Daisy Ridley is Ophelia, and Ophelia is not dead, in this bland YA gloss on Hamlet
Film Reviews Movie Review
Opening with a shot of its title character (Daisy Ridley) floating in a brook, presumably drowned (as announced by Gertrude in Act IV, Scene VII), Ophelia then has her address us in voice-over narration, speaking words that have lately become dreaded cliché: “You may think you know my story.” Well, only because it’s part of the most famous text in literary history. Reconsidering Hamlet from another viewpoint has certainly been done before—most notably in Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead—but the attempt is inherently risky; if you’re going to court comparison with the English language’s finest wordsmith, you’d better share Tom Stoppard’s rich imagination and verbal dexterity. Lisa Klein, who penned the young-adult novel from which Ophelia was adapted, doesn’t achieve that rarefied level here, and neither does screenwriter Semi Chellas (who was nominated for an Emmy for her work on Mad Men). They’ve created not a bold revision but a bland empowerment tale, devoid of everything that makes Hamlet great.
To be fair, over half an hour elapses before the movie even arrives at the events of Shakespeare’s play. We initially meet Ophelia as an inquisitive child (played by Mia Quiney) who embarrasses her father, Polonius (Dominic Mafham), by failing to remain silent and “ladylike” at court. Her spunk attracts the attention of Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts), as yet still married to Hamlet’s dad and seemingly bored out of her mind. Gertrude installs Ophelia as one of her ladies-in-waiting, whereupon Ophelia jumps forward to the period preceding the King’s murder by Claudius (Clive Owen, seemingly bored out of his mind). These scenes serve less to broaden our notion of who Ophelia is than simply to fill in some of Hamlet’s backstory, depicting Claudius’ initial seduction of Gertrude and the ghost’s first appearance (to Ophelia). Finally, we get an ultra-condensed run through Hamlet itself, reconceived with Ophelia as its prime mover—she’s now the one who’s truly feigning madness, as well as eventually faking her own death.
That last bit borrows a plot point from Romeo And Juliet (the false poison), and Klein’s story also throws in some wholesale inventions, including Gertrude’s sort of witch-adjacent twin sister (also Naomi Watts). But it arguably gives Ridley less to play than would a straight performance of Hamlet. This Ophelia is more proactive than the Shakespearean version, but still very much circumscribed by custom; she and Hamlet (George MacKay) secretly wed midway through the film, and the primary narrative question becomes whether he’ll honor that pledge or throw it away in his quest for revenge. What had previously been a deeply perplexed young woman, struggling to cope with Hamlet’s antic disposition, gets reduced to one of those decorative screen wives who begs the male hero not to do something interesting. Even her grief over Polonius’ death barely registers, and while Ridley leans hard on generic fierceness, making Ophelia superficially stronger, she doesn’t expand the character to a degree that would merit her having taken center stage. Several major events have been rejiggered in her favor, yet she still feels subsidiary.
Director Claire McCarthy (The Waiting City) creates an occasional visual correlative to Hamlet’s verbal grandeur; her Murder Of Gonzago—the play-within-the-play that Hamlet stages in order to study Claudius’ reaction—looks magnificent, performed in shadow behind a blood-red curtain. Any formal merit, however, is undermined by the dismal language. Rather than attempt to mimic Shakespeare’s poetry—admittedly a near-impossible task—Chellas chooses to have everyone speak plainly, rewriting portions of Hamlet to match. No more does Polonius instruct Laertes (Tom “Draco Malfoy” Felton) to “beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.” Instead, he now says “And don’t fight, or if you do, win.” How painfully this contemporization strikes the ear will likely vary from viewer to viewer, though few will be able to repress a snort at Hamlet testily saying, when Ophelia unexpectedly shows up alive, “I told you to get to the nunnery!” Ophelia’s wholly invented dialogue, on the other hand, sounds very much like it came out of a young-adult novel. “You stop my heart,” Hamlet tells Ophelia during their first courtship scene. “If your heart stopped, you would die,” she correctly observes. “I seem to be quite alive,” he accurately notes in turn. It’s probably safe to say that nobody will be speaking those lines 400 years from now. Nobody may even remember them a week from now.
59 Comments
Of course Ophelia isn’t dead, she’s simply pinning for the Fjords.
Get thee to a punnery!
Eez ‘amlet restin then?
Judging from the picture of her in this article, Ophelia wouldn’t vroom if you put 5,000 volts into her…
She didn’t ask this man for advice again did she?
He may claim Derek Sibling was one of the best Henry Vs he’s ever seen but he also shat himself during a commercial.
At least it wasn’t Ray bloody Purchase!
I do hope filmmakers eventually figure out that “Shakespeare, but from a different point of view, man” is not an inherently fascinating idea.
Last decent revamped Shakespeare I remember was the Ralph Fiennes version of Coriolanus.
Unless Tom Stoppard is involved.
It was pretty clear from the preview that this movie was gonna be a trainwreck. The only question was was it going to be a mediocre trainwreck or a Hall of Infamy trainwreck. Sounds like it only managed mediocre status which is sad because the world can always use an infamous Shakespeare trainwreck.BTW what’s the consensus on Daisy Ridley’s acting chops? The sequel trilogy is so bad it’s hard to tell from that, and I couldn’t get past about 30 minutes of Orient Express to judge for myself.
The sequels are good (TFA) to great (TLJ) so far, but the acting is mostly competent across the board (except for Driver, Hamill and Laura Dern). I think that’s by design.She seems perfectly capable as an actress but she needs better parts. Orient Express was a very sleepy movie and she wasn’t one of the major characters so she didn’t have much to do.
Are you saying Diver, Hamill and Dern weren’t competent? I though Driver and Hamill did a good job. Dern was fine in a poorly written role.
No, I meant that they were very good, definitely much better than anyone else.I’m just not righting good today 🙁
Driver is a decent actor, but Kylo Ren is such an annoying stereotype of a whiny teen. If Snoke had chopped *him* in two, it would have been better.
The sequel trilogy sucks.
No it doesn’t.
You spelled “yes it does” wrong.
this movie will be a hit b/c the audience it’s aimed at doesn’t know “hamlet” at all!
Oh god you are probably right.
if you’re going to revamp shakespeare and you don’t cast The Rock as the lead, you’re just out of your mind. compare:‘This summer Daisy Ridley has faked her own death and is back for revenge in…. Ophelia!’ ‘This summer Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has faked his own death and is back for revenge in…. Ophelia!’
only one of those tag lines sells itself
He proved he can pull off a dress in Tooth Fairy.
Shakespeare generally bores the hell out of me but I’d pay good money to see the second one!
Imagine The Rock as Ophelia, and Arnold as Hamlet.
Such a good film, love me some Last Action Hero!
And just to get Ridley a part, she can play Polonius!
Ophelia faking her death to get away from that asshole Hamlet, and running off to London to solve crimes, would be a much more interesting story.
Are you referencing the Hamlet choose your own adventure book, or are you unaware it exists?
I think I remember hearing about it when it came out (…six years ago) but I never read it or knew anything about it. Did I accidentally guess one of the endings?
Kind of. Because the book is very silly, it actually has “playable characters.” For most of the book, you make choices as Hamlet, but it’s also possible to try some storylines with Ophelia as well. One of the choices involves just leaving and getting involved with some Nancy Drew style shenanigans at a different location.
I will take this as unassailable proof that I am as clever as Ryan North.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!!!!
…the eighth film in the long-running Fast & Opheliest franchise.
Vin Diesel tweeted that The Rock is a candy ass for doing Ophelia vs. Godzilla: clash of the Jumanji’s instead of the 9th film- Fast and Opheliest 9: its about family and stuff or whatever
A beautiful discussion of Ophelia’s “madness”
God, I love this scene. Time for another Slings & Arrows rewatch.
Some of the terrific Paul Gross’s best work
Personally, I think Rowan Atkinson’s description of Ophelia as “the crazy chick in the see-through dress who does the flower gags and then drowns herself” is beautiful in its own way ….
rowan is brilliant! so is hugh!
In a perverse way, it sounds like the movie denies that Ophelia would go mad, as in psychotic, just because she’s upset. This really explains why she might kill herself, but the eerie little songs is more some exciting dramatics than insight into the human condition. Hamlet’s attack on her is omitted from the explanation I note.
Do you mean Slings and Arrows? It’s a TV show. And yeah I disagree with their analysis; the words in Ophelia’s songs had barely-veiled meanings in Shakespeare’s day, and basically Ophelia is PISSED.
“slings & arrows” is beyond brilliant!!!!
“To be or not to be…whoops! Hamlet slips off the battlements!”
To die… to sleep… to sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub… Ha ha… rub! For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come… must give us pause… make us bear those… uh, I’ve forgotten. Huh… I know I’m depressed about something. Uh-ba-da-da… mother: dead…. no, father dead, mother alive, kind of a sexy thing with the mom, uncle; probably killed my father, girlfriend: crazy as a loon, her father’s a chatterbox, I killed him… ah, this is all too complicated.
It’s like no one learned anything from the trainwreck that was Mary Magadelene: Feminist Icon.
What, a bland movie led by Daisy Ridley?! I am shocked that bland actress Daisy Ridley is in a bland movie blandly, this is astonishing.I mean, it sounds like they cast the right actress for this bland, ill-conceived project. Who knows, maybe someone some day will figure out how to get a project that shows off hidden depths for her, but so far that’s not happened.
One does not simply leap from Star Wars to Shakespeare.
Imagining someone (some monster) combining Gertrude and Claudius with Star Wars. Every chapter begins: “The Emperor was irate…”
Yeah, we’re talking a coupla Jim Browns, some Cannes runways, at least a Netflix ten-parter, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever…!
Why am I just hearing about this?!!
Yeah, but does everybody die at the end?I wanted everybody to die at the end of Dark Phoenix and they didn’t. My summer is not yet complete.
To be fair audiences did die a little after watching it.
It’s too bad they didn’t adapt Ryan North’s choose-your-own-adventure “To Be Or Not To Be”, specifically one of the plotlines where Ophelia invents the thermometer.
“To be or not to be?I, like, was wondering, but then I was, like, I dunno, So, like, I guess?”- Shakespeare
Why don’tcha go to a women-only yoga retreat?
I’d like to take this moment to plug Lady Macbeth with Florence Pugh, which — while not quite a direct reimagining of Shakespeare — was a fantastic movie with bloody Shakespearean themes
I consider myself a proud feminist, and yet every single movie where the main character is a Spirited Young Lady who bristles at the Stuffy Boring Social Norms and would rather Dance/Swordfight/Run Barefoot In Mud is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
“…one of those decorative screen wives who begs the male hero not to do something interesting.”Hats off to you, Mike. I don’t think I’ve heard this type of role characterized so succinctly and accurately before, haha.
I figure the King James bible has to be the most famous literary text (and possibly Romeo and Juliet to be the most famous Shakespeare that’d actually have some knowledge of the plot seep through)–in any case I’m actually kinda disappointed. I didn’t expect Shakespeare, but maybe something fun.
she’s now the one who’s truly feigning madness, as well as eventually faking her own death.Dagblast it, ain’t anybody in this durned Shakespeare canon actually dead?