The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: (Mis-) Adapting Hamlet in the Movies

T.S. Eliot might almost have been speaking of directors rather than of literary critics when he wrote that in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet,

Hamlet the character has had an especial temptation for that most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead. These minds often find in Hamlet a vicarious existence for their own artistic realization. (180) If one were to substitute the word director for critic, and film-making for criticism, the same statement would fit remarkably well some of the more recent filmed versions of

Hamlet. Two versions in particular, Kenneth Branagh’s lavish 1996 version and Michael

Almereyda’s 2000 update of the film, seem more the result of their respective directors concern with demonstrating their status as auteur than genuine attempts to translate the classic tragedy to film; Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 Hamlet, on the other hand, while less faithful to the text than Branagh’s and certainly less innovative than Almereyda’s, captures the major conflicts and issues of the play in an entertaining, realistic, and commercially successful manner.