The first thing that struck me in Branagh's approach to act 1 scene 5 was the eyes of Hamlets father ghosts. I don't think this was an accident to portray the ghost with such piercing eyes. This seems to have a sort of paralyzing effect on the character that is playing Hamlet. In the video where Kenneth Branagh is ex-planing how he acted out the scene, he talks about how he tried to do as little as possible and just kinda let it happen, and I think the ghosts eyes really help this happen.
Another thing that stuck out to me was King Hamlets death. When the movie cuts back to King Hamlets ear bleeding while he's talking to Hamlet and then repeatedly cutting back to it, it shows how unnatural his death was. Another thing that was portrayed very well was the betrayal of Claudius to King hamlet. This is shown when King Hamlet looks up in his last moment of existence and see's his brother. They don't say anything to each other and the whole scene is portrayed very well
Being a person who wrote to the other prompt, this post definitely caught me a little off guard. You did a good job of retelling how the actual scene played out, but I felt kind of left wondering about what Kenneth Branagh talked about when he recalled performing this scene. I would suggest talking more about the actor's point of view when performing this scene in this version or how other actors or even you might make changes to improve the scene. The content that you did have was quality though. You discussed what struck you most, what made you think, and some opinions on certain things about the scene. Exploring that further would help make the post stronger by supplying a meaningful point of insight that guides the rest of the post until the conclusion. It would also make it longer. Think of it as an essay but without all the formality and the post will make itself easy to write and easy to complete. All in all though, you did a good job, but supplying more ideas in greater detail would help.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to me that you focused on the eyes. When I saw the video the eyes had a “paralyzing effect on” me; I was stunned. I had no idea Branagh just let it go and was waiting to see what happened next. But now that I think about it, Branagh really set it up well. He set up the scene with the ghost’s piercing blue eyes, the flashes between the ghost and the ghost’s death, and the cold snowy atmosphere. The overall costume design in general was a great set up. You could really get into character with that pointy helmet that the ghost was wearing. Your paragraphs were very interesting to read. I enjoyed them very much.
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