Ophelia

 2/4

Starring: Daisy Ridley, George McKay, Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, Devon Terrell, Tom Felton

Rated PG-13 for a Scene of Violence/Bloody Images, Some Sensuality, and Thematic Elements

Hamlet.  From Ophelia's perspective.

That's really all that this film is about.  And while it sounds intriguing, it really isn't.  Because of bad choices on the screenwriting and directing levels and plot developments that can charitably be called questionable, this new vision of Shakespeare's classic tragedy is by turns incoherent, absurd, and at times goofy.

The film starts well before Act One of the plat.  Ophelia (Mia Quiney) is a common girl who, with a bit of luck, becomes one of the ladies in waiting for Queen Gertrude (Watts), who raises her.  As an adult (Ridley), she frequently comes into contact with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (McKay).  Hamlet becomes infatuated with her almost as soon as he lays eyes on her, but she spurns his advances because she is not nobility.  Eventually she acknowledges her own feelings and they are soon wed.  But when the King (Nathaniel Parker) is found poisoned, Ophelia finds out things that she shouldn't, and that puts her on the hit list of Claudius (Owen), the new king.

You know the rest.  Well, mostly.  Director Claire McCarthy, working from the novel by Lisa Klein, adds a few new touches to address the fact that Ophelia in the play is only tangentially involved in the central tragedies (and gone well before the final bloodbath).  While this has some entertainment value, it doesn't really work.

There are other problems.  For one thing, Ophelia's character is radically reimagined.  Here, she's a fiery feminist and has a love/hate/something relationship with Gertrude.  A new interpretation of a classic literary figure isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but the choices that are made backfire in this new iteration.  For one thing, this new Ophelia is constructed out of "strong women" cliches: she is literate, doesn't back down from anything, and is fiercely independent.  Admirable as those qualities are, they aren't the same thing as having a personality, which this Ophelia lacks.  Ophelia is boring.  Further, giving her a backbone (or what counts as one) undermines the emotional impact of her tragic fate.  The film does find a way to get around this, but the less said about that, the better.

This new take on the classic play must have been an irresistible challenge for the actors, but unfortunately none of them have a well-written part.  Ophelia's personality changes to suit the needs of the plot, and there is little that Daisy Ridley, who is a good actress, can do about it.  She's both headstrong to talk back to a knife-wielding Claudius yet medley submits to bullying by the other ladies-in-waiting.  Huh?  I'll give her a pass on the fact that she has zero chemistry with her co-star George McKay since she is clearly doing all she can.  While critics and scholars continue to debate whether Hamlet actually does go insane or is just faking it, I think they'll all share the same horror at George McKay's portrayal.  McKay turns the Prince of Denmark into the world's biggest pussy.  Naomi Watts is at a loss as to how to play Gertrude, which is understandable considering how badly she is written.  I never got a sense of who she was in this iteration, or more importantly, how she felt about Ophelia.  And considering how important this subplot is, this is a huge bruise on the film.  At least Clive Owen is convincing as a blackhearted monster (except when the screenplay forces him to go over the top).  But he is just here as a stopgap on the way to his inevitable Shakespeare collaboration with Kenneth Branagh.

The Bard's plays are some of the easiest to adapt to film, but some of the hardest to do well.  Shakespeare's works have lent themselves to everything from lavish spectacles (Branagh's glorious uncut version of, well what do you know, "Hamlet") to alternate reality Mindbenders ("Titus") and even teen comedies ("10 Things I Hate About You").  To McCarthy's credit, she understands that, even if you keep the same Middle Ages setting, merely putting it on the screen is not sufficient.  It must be interpreted and adapted for the screen.  It's just that her choices in doing so render what worked in the text completely inert.

Props for trying, though.  I'll give her that.

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