★ 4 / 10
**Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must remain in the theater.**
Filipe Manuel Neto
**Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must remain in the theater.** This film is perhaps the proof that not all successful plays are good enough to work in the…
**Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must remain in the theater.**
This film is perhaps the proof that not all successful plays are good enough to work in the cinema. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two characters from “Hamlet”, by William Shakespeare, but it is difficult for anyone to remember them without being very knowledgeable about the literary work in question. They really barely matter to the action. Here, they are the main actors, and we are invited, in a way, to see things through their eyes. In theater, this is interesting. In the cinema, and for a general audience that doesn't know “Hamlet” so well, this doesn't seem like a good idea.
Gary Oldman and Tim Roth brought the main roles to life with great panache and value, and the film ends up not being an absolute waste of time thanks to these two magnificent and valuable actors, full of talent. There is a high dose of “nonsense” in the dialogues between the two, and this can become tiring, but it generally works without surprising. The rest of the cast does not have such good material and opportunities to stand out, thus leaving the film somewhat devoid of good characters other than the protagonists.
On a technical level, the emphasis is on the costumes and sets. I can't say that there is great historical rigor here: historically, Hamlet's life is located in Denmark in the Year One Thousand and what we see is Renaissance, much more suited to people and figures who would be contemporary with Shakespeare. But I didn't have any problems with that, and that's not even a problem because all of this is fiction and can be situated in time whenever you want. Much more difficult to bear is the slight feeling that we are watching a kind of recorded play instead of a film.
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★ 7 / 10
Brilliant story, but not any more special as a film
Movie_Muse_Reviews
Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" is a brilliant existential twist on a classic story (Shakespeare's "Hamlet") and classic storytelling.…
Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" is a brilliant existential twist on a classic story (Shakespeare's "Hamlet") and classic storytelling. It's sharp, witty, well-acted and thought-provoking in any number of ways, being both memorably absurd and surprisingly truthful.
It's hard to scrutinize, but the truth is that Stoppard's Tony-winning 1968 play doesn't offer an ounce of proof as to why it belongs on the screen. It's a contemplative story, one that's heavy and dependent on dialogue. It's the struggle of all stage-to-screen adaptations, but where others have succeeded in shedding new light through that transition, Stoppard's re- imagining of his own work lacks a visual edge, perhaps explain why he never took up the director's chair again.
The story follows "Hamlet" characters Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth), two remarkably unimportant characters from the play who are part of the tragedy's final body count for no reason other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Stoppard's story explores the play from their perspective: Were they even aware of what was unfolding around them? What was the point of them being there -- their purpose? Why did they die? These questions also fuel the film.
Stoppard paints them as goofball characters that despite great wit and sophistication, remain completely oblivious to everything around them until it's too late and their prescribed fate takes over. Roth and Oldman handle these extremely random conversations that bounce between the literal and figurative playfully yet with great strength. They're a heck of a duo. Rosencrantz also has a knack for discovering basic laws of physics but then losing them amidst his and Guildenstern's struggle to figure out what exactly it is they're doing in all of this Hamlet business. Stoppard uses these examples and a fitting opening bit about the probability of a coin flip to suggest the conflict between randomness and order in life and nature.
Also significant is the group of traveling tragedians led by Richard Dreyfuss, who end up being the ones to put on the play that Hamlet uses to catch his Uncle Claudius realizing his sin. They add the element of theater and tragedy into the meditative stew, reminding us that this story ("Hamlet") is indeed a work of fiction that was created to a purpose. He preaches in fate, that in tragedy everyone who dies dies because that is what's expected of them.
It's a real head-churner, but as philosophically impressive as it is, none of that juicy thought is derived from the visual experience of the film. What characters say in this film is ten times more important than what they do, or namely how they do it. Stoppard throws in some smaller visual elements and undoubtedly he must've added something to the screenplay that wasn't on the stage. After all, he had nearly 20 years to think about his work between the play and the film, so naturally he would've wanted to make some changes. But nothing about the way he films this story enhances the existential dialogue between characters as well as between film and audience.
Having never seen the play, "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" was an enjoyable, thought-provoking film experience, but I would imagine having already been exposed to its meta-exploratory ingenuity, those coming to the film with previous exposure might not feel anything more fulfilling than simply seeing it in a three-dimensional world.
~Steven C
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Tim Roth