Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
Director: Tom Stoppard
Context:
In 1966, playwright and eventual screenwriter Tom Stoppard premiered his alternative take on William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival and quickly rose to prominence in the writing community. In 1990, after writing many well-received film scripts, he directed the film adaptation of the play that made him famous, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
I forget when I first became aware of this play/film, but it was shortly after I had encountered Hamlet for the first time in high school. But even at a young age, I always enjoyed familiar stories that were retold from a different character's perspective. However, it wasn't until a few years ago until I finally sought out this film. While I was expecting just a humorous parody of Shakespeare, I instead found a deep, clever, and existential piece that only became more enjoyable each time I revisited it.
Plot:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original Hamlet, find themselves swept up in the tragic events of Denmark with nary a clue as to why they are involved and whether or not they have a choice in the matter.
Analysis:
Stoppard made a wise choice in crafting this script. Rather than retell the story of Hamlet with new information that changes the way the audience interprets the plot (a la Wicked), he keeps the original story intact while letting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just explore the world "offstage" as it were. And, by using the themes of Hamlet as well as the stylings of absurdist theater (Waiting for Godot, Six Characters in Search of an Author), he presents the duo as not strictly of Hamlet's world. While they never quite reach the awareness that they are simply characters in a play, they come close to that edge often.
The first time I saw this film, I was very confused about the choices being made about what scenes to include, and what characters to include in the non-Hamlet scenes. But having seen it in full, it becomes clear why Stoppard made the choices he did. Basically, you not only need to be familiar with Hamlet to get the full experience of this story, but the world of theater as well. Because this is a prime example of "metatheatre."
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are introduced to the audience already heading toward's Castle Elsinore on horseback. But as they get to talking, they realize they have a severe lack of memory as to the events that brought them to this point, only that they seem to be driven towards wherever they are going. They don't even know which of them is supposed to be Rosencrantz and which is Guildenstern (an idea that is played with several times in the story). They encounter the troupe of players that eventually make their way to Elsinore as well where (in Hamlet) they will be instructed to perform a play that mimics the treachery of Hamlet's uncle Claudius against his brother, Hamlet's father. The players offer to perform a show for the duo first, as well as a chance to "participate" in the story. While at first this is suggested to mean that they are a group of traveling prostitutes as well, when the duo pay for the show, they suddenly find themselves at the castle with the events of Hamlet underway.
Now, the head Player (Richard Dreyfuss) can be seen as a supernatural, godlike figure, manipulating the events that unfold. For, as R&G find themselves interacting with the characters from Hamlet, they say their lines as they should, effectively "playing along," even though they have little idea as to what is actually happening. So we are presented with the film's main question, do we have free will or does everything come down to fate?
I neglected to discuss the opening scene that sets up this question of free will vs. fate that sets our philosophical duo into action. Dim-witted Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) finds a coin and begins to flip it, finding that it comes up heads every time. He's only mildly amused by the phenomenon but the intelligent Guildenstern (Tim Roth) is much more intrigued as to what is causing this highly improbable situation. Now, we the audience at home know that the coin keeps coming up heads because...the story demands that it keeps coming up heads. The fictional characters are already becoming aware to the limitations of their world, even if they don't quite understand what that means.
Back to Hamlet, R&G glean from the context of the other characters that Hamlet has been behaving unusually lately, they are his childhood friends, and they must determine the cause of his madness. R&G just accept that this is what they are meant to do and spend their free time deliberating how they are to do it and what the purpose of it all is. For some reason, they never consider asking the main characters of Hamlet for any guidance. Well, we know the reason. Because in Shakespeare's original script, R&G never had such conversations with the main characters. So they must rely on each other and the seemingly all-knowing Player to make sense of it all.
One fun aspect of having the players serve as the "third main character" of this story is that we get to see variations of their versions of the story. In a sense, we see them perform the story of Hamlet four different ways. The original was famous for its "play-within-a-play" scene, but at one point, we are privy to a play-within-a-play-within-a-play-(within-a-play-within-a-play, depending on how metaphysical you're willing to get).
Okay, first, we have the whole outer-lying structure of the film itself. This is Level 1, with Oldman, Roth, and Dreyfuss playing characters who meet up in a forest. Then the Player...whisks them all into the world of Hamlet (and when they die at the end...SPOILERS...the players pack up the caravan and continue through the woods, suggesting the whole Hamlet section was fictional). Hamlet as we know it is Level 2. At one point, we see the players performing a dumb version of key scenes from Hamlet to the lower staff in the castle. They don't specify whether this is The Murder of Gonzago that they are slated to perform that evening, but it seems as if they are just foreshadowing all the major deaths to follow. R&G watch this and don't take this as a warning.
Later on, the troupe rehearses the dumb show for Gonzago with masks, which is how it appears in the original. Both of these are Level 3, and one could argue that they are both parts of the the same play. Gonzago is extended in this version and we see equivalents for not only Claudius and Gertrude, but Ophelia and Hamlet as well (who come crashing through the rehearsal, colliding with their similarly dressed counterparts). The extended version that appears in this rehearsal has a dumb puppet show version of the exact same play to mirror the moment when Claudius watches the play of himself (if only he stuck around to watch himself watching himself). Level 4.
(I would like to note that while I'm not sure how this effect is pulled off in the stage version, but it's a great editing beat as the camera focuses in on the fake Claudius watching the puppet Claudius then immediately cuts to the real Claudius standing up and canceling the show.)
The other metatheatrical bit I enjoy is in the design of the sets. Every room in Elsinore Castle is made to look like a multistory stage set mirror imaged on each side of the room. Stairs lead out of each room and take people to what appear to be the exact same room with different dressings. Guildenstern even remarks that they're going in circles.
While all of this layering may sound complicated to follow, the real tricky business is with the dialogue. It occurs so fast with such wit and wordplay that one could imagine that Stoppard was a modern day Shakespeare. The non-Hamlet dialogue isn't spoken in iambic pentameter, which lends to the illusion that R&G are "performing" when talking to anyone else, but it's fine since it allows for some more modern dialogue humor to make its way in. It's still very intelligent and hard to follow at times. The Questions game or the courtyard scene where R&G pretend to be Hamlet to practice for their eventual meeting with him are particularly inspired.
The Ending:
As is stated in the title, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must die, as in the original play. They die after their boat trip to England, where they deliver a letter to the king that was meant to have Hamlet executed, but was switched for a forgery that has them executed instead. Guildenstern comments that he likes boats because you are momentarily free from life when traveling on a boat. It follows its own path and you're just along for the ride, without any responsibilities. Of course, getting on the boat spelled out their death, precisely because they spent the whole play "living on a boat" and never making any choices for themselves.
Which begs the question, could they have escaped? We already know how their stories end, so obviously not. But as we see in the film, there really was ample opportunity to prevent their deaths from occurring. Of course, maybe the title of the movie hints that these two were dead the whole time and the Player and his troupe's caravan were merely a vessel taking them to the afterlife. It would explain the strange nature of the coin flips, the lack of substantial memories before the opening sequence, and the Player's seeming omniscience.
Or maybe that's too much weight to put on two silly characters who never existed in the first place.
Final Thoughts:
I love alternative takes on Shakespeare and this is clearly the king of the crop. Some critics found the transition from stage to film to be lacking, but as I aid, I enjoyed a lot of the stylization and editing choices that could only be done with a filmed version. This is a story that's made to be reviewed over and over and a film version (with three great lead actors) is almost necessary for that.
There is much more that can be gleaned from this story if you ask the right questions and it's always worth visiting for any fans of Shakespeare, theater, or existential crises.
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