Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

What are we talking about when we discuss Shakespeare on screen? Most critical inquiry focuses upon films and videos as completed artifacts invested with cultural and aesthetic meanings – which they of course are, whether the meanings are intended or not. However, in so doing we often move swiftly past the actual artistic space and conditions of production: the process of making that motivates and creates an artifact, and is the almost exclusive site of interest for participating artists. As a result, we not only fail to address the concerns of those who produce our “material” but also leave ourselves open to charges of willful, unnecessary misreading and misattribution of cause-and-effect relationships. By exploring some dimensions of the artistic process that went into the making of Campbell Scott's Hamlet (2000), I hope to provide a cautionary as well as illuminating example of the concerns preoccupying filmmakers, their views of their own roles, and the ways in which their priorities redirect or even defy the usual forms of scholarly interpretation. Why this film? In part because it has been overshadowed by the two other Hamlet films released within the same five-year time span, those directed by Kenneth Branagh and Michael Almereyda. The reasons for this are both commercial and artistic. Although well reviewed in the New York Times when it premiered on the big screen, ... log in or subscribe to read full text