Ophelia

[peter]

Claire McCarthy's 2018 film, worked around the story of Shakespeare's play Hamlet is a rich and glorious feast for the eyes in the tradtion of John Everett Millais' panting of the same name. In fact the painting itself is used as the framework for the famous drowning scene, an initial shot from which the entire film seems to billow out.

Starring Daisy Ridley as the eponymous heroine and George Mackay as (a rather insipid it must be said) Hamlet, the film weaves in and out of Shakespeare's masterpiece, adding a background story that fits seamlessly into the plays usual narrative. For me (I have to admit) a large part of the pleasure of this film (and it was significant) was picking out the parts where it veers into the original and noting how the Bard's text had been modified (very well I thought) in order to make it fit into the flow of the script, but still retain a flavour of the original. The other roles are well served, Clive Owen as a particularly nasty Claudius of whom we learn somewhat more of his dastardly acts, and Naomi Watts in a dual role as Gertrude and a local witch. Polonius' famous scene with Laertes is covered and here I thought, room might have been made to incorporate just a fraction more of Shakespeare's marvelous text. (I'm a long standing fan of Hamlet and simply reading the play gives me frissons of pleasure in places, so one of the problems I did have with this film was that, through no fault of it's own, my own mind simply wanted to veer off into the Bard's words all the time.)

All that said, the film is beautiful to look at. The setting is rich and verdant, the scenes pastel pink and dark by turn and ochre settings enlivened by the splash of blue of Ophelia's dress or the flash of a red ribbon. I'm not going to race back and see it again - once is enough and the film's value for me was more in terms of its novelty than its actual story (which is ok, cleverly woven in but a bit formulaic) - but I wouldn't have missed it (although I very nearly did - I only rediscovered it on an old list of 'stuff to look out for' that I happened across in a notebook). Available on Netflix, I think it's just the diversion one needs for the current circumstances we find ourselves in: bright and with a satisfying ending to the usual tragic tale we are used to. Give it a try.