Setting: Time Period
The time period in which Branagh sets his version of Hamlet is familiar but indeterminate, vague yet also precise. The costumes immediately make it clear that Branagh has set the tale neither in an authentic chronological time nor during the Shakespeare’s own Elizabethan age. While impossible to pinpoint an exact decade, much less an exact year, enough can be gleaned for a useful ballpark figure: somewhere between the end of the Victorian Era and the outbreak of World War I. And that is where the choice becomes less ambiguous and more precise: the setting appears to be intended as a commentary on the collapse of the old European aristocracy with the implication that royalty like Prince Hamlet may be viewed either as the engineers of this decline…or the agency of that decline of which must be stopped.
Setting: Production Design
Even the previous film versions of Hamlet shot in color tend to be bleak and gloomy affairs, combining film noir shadows with horror movie night scenes. If there is a version of Hamlet that is more colorful and a vision of court life at Elsinore Castle that is more festive, it must be moldering alongside the Ark of the Covenant in warehouse 14. Branagh chose to eschew the typical vision of Hamlet’s entire world being a reflection of his melancholy state by brilliantly juxtaposing the black-clad Prince against a court that revealed as blissfully oblivious to the dark truths that only he and Claudius know. That imagery serves to visually alienate and isolate Hamlet no matter where he is in the castle or who is nearby.
The Checkerboard/Chess Board Floor
Hamlet is a breathtakingly beautiful film and much of that impressive cinematography is devoted to widescreen compositions inside the castle’s Great Hall. The defining characteristic of that hall is the black and white floor tiled floor commonly known among decorators as “checkerboard” design. That name is fitting, of course, when one remembers that when one opponent gets makes it all the way across to the other side he gets to triumphantly demand, “King me!” But chess is also played on the same board as checkers and so the imagery works equally well for the intense game of wits and battle of nerves that Hamlet and Claudius are playing against each other.
These are the Questions
Hamlet is the most famous play in the world and Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” is the most famous scene in history. So it is only fitting that Branagh’s single most inspired and analyzed use of imagery is his absolutely brilliant staging of that soliloquy. Delivered in one unbroken continuous shot, the entire monologue is staged as Hamlet talking to his own reflection in a mirror. Notably, in that reflection are the reflections of additional mirrors behind him. Just before he asks the question, however, there is a cut from Hamlet moving in front of the mirror to reveal that it is, in fact, a two-way mirror from behind which Claudius and Polonius was silently spying on him. Hamlet never breaks his gaze from his reflection which raises the question: does he somehow sense or even know that he is being watched? And if so—then is the whole thing merely a performance for his audience whom aren’t aware they are an audience? If not, then the imagery suggests the contemplation of suicide is quite literally just mere self-reflective musing. But if it is a performance then the question becomes is Hamlet showing his true self or his falsely opposed mirrored reflection to Claudius?
