being portrayed as a man of inaction who can’t seem to make up his mind and spouts around 1,490 lines or so before finally getting around to carrying out the vengeance most of those words have been discussing.
Ironic Ophelia
Ophelia is usually portrayed as a passive and submissive young female of her time who is notably lacking in any explicit display of irony. This film plays fast and loose with that conventional characterization by channeling Ophelia’s passivity into aggression. This is most immediately and notably demonstrated by the ironic look on the face of the actress playing Ophelia when she responds to her father’s insistence that she put an end to her brief romantic flirtation with Hamlet. The line is quite direct: “I shall obey, my lord.” The line reading twists its meaning into an act of ironic passive aggression.
Shorter but Larger
Hamlet in its entirely is a really, really long play. To give an idea of just how long, consider that Kenneth Branagh’s film version of the full, uncut version has a running time of four hours. Zeffirelli’s heavily edited but still coherent version is roughly half that. One of the outcomes of cutting out entire characters and subplots, shortening speeches, giving some lines to different characters and editing down the length in general might well be considered an ironic one for some. The result of all that stripping down of Shakespeare’s original is to empower the two important female roles, Ophelia and Gertrude. By reducing the play overall, the significance and power of Gertrude and Ophelia are both enlarged.
Ironic Humor
In the fencing scene, as he prepares for swordplay with Laertes, Hamlet engages in a bit of ironic comedy by pretending that the sword is so heavy he cannot even lift it properly. The full extent of this irony is, of course, quickly put on full display when it becomes apparent that Hamlet has actually mastered his highly regarded rival in the sport.
Hamlet’s Oedipal Uncomplex
Ever since Laurence Olivier established his reputation with the first actively acknowledged performance of Hamlet as a son suffering from an Oedipal Complex, the idea has snowballed to the point where some might have forgotten that this is interpretation is just that: it exists only subtext and is not directly expressed in Shakespeare’s written words anywhere. Playing Hamlet as if he is subconsciously desirable of Gertrude was pretty much standard fare even by the time the film was made, but Zeffirelli takes this idea to explicitly textual rather than subtextual places that it had never gone before in a mainstream film adaptation. An inherent irony exists in the film’s rather awkward insistence that there is more to the relationship between mother and son that meets the eyes. The entire point of Freud’s construction of the theory is precisely that it is not explicit and it is not manifested in obvious ways. The psychological conflict which develops as a result of the Oedipal Complex is by definition supposed to reveal itself in such subtle ways that it may not actually be recognized or admitted to.
