Because of the power outage, this post is unfortunately a
whole week late.
Thinking back to before break
started, we watched many versions of Hamlet. On Monday we watched Shakespeare
uncovered, and that went through the Hamlets that we watched, as well as a few
more Hamlets that we didn’t get to. I think it’s really interesting to see
different scenes of Hamlet compared and contrasted its fun to see the different
films, but when the comparisons are shown scene by scene you notice more
similarities / differences. Also, David Tennant was the main focus, so that
made me more than happy, and it pushed back the annotation date, so double gold
stars to that.
After that, we read an essay on the many
different types of Hamlet. I think the background knowledge on the movies was
super, but having to annotate that after just turning in the annotations to
Hamlet made me want to rip my eyebrows out. Just saying.
The main purpose of the text was to
make us see why some things happened in the movies, and how they were shown,
not to mention the little things that are shown in each movie, that we maybe
skipped when we were scene hopping, or just didn’t notice when we saw it.
I liked the comment Sydney made
about the hanging person in Hamlet’s death scene in the Jacobi version, I also
noticed a little Jesus figurine that looked like it was crying (from the rain)
while they were carrying Hamlets body to his grave (that happened to be on the
roof??) I wish that I had paid more attention to smaller details in the other
films as well, and maybe caught something similar.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteSorry about losing power...luckily I didn't! I cannot imagine not having electricity over holiday break! Your summary is a little vague but I guess it is true that Hamlet is basically all we have been doing the past weeks so there isn't much else to talk about! You did a pretty good job of responding to the text and not just summarizing but I think you can do better because most of this is just a summary. Your thoughts in the last paragraph were great though! It is crazy what you notice and can make connections with when you pay attention to smaller details! There were a few class activities that you forgot to mention like the story of "Amleth" and "Tragic Balance in Hamlet" but these were just little things. Did you enjoy watching all the different versions of Hamlet?
Rachel, I'm so sorry your power was out! Mine was too unfortunately, for 5 days, what an inconvenience...anyways I'm glad everyone's is back and running now. I agree with Katie in the fact that this response is a little brief, however you did mention everything that we covered. I also enjoyed and appreciated watching each of the Hamlet films because it helped me to really understand the plot, however I too did not focus too much on details and missed the Jesus figurine in the Jacobi version. This could be essential to interpret that film though because just yesterday in class someone mentioned that Hamlet could be a Jesus figure, so that could be indeed a large connection! I also enjoyed David Tennant and very much didn't enjoy the large amount of annotations we did. Especially on the article after the films, that article was not only super confusing but also contradictory and I still don't fully understand the point of it.
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteI feel like this post is a little half-baked. You've laid the groundwork for the things that we've discussed over the past few weeks, but the specifics aren't there. You write that as we watched the many movie adaptations of the play you noticed "similarities and differences" between them, and I'd like to know what a few of those are. Our class discussed Ophelia's varying interpretations between films, especially in the Branagh and Tennant versions, where, in the former, we saw her as an out-of-control, genuinely crazy person, which most of us disagreed with, while in the Tennant version she seemed more in control of her actions and emotions. Other topics such as how directors might emphasize certain themes found in Hamlet over others, such as the surveillance theme in the Tennant version, which is certainly present in the original text but highlighted in this particular interpretation. Our class used the films to finesse our understandings of characters, especially Hamlet, Claudius, and Ophelia, all of which were presented differently across every film. I would like to hear what you and your class thought about these differing interpretations and how they helped (or perhaps hindered) your personal interpretations of the play and its characters.