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Hamlet (1996): (Patrick Doyle) While directing
Henry V and
Much Ado About Nothing and co-starring in
Othello, actor, screenwriter, and director Kenneth Branagh had
always dreamt of bringing an ultimate version of William Shakespeare's
famed "Hamlet" to the big screen. Through history, actors such as John
Gielgud, Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, and Mel Gibson had appeared
in the title role, and Branagh was prepared to tackle the same challenge
with all the authenticity that the original story conveyed. Unlike the
other interpretations of the story, Branagh's
Hamlet of 1996 was
meant feature every word of dialogue from the play, causing a massive
running time of over four hours that would necessitate an intermission.
Despite this length, Branagh's idea worked, the film providing a much
more rounded and understandable tapestry than shorter interpretations.
Also of note is the fact that Branagh doesn't force the story to brood
in despair, allowing for the more positive moments to shine clearly.
Reception of the movie by audiences was cool if only because of the
massive running time, but an outstanding international cast led the film
to critical success and several Oscar nominations for art direction,
costumes, screenplay, and Patrick Doyle's score. By 1996, Doyle's career
was almost inseparable from Branagh's works, with only Ang Lee's
Sense and Sensibility from the previous year standing out as a
noteworthy exception. His children's adventure scores of the early
1990's were nearly anonymous and difficult to obtain on album. Doyle's
music for Branagh's productions had always been appropriately lyrical
and romantic, though often restrained in scope out of respect for the
constant overlying dialogue that was usually the purpose of his films.
With
Hamlet, the size of the picture, as well as several
flashback scenes without original dialogue, allowed Doyle to unleash the
full force of his orchestra in the fashion of
Frankenstein and
his other horror works. At the same time, Doyle was instructed to
produce fanfares worthy of the monarchy of Denmark, with melodic
resonance expressed at levels not yet heard from the composer. The odd
thing about his perspective on
Hamlet however, is that despite
this great opportunity, Doyle wrote one of the more disjointed and
confused scores of his career, one of hidden structural torment that may
not be particularly easy to grasp for casual listeners.
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Doyle's usual keen sense of lyricism in
Hamlet
will provide enough cohesion in the score for some enthusiasts of the
composer. But he doesn't very clearly express the totality of his
thematic identities, usually content to intellectualize them to the
point of subtle sterility. Even with this plethora of interesting
characters, high drama, and ghostly politics, Doyle's end result is a
whole lot of great ideas that start and die, leaving the score in sum to
be lacking in any overarching identity outside of its demeanor. The
primary theme for the titular character, a "simple" one by Doyle's
admission, is remarkably similar to thematic constructs for his much
lesser scores, heard best in the opening, finale, and closing cues of
Hamlet. It interestingly shows little remorse or even beauty, for
that matter, and it proves difficult to adapt to the contemplative
moments of the lead character's soliloquies. Doyle also wrote themes for
Claudius and Ophelia, however neither of these themes is enunciated to
effective levels and they are typically developed only in the stewing of
the tense string section and occasional woodwind fragments. There is
still more depth to Doyle's ensemble here than in previous Shakespearean
scores by the composer, with "The Ghost" (among other cues) providing
outstanding rips of percussion and brass. At the very least, Doyle does
accomplish the weight needed to anchor this level of drama, and because
of his constant layering of strings, the score suffices at maintaining
the necessary tone. But the audience will be confronted by fragments of
themes and other motifs, one of which is surprisingly similar to what
Basil Poledouris would write for
Les Misérables not long
after, that never congeal into a delineated, larger canvas, and
disappointment sets in as those ideas never reach fruition. Only the
main theme, with its grand choral finale, reaches back to the elegance
of
Henry V to close out the score. Placido Domingo's performance
of that theme, "In Pace," is restrained also by the same lack of
orchestral power and enthusiasm that haunts portions of the rest of the
score. In short,
Hamlet, more than any other Shakespearean work
(except
Othello, maybe), needs strong, obvious musical identity
for several characters, and the opportunity to weave those ideas
together with obvious contempt and passion is sadly missed here. In the
end, for much of its length, the result soothes the listener as did
Sense and Sensibility, which speaks directly to the weakness in
orchestration, performance, and overall realization of
Hamlet.
This score teases but fails to deliver on the gravitas of the topic.
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| Bias Check: | For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.85 (in 26 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.48
(in 20,137 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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