Mechanical Reproduction

Chapter 5. Remembering Tomorrow: Hamlet in the Digital World

Background

As an audiovisual medium, f= ilm is by definition a hybrid experience. And because of its multidisciplinary nat= ure, there are many fronts on which it can evolve. For this reason,

many artists have turned to= cinema to confront the challenges of adapting to the rapidly evolving postmodern w= orld by self-consciously representing the state of transition. By incorporating modern breakthroughs such as digital technology with various traditional narratives, postmodern cinema has freed itself from the limits of the modern imagination to reflect upon that which exists between or even outside of any specific time and space. The digital world, for example, has released the filmmaker from the limits of film itself, and perhaps more importantly, from the restraints of time, space and even capital. Digital cinema offers a previously unimagined capacity to explore continuity through electronically simulated experiences, with infinite space to reflect, reshape, recontextualize, or completely re-imagine reality.

Living in an era full of su= ch alternate realities, we must consider the possibility that these alternate realities are beginning to affect actual reality. This question has inspired considerable anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and cynicism among film critics and scholars over the future of their medium. Many critics, for example, are concerned with the ways in which the physically alternative reality of digi= tal cinema threatens the very existence of film. “What is left…of cinema as it is replaced, part by part by digitization? Does cinema studies have a future in the twenty-first century? … Is this the end of film = and therefore the end of cinema studies?” [1]

The paranoid anxiety over t= his changing medium is echoed by Anne Friedberg, who laments that, “..as = new technologies trouble the futures of cinematic production and reception, ‘film’ as a discrete object becomes more and more of an endange= red species”[2] More generally, film theorist’s concern is that the essential features, formulas and motifs that define modern cinematic identity are being detemporalized, dehistoricized, derealized, and ultimately replaced by the postmodern attempt to internalize the rapidly evolving landscape of the twe= nty first century into the cinematic realm.[3]

Film theory is critical for= a number of reasons, including its role as a guide for the artistic progress = of the postmodern cinema that has grown out of it. And yet, this postmodern ci= nema is evolving so rapidly that is has essentially outrun film theorists abilit= y to associate with it. It is becoming more and more difficult to evaluate and articulate the issues concerning this ongoing transformation and convergence through traditional academic means or even through mechanical reproduction, because they lack the dimensions needed to account for such broad and exten= sive changes. And so ironically, it is postmodern cinema, the very medium that produces this popular mood of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and cynicism for = film theorists, that now seams to be the only medium capable of exploring its consequences within the cinematic world.

Reflecting the historic con= vergence of media culture, technology, and consumerism, the postmodern cinematic experience has emerged not only to capture the ubiquitous reality of postmo= dern culture, but also to find ways to shape it in a coherent way. Instead of approaching Film-cinema, Digital-cinema and Internet-Cinema as fundamentally different art forms, postmodern filmmakers work from the notion that all su= ch mediums are unique methods of delivering an experience, more simply and commonly known as “the movie.”

Postmodern cinema has becom= e a rich hybrid of various narrative and visual forms focusing less on their individ= ual content and more on the technique of creating continuity between them.[4] And yet this new focus of postmodern cinema is often blurred or confused by= the seemingly more academic yet misallocated term “film,” which has= a danger of limiting or misleading academic investigations of filmmakers effo= rts. By broadening the scope of cinema theory beyond celluloid film, filmmakers immediately dispel the myth that cinema theory is endangered by the innovat= ions of the postmodern world.

Thus, the anxiety of theori= zing over this transient and dated form of entertainment gives way to a more fruitful exploration of the continuity and discontinuity between the various forms of cinema and other mediums outside of what can safely be termed as movie, such as literature, theatre, music, and other audio-visual arts. By drawing attention away from alienating specificity and instead focusing on = the significance of hybridity, questions such as “is film a dying art,= 221; “when is a film no longer a film,” or “when does something that is not a film become film?” seem less essential to the broader investigation of the evolution of postmodern cinema, from its history to its present status, from its failures to its successes.

From here, a number of philosophical questions arise. What is lost and gained for the spectator/participant’s experience though the hybridization of unique mediums? How has films relatively short history, as compared to say that of literature, been complicated by film adaptations of so-called timeless work= s of art such as Shakespeare? How is the staying power of both Shakespeare and Shakespearian film adaptations influenced by their relationship to one anot= her? And how has the real world been affected by the evolution of hybrid cinema?=

If a more general umbrella = is used to categorize the academic investigation of cinemas evolution, there is that much more room for focus within academic discourse. Instead of abandoning w= hat might otherwise seem to be a dying art, we discover continuity within an ever-evolving world of the visual arts. This investigation will not only yi= eld a richer understanding of cinema as we know it today, but will also help to guide its future.

Reality

= ;

Everyone suffers the limits= of their own imagination like the edge of their own personal stage. In the Glo= be Theatre where Hamlet is still performed today, people walk into a space designed to entertain through the creation of an imaginary world that expands the limits of their own mind. T= he process begins as they arrive at the box office, buy there tickets, and fin= d their way or are ushered to their designated seat or floor. The crowd quiets down, the curtains are drawn, and the play begins. From this point on, the theatr= e is no longer a theatre, the stage is no longer a stage, the actors are no long= er actors. This Globe is now a new world. With all the formalities and preparations complete, the audience is ready to accept the artificial reality that they have entered into and to s= tay inside of it, undistracted by elements of actual reality until the conclusi= on of the performance. The magical and hopefully mind expanding experience that the audience undergoes during this altered state of reality is quintessenti= ally theatre. Yet in Hamlet, this experience is troubled from beginning to end by the constant self-reflective question: What is reality?=

In Hamlet reality is a very intriguing idea, complicated by the fact that the setting of Hamlet is repeatedly theatricalised. Shakespeare often stages a play-within-the-play, either in = the form of an actual theatrical performance or a situation that draws on the i= dea and energies of drama. In Hamlet, this use of metadrama is taken to the extreme through countless layers of self-reflexive play within play scenarios. There are the guards as an audie= nce to the ghost, Claudius acting as a player King, Claudius and Polonius as an audience to Hamlet and Ophilia’s quarrel, Hamlet deliberately acting = as if he were crazy, the players and their play within the play, the court audience watching the sward play between Hamlet and Laertes, and the repeat= ed use of terms such as “act, show, play, audience, argument, perform,” (Calderwood) that all serve to remind the audience to quest= ion reality.

= ;

One might assume that such continuous self-referencing metadrama would undermine any impact the play c= ould have on the audience. But ironically, this strange technique somehow works = to make our experience even more powerful than otherwise. The more illusion is revealed, the more we question reality. Yet the more we question reality, t= he more realistic Hamlet’s own struggle between reality and illusion becomes.

And so instead of being com= pletely removed from the illusion of the play, Hamlet so intrigues us that we are pulled into his tormented mind of the young Pri= nce, a dizzying world swirling with love, betrayal, friendship, and revenge; a w= orld where the living have come into contact with the dead, where actors pose as real people, where the sane feign psychosis, and where the play extends bey= ond the stage. In this world, nothing can be trusted and yet truth is all that matters. Hamlet seems to be going crazy. Yet his insanity is the only thing that makes any sense in this swirling globe of surreal nightmares bleeding = into one another and infecting a mind tormented by the persistence of memory. Is Hamlet more insane when he is c= razy or when he is sane? Everyone suffers the limits of their own imagination li= ke the walls of their own play. But what happens when those walls collapse, wh= en the boundaries of our play disappear, and when illusion escapes into truth?= How then, do we separate reality from fantasy; the real world from the dream wo= rld? This is the essential question posed by the dark and psychedelic tragedy of= Hamlet. And as it happens, this is= the same question we have asked in our study of postmodern cinema.

&#= 8220;In the theatre the pretence of the fourth wall may be broken by metatheatrical devices. T= he film medium, however, which prides itself on its realism, rarely discloses its o= wn enunciation and<= /span> te= nds to deliberately ignore the spectators, permitting them to indulge in their voyeuris= tic fanta= sy. Mulvey calls it “a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience”.^=
1 The Hollywood aesthetics, as exemplified in the names of the studios, such as DreamWorks, is= based on the presumption that the experience of watching a movie is similar to the state of = dreaming. Does it mea= n, however, that the au= dience should always be kept at a safe dist= anc= e and the illusion of the film world protected? Can they be awakened from “the dream” earlier on than in the final credits.”[5]

Here Agnieszka Rasmus illus= trates the challenges of transferring “metathatre” into “the new medium” (Rasmus 157) of cinema, and considers the potential consequen= ces of shattering an audiences illusion of the films reality. How might these challenges be overcome, and how would their result impact our theories of cinematic reality? In adapting Haml= et to the screen, Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet confronts these challenges by recontextualising Shakespearian metadrama as metacinema. Through the striking visual translation of this tragedy into contemporary American setting, the film itself becomes a reflection of the changing landscape not only of Shakespearian cinema but also of film in general.

In the postmodern world, th= e arts are being radically transformed by technology at such a rate that yesterday’s dreams are becoming today’s reality. Thanks to mechanical reproduction, the l= ine between history and future has been blurred, and it becomes difficult to pe= rceive the present as it actually is. As Paul Valery explains, even our understand= ing of art is undergoing dramatic changes. “We must expect great innovati= ons to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our v= ery notion of art.”[6]

Almeyreda’s Hamlet is a great example of such innovations in art. His film acknowledges “Hamlet’s obsession w= ith the stage and the theatrical,” and transforms the protagonist into “an amateur filmmaker and actor” who is “obsessed with the camera and the cinematic.” The protagonist’s Mousetrap production is “no longer a play within the film, but a film within the film. He also videotapes everything he sees with his Pixel camera. The tapes become a video diary full of memories from the past= but also his reflection upon the present” (Rasmus 157). This contemporary version of Shakespeare’s play successfully incorporates modern techno= logy even into the play found within the play, complicating this theatrical meta= phor with the issues of cinematic reality and digital/mechanical reproduction. <= /p>

Illusion

As the original play begins= we are relieved of reality as we find ourselves transported into darkness outside Elsinore Castle in Denmark. The film translates the kingdom of Denmark into= the financial district of Manhattan; Elsinore Castle into Elsinore Hotel.

The play begins with fright= ened watchmen relieving one another from their posts. As Prince Hamlet’s friend Horatio greets them, they claim to have seen an apparition. Horatio,= an educated, and sensible man skeptical of the guard’s superstitious nonsense, is our standard for measuring reality when the ghost actually app= ears before him. Therefore, we become the terrified Horatio among the four-man audience on stage, as the ghost of the dead King of Denmark appears and then vanishes. Through Horatio we have questioned the ghost, but now we have seen it, through his eyes and our own, and accepted it into reality.

By Act I, = scene iv, Hamlet joins the audience o= utside the castle wall and sees the ghost for himself. Now the audience has seen t= his Ghost on two successive nights, through our own eyes and through the eyes of the trusted Horatio and Hamlet. Shakespeare has painstakingly orchestrated = this delicate reality before us so well that we temporarily accept it as truth. = But when the Ghost is no longer in sight, Hamlet “attempts to reduce the Ghost to a stage figure by his reference to it (in terms of the actual stag= e) as the ‘fellow in the cellarage’ (I.v.152), as if questioning t= he reality of the illusion he has just witnessed.

= ;

In Almeyreda’s Hamlet, the g= host appears not in the cellarage but on “the celluloid,” not before= the castle walls but on a surveillance monitor. The camera becomes the witness = to the ghost and to all the events of the film. And in the final scene of the play, Horatio hastens to tell Hamlet’s tragedy to incumbent King, Fortinbras, lest the memory become distorted over time. But in Almeyreda’s Hamlet, it is= the cameras reproduction of the tragic events on the news that announces Hamlet’s death and the succession of Fortinbras to the throne of the Denmark Corporation. And so the cinema is not just a theme of this film, it= is also “one of the most important characters,” playing the role of “intermediary with the audience since it takes on Horatio’s fun= ction from the play in that it serves as a prologue and epilogue and fills in the gaps for the audience.” (Rasmus 157) But can we trust the digitally reproduced image of reality?

Be thy int= ents wicked or charitable,

Thou com&#= 8217;st in such a questionable shape

That I wil= l speak to thee.

        &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p; Hamlet, 1.4.21-23[7]<= o:p>

So speaks the young Hamlet = to his father’s ghost in the first act of Hamlet. But through Michael Almereyda’s radically re-imagined production, Hamlet’s words also begin to shape reality outside of the play, as we react to “questionable shape” of Almereysa’s digital recontextualization, and speak to the ways in which digital reproduction influences our own experience. We find young Hamlet playing with his toy camera, inviting the audience to consider how the film can and will play wi= th our memory of the original play.

“And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (II.ii) On the word dust, Hamlet’s video diary goes static, and the pixilation of the screen suggests the parallel between the dust that we are made of and the dust like pixels that are the = only matter that matters to the cinematic world. In the next scene, Hamlet is us= ing his toy camera to videotape the press. This represents more than just metacinema. It suggests that the film we are about to watch will be, at lea= st in part, a movie about the ways in which we document reality. What is the “quintessence” of this cinematic world? Is it film? Is it video= ? Is it analog? Is it digital? Is it sound? Is it image? Is there a particular method of reproduction that is the best reflection of the real world? Or do= all such mediums, in the end, fail to truly represent it?

From this point on, we take= note of the myriad of reflective surfaces and devices, and their significance in relation to the narrative. From simple reflections in surfaces like glass a= nd mirrors, to representations on electronic billboards to images captured on Polaroid pictures, on press cameras, to moving pictures captured by surveillance cameras and Hamlet’s toy camera, to collections of representations in the art gallery, the blockbuster video, Ophelia’s darkroom, and Hamlet’s video diary, thoughts are captured or displaye= d on tape, in letter, on message machines, fax machines, voice recorders, comput= ers, discs, newspapers, television sets, movie theatres, telephones, and so on/ Everywhere we look in every single scene, there are constant self conscious reflections of reality within the film.

A big “A” then = small “a” flicker across the screen, then we read “A double fil= ms production.” Doubling is a concept of the film spelled out even in the name of the production company. The words “New York city, 2000”= are printed on the screen as we peer through the skylight of a limousine to see times square, with real advertisements including one for a Clint Eastwood movie, and among them we find the billboard for “Denmark Corporation” that immediately tells us how this 21^st centu= ry corporation will double as the kingdom of Denmark.

The title shot, HAMLET, a t= ragedy by William Shakespeare, appears in bold white letters over a red background. Later in the film this scene is doubled by the title, MOUSTRAP, a tragedy by Hamlet, over the same red background with the same white lettering as the intro. In this video, a red rose wilts during the depiction of GertrudeR= 17;s marriage to Claudius. At the beginning of the outer film, Gertrude first appears in red and later only in black. Applause is inserted into Hamlet= 217;s film, to accentuate how undeserving this marriage is of applause. Composing= the production, Hamlet exclaims, “The play is the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii) while looking into a video = of a past production of Hamlet holding a skull.

After the film, Hamlet jump= s into one of countless indistinguishable taxi cabs, and is joined by Rosencrantz = and Guildenstern, themselves interchangeable characters as illustrated by Gertr= ude when she flips the ordering of their names arbitrarily. The taxi plays a recording remind the passengers to wear a seatbelt, another reminder of dig= ital reproduction. Rosencrantz urges Hamlet to “Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame,” (III.ii) to which Hamlet replies that he = is too mad to do.

In the final scene of the f= ilm, a news anchor announces that Fortinbras has become king. Our frame slowly zoo= ming into the TV set, then the zoom stops from our camera, and the zoom within t= he TV continues to zooming on the face of the news anchor, illustrating not on= ly how one reality has merged into the other, but also the space that exists betwe= en the frames. The anchor reads,

But, order= ly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:

(III.ii)

The credits roll, “ba= sed on the play by William Shakespeare,” then a scroll displays the same wor= ds from the anchors “orderly to end where I begun,” speech in prin= t, rolling in an infinite loop on a wheel. From the news anchor to the wheel, = both representations of the words are mechanical, with the potential to repeat t= heir timeless truth indefinitely. But to what end? What is the difference between these two modes of representation? We have the freedom to express our thoug= hts however we can. But in the end the impact of our expression is unpredictabl= e. Perhaps the original will be forgotten among the multitude of reproductions= . Or perhaps it will live on through everything it touches.

Have you forgot me? Gertrude asks Hamlet, whereupon she slaps him for telling her what he considers to be the truth of her nature. Hamlet forces her up against a mirror, expecting t= hat by looking at her image she will realize some deeper truth about herself as Hamlet does when he studies himself in his video diary.

Upon hearing a noise from behind the mirror, Hamlet shoots through the reflection, presuming the king= to be on the other side, but kills Polonius instead. As described in the conclusion, Hamlet’s will runs contrary to his fate, as his desires a= re overthrown by his own actions. These consequences can be considered in term= s of filmmaking as well. We shoot a film, documenting a reflection of the real w= ord, and in doing so take aim at an audience with a certain goal in mind. But perhaps in some ways the camera can be as deadly as a Hamlet’s gun, f= or better or worse, because it has the power to change reality, even when the person wielding it is cannot see beyond the reality reflected in the cameras lens to the world influenced by what is depicted on screen.

Queen.:

O, what a = rash and bloody deed is this!

Ham.:

A bloody deed!—almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a = king and marry with his brother.

(III.iv)

Here, Hamlet points out the parallel between his bloody deeds and his mother’s incestuous marriag= e, similar in that they are both sins performed in the heat of passion, without rational thought to their contextual reality.

As a sort of meta-paper sid= e note to this scene, looking in the window in the background, I can clearly see a microphone on a bookstand. For me, this is normally enough to ruin such a scene. Yet when I consider this seemingly careless error within the context= in which it was made, it becomes excusable, and perhaps even debatable whether= it was an error or not, because of the prevailing theme of metacinema that see= ms to incorporate it. Here, actual reality of filming of this film has been ca= ught in the reflection designed to illustrate metadrama, and merged into the film itself in a kind of metacinematic-metadrama: Reality caught in a reflection within the film, itself intended as a be a reflection of the themes of the play.

One very deliberate instanc= e of reflection is when Guildenstern tries to sneak up on Hamlet and scare him, = even as Hamlet studies himself against the background in the reflection of the laundry machine that erases the stains on his clothing from his bloody deed= s. One could read this moment as a metaphor for the ways in which reflections = of reality can desensitize us to actual reality. He tells Claudius, “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing,—…Of nothing:” (IV.ii) The king, meaning the dead K= ing Hamlet, often represented by the digital recording that reproduces his imag= e, is a thing of nothing, not just in the sense of being a ghost, but also in other the sense of being a digital recording that, like a ghost, can be seen and yet has no matter.

On the plane, Hamlet wonder= s why he still lives to think on action, when he sees a baby on its mother’s l= ap, and is suddenly reminded of his duty to his father. He goes into the bathro= om and speaks the next monologue before a mirror, for lack of a camera. When Hamlet is slain, and Horatio says Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing = thee to thy rest!” (V.ii) we hear the sound of a jet airplane and then cut to= the image of the jet flying above a statue of a man on horse being led by an an= gel.

These are but a sample of t= he countless examples of doubling and reflection in the film, full of implicat= ions about the timelessness of the human condition, the persistence of memory, a= nd the illusory nature of reality. Each of these scenes lends itself to the overarching question of how representations of reality end up changing real= ity. More than just visually represented, this issue is openly discussed from fi= rst scene of the film, when Gertrude asks Hamlet, “If it be, why seems it= so particular with thee?” Referring to the natural fact of death. Hamlet replies, “Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not seems.” All the r= epresentations, from dress to tears to sighs of grief, are meaningless to Hamlet, who argues that,

QUEEN GERT= RUDE

= ;

    If it be,

    Why seems it so partic= ular with thee?

= ;

HAMLET

= ;

    Seems, madam! nay it i= s; I know not 'seems.'

    'Tis not alone my inky= cloak, good mother,

    Nor customary suits of solemn black,

    Nor windy suspiration = of forced breath,

    No, nor the fruitful r= iver in the eye,

    Nor the dejected 'havi= or of the visage,

    Together with all form= s, moods, shapes of grief,

    That can denote me tru= ly: these indeed seem,

    For they are actions t= hat a man might play:

    But I have that within= which passeth show;

    These but the trapping= s and the suits of woe.    &n= bsp;            = ;            &n= bsp;            = ;            &n= bsp;            = ;            &n= bsp;            = ;             &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;   (I.ii)

But though he remains deeply troubled by the memory of his poor father, he does not know how to act upon these feelings because he cannot trust “seeming” representation= s of reality, including, for a time, the very ghost of his father.

Memory:

Thus, mechanically and digital= ly reproduced memories do not “facilitate action but actually block = it and the process of remembering events and people becomes so obsessive that it turns the people and things remember= ed into a kind of fetish from which an individual cannot escape.” = [8]⁼Swearing not to forget his poor murdered father, Hamlet says, “Remember thee? / Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat / In this distracted globe” (I.v.95-97). Hamlet’s reference to this “distracted globe”, reminds the audience of the Globe theatre, challenging the reality of the play by reminding us that we are watching an actor on a stage talking about a fictional ghost. In this moment, the illusion of reality is shattered. And yet, Hamlet is so poetic, so interesting, and so engaging, t= hat his words take hold of us and we continue,

“Yea= , from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!”

(I.v.112)

While the Globe certainly e= xists, the alternative reality we desire compels us to “wipe away all trivial fond records” of “this distracted globe.” Indeed, the mom= ent Hamlet puts up a mirror to the aud= ience the illusion on the stage before us is shattered. But in this same motion, = that world reflected in the mirror becomes a part of the play, a play that conti= nues on without blinking. The border between illusion and reality that straddles= the line where the stage ends and the audience begins rapidly disappears and is redrawn somewhere off in the unseen distance, beyond the walls of the Globe theatre, breaking down its fourth wall. But in Almereyda’s film, this speech is not needed to create this effect, because mechanical reproduction= has already captured the Ghost of Hamlet within the very real world of 21^s=
t the century, enveloping the two distant realities within a single permanent cinematic memory. There is no need for Hamlet to

‘Wip= e away all trivial fond records’ to remember since he has never really forgotten. In fact, the Ghost’s words: “Remember me”, whi= ch are meant to prompt Hamlet into action, result in his even greater entrapme= nt in the past as he constantly ruminates over the history preserved on his ta= pes. Hamlet becomes a story of memories. Hawke’s Hamlet is very much immer= sed in the world of the past and refuses to accept the present status quo. Howe= ver, in a morbid kind of way, his obsession with the past realizes itself on many different levels. It is worth noting that contrary to the other characters = in the film, it is difficult to call him up to date or fashionable. He looks casual despite wearing suits and his flat is a strange clash of hi-tech equipment and stylised furniture. He seems uneasy in the media saturated wo= rld and despite the fact that he is himself a filmmaker, the camera he has is a= toy one, which sets him in opposition to Denmark Corporation and the values it represents (Rasmus 159).

Noting Hamlet’s obses= sion with the past, Claudius tries to reason Hamlet away from his memories, sayi= ng,

That fathe= r lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation for some term

To do obse= quious sorrow: but to persever

In obstina= te condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;

It shows a= will most incorrect to heaven,

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,

An underst= anding simple and unschool'd:

        &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp; (I.ii)

Yet the dead remain alive i= n the present, not only as ghosts, but through Hamlet’s videos. Immortalize= d on screen, their stories live on even after young Hamlet’s death. As with the ghost who reminds his son to “remember me,” the young Hamlet asks the same duty of Horatio. But unlike the play, it is not Horatio’= ;s words that keep the memories alive. Rather it Hamlet’s video diary, through which we see a montage of black and white film, not that which was filmed by Hamlet within the film, but the actual footage of the movie that = we have been watching. And it is only footage of those characters that have di= ed, as if these are ghosts that live on through the film we have seen that Horatio employed to tell their story.

This is a production obsess= ed with the idea of memory. But can we trust memory? Even before the first ghost sighting, Hamlet had persevered “to persever

In obstinate condolement= 221; (I.ii). through the remembrances of his father captured and preserved in his video diary. Upon reflection of this diary, Hamlet laments how “dull = and flat” (IV.vii) we are. But is his reality being distorted by its representation? Has his video diary imposed itself on reality, collapsing t= he beauty of the real world into the dull and flat reality of Hamlets depressed alternative reality? He watches the film of his parents, and forgets to meet Ophelia; he is in the wrong moment. Then, the doorbell rings, and he freezes the video, reminding us that we too are watching nothing more than a series= of still images. Horatio comes in, and describes his sighting of the ghost cau= ght on the surveillance camera. But no video representation can prepare Hamlet = for the presence of the ghost when met in the flesh; frightful not because of h= is image, but because of his tangibility. Indeed, the apparition is not a dull= and flat illusion, as on the two dimensional screen, but terrifyingly alive and= real. So real in fact, that he physically grabs hold of young Hamlet, shaking him= out of his gray memories into the vivid reality of the present moment.

And so, just as mechanical reproduction can be used to sustain memory, it can also be used to change, = manipulate, and even erase memory. Upon his return from Wittenberg, Hamlet recounts to Horatio how he uncovered the laptop that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were = to deliver, on which he found clear instructions that the young prince should = be put to death. But just as easily as these instructions were written, Hamlet changes them to command the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. Hamlet also tells Horatio that he is sorry “That to Laertes I forgot myself: For by the image of my cause I see The pomaiture of his” (V,i= i, 82-5). Even with all reflections, Hamlet fails to see himself in others. He becomes a hypocrite, condemning his mother for forgetting his father even w= hile he forgets Ophelia, his promised love. Furthermore, he fails to recognize t= he just fury of Laertes over Polonius’s murder even while he plots to avenge = his own father.

When Ophelia is forced by P= olonius to draw a confession of Hamlet’s love for her, Ophelia says, My lord,= I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray y= ou, now receive them. (3.1.94) and gives Hamlet the letters that he has written. And though it is clear that he is the auth= or, he denies that they are his, and because the digital recorder strapped to Ophelia records him saying so, the reality of these letters is undone by th= is new, though false, record of truth. As Hamlet unbuttons her shirt, their relationship is undone as well. After the voice recorder is detected, Hamlet becomes enraged “Get thee to a nunnery” (3.1.119) he screams ov= er her phones message machine, re-creating recorded memories that overwrite the memories of love, as Ophelia burns the Polaroid pictures of their times together. Polaroid pictures are particularly significant because they are instantly developed and therefore their reality cannot be tampered with, as with a video. And so they are destroyed, along with the characters they depict.

Earlier in the film, when P= olonius reveals her letters to Claudius and Gertrude, Ophelia’s imagination foreshadows her suicide by drowning that will ultimately erase her life, as well as all of Hamlet’s letters of remembrance, whose ink is erased in that same fountain. But are the adults the ones who destroy Ophelia? She dr= owns in the same fountain where Hamlet stood her up at the beginning of the film. And why does Hamlet stand her up? Because he is caught in an the alternate reality of his video diary. Hamlet, the videographer, collapses the past and the present into a single cinematic frame. Ophelia, the photographer, exist= s in clearly defined moments, generally devoid of narrative, several of which foreshadow the ultimate moment of her suicide in a way that is too subtle f= or most to pick up on until it is too late. Hamlet meanwhile, contemplated his suicide on video, watching it over and over again, and since he is able to = see this moment of suicide clearly enough to reflect on it, he is able to reason himself out of the action. But then, in the end, both mediums work to the s= ame end, as all the main characters, excepting Horatio, die tragically.

In the movie theatre before= the screening of his MOUSETRAP, Hamlet tells Ophelia, Oh heavens, die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outl= ive his life half a year. (Hamlet, III.ii) Hamlet is obsessed with the preserva= tion of memory, and uses MOUSETRAP to haunt Claudius with the memory of his bloody deeds. After watching the film, Claudius becomes hyper aware of reflections of his brother and his foul mur= der. As he leaves the building, a little girl dressed as a ghost says, “boo!” to Claudius, seeming to him a frightful representation of Hamlet’s ghost. He hurr= ies into his limousine, and in the limo’s TV sees an advertisement over a= red background, saying “stop living pay check to paycheck,” a deadly cycle illustrated by a man who poisons himself with drink and turns into a skeleton. The commercial cuts to a conference with President Bill Clinton a= nd other politicians all dressed in black and white while Hillary Clinton appe= ars dressed in a bright red dress. The President and the First Lady are representative of the modern day king and queen made more relevant though t= he same symbolic red that Hamlet film likens to Gertrude. The car takes a sharp turn and Claudius falls onto the television, and stairs at his hand’s outline on the television screen.

My fault i= s past. But, O, what form of prayer

Can serve = my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?

That canno= t be; since I am still possess'd

Of those e= ffects for which I did the murder,

My crown, = mine own ambition and my queen.

May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?

In the cor= rupted currents of this world

Offence's = gilded hand may shove by justice,

        &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p; III.iii.

In other words, Claudius may wash h= is foul hands clean of his misdeeds, like the frame of his hand on the televis= ion, his kingly outline remains to reveal his motive and implicate him for his crimes.

Little does he know, Hamlet= is the driver behind the wheel, and he pulls over to shoot the unsuspecting Claudi= us. Hamlet used the film to “Observe my uncle,” and by the man̵= 7;s reaction to the film, he could determine the proper course of action. Yet by awakening “the conscience of the king”, Hamlet not only gets Claudius to admit his guilt, he also awakens his penitence, thus thwarting = his own plan for action. “Try what repentance can.” Claudius says, “What can it not?” At this point, Hamlet has a gun pointed at Claudius’s head. Meanwhile, Claudius laments, “My words fly up,= my thoughts remain below. Words without thought never to heaven go.” (Hamlet I.iii.) Yet he spoke his repenting speech as in inner monologue, or more accurately, as a prayer, an= d at this moment at least, his prayers are answered. Unwilling to damn himself by shooting a man at prayer, Hamlet withdraws from the limo and runs toward the entrance to the Broadway Theatre production of The Lion King, which not only reminds us of the films roots to Shakespeare’s play, but also correctly suggests that The Lion King is another production indebted to the themes of Hamlet. Whereas Hamlets actions are thwarted by words, Ophelia finds a way to turn her voice into action by screaming into the art gallery in protest of her fathers murder. The result= ing commotion is an example of the direct effect that sound can have, with or without words to enforce them. In another example, it is the absence of wor= ds and sound that becomes action, as Gertrude tells Hamlet

Be thou assured, if words b= e made of breath,: And breath of life, I have no life to breathe: What thou hast s= aid to me. (Hamlet III.iv.200). This conversation takes place over a phone, as blood of the slain Polonius streaks across the floor, preserving even throu= gh silence the memory of his murder.

Action

Inside the= castle, Hamlet appears to be going crazy as he struggles to get a firm grasp on reality, when who should walk in but a theatrical troupe! Hamlet seems to c= heer up as one of the actors performs a speech on the fall of Troy and the death= of the Trojan king and queen, Priam and Hecuba. Yet we must wonder why such a speech would cheer up Prince Hamlet when it so closely mirrors the cruel fa= te of his father and the ominous future of Denmark. And more importantly, why would Shakespeare force us, yet again, to see the reality of actors on a st= age in a theatre, when we are intended to be transported from said reality into= the illusion of a play? Why on earth would Shakespeare deliberately disillusion= his audience a second time? What more can he possibly achieve in this meta-play that wasn’t already played out in the previous reference to the Globe= ?

“Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a f= iction, in a dream of passion,

Could forc= e his soul so to his own conceit

That from = her working all his visage wan'd;

Tears in h= is eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken v= oice, and his whole function suiting

With forms= to his conceit? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba= ?

What's Hec= uba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he sh= ould weep for her?” (II.ii.392)

As we watch a group of acto= rs acting before another group of actors acting before an audience who are all quite possibly actors themselves in their own right, acting as audience mem= bers without whom the reality of the play could not exist. Acting is simply the process of doing or performing something. For example, the act of thinking.= The act of acting. T= he act of watching an actor. Or the act of watching an actor watching an actor. The appropriate questions for the Hamle= t is whether the play within the play is less real than the play encompassing the play (or the film encompassing the film). Are the actors acting as actors less real than the actors they perform for or e= ven the audience members watching them? Is Ellsinore somehow closer than Troy? = Is London somehow closer than Hamlet&#= 8217;s Denmark? Are these rhetorical questions, or is there really something to po= nder here? It all comes down to what is real. It all comes down to Hecuba.

What is Hecuba to him? Hecu= ba is that which made him weep, no matter how many layers deep into theatre, a te= ar is a tear, and with Shakespeare, “All the world's a stage.” (As You Like It II.vii.) In the beg= inning of the play, Hamlet claims that all representations of emotion, from dress = to tears to sighs of grief, are meaningless[9] Moreover, Almereyda’s production makes it clear that digitization does not threaten the future of cinema and cinema studies; on the contrary, it is the vital evolutionary step that ensures their place within the constantly evolving landscape of the visual arts in= the twenty-first century.

“The film within the = film doubles the cinematic illusion and creates a strong metalinguistic awareness that we are watching a movie. In this respect, it seems to duplicate the play’s metatheatrical aspect.”[10] As Shakespearian metadrama is transformed into Almereydaian metacinema, the Shakespeare scholar discovers how Almereyda’s film has brought Shakespeare play to life. And through this same experience, the cinema scho= lar discovers how the dying study of film is revived by a self-conscious exploration of the roots of digital cinema. Far from extinction, film is on= the threshold of a new beginning, exemplified by Almereyda’s Hamlet whose clear historical root= s mark the emergence of a postmodern cinema ripe for study. Without even consideri= ng the legacy of the Bard, the film studies essay Postmodern Cinema and Hollywood Culture in an Age of Corporate Colonization, describes the evolution of Postmodern Cinema in terms that clearly parallel the form of Shakespearian tragedy.

Consider how easily one mig= ht apply this description to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and it becomes easy to see why Almereyda chose the play for postmodern adap= tation. And through his production, Almereyda confronts one of the biggest problems facing the postmodern world; it’s lack of historical grounding. As An= ne Friedberg explains,

“The= most profound symptoms of the postmodern condition diagnosed by theorists as div= erse as Jean-Francoise Lyotard, Fredric Jamerson, Jean Baudrillard-the disappear= ance of a sense of history, entrapment in perpetual present, the loss of temporal referents-have been, I argue, caused at least in part by the implicit time travel of cinematic and televisual speciation….The mechanical (and now electronic) capacity to manipulate time and space, essential features of cinematic and televisual apparatuses, has produced an increasingly detemporalized subject. And at the same time, the ubiquity of these simulat= ed experiences has fostered an increasingly derealized sense of presence and identity.”[11]

Hamlet is a play addressing, among other things, this specific issue of disjointed time. As Hamlet himself laments, “the time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.” 26:38 Almereyda’s Hamlet spe= aks these lines over the sounds of a modem connecting, peering into the image of Denmark Corporation on a screen that turns to static, then to lines, then fading to the image of Hamlets ghost. Earlier Hamlet tells Horatio, “there are more things in heaven= and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy”, as they look out of the window and see Hamlet’s ghost on a balcony overlooking New York city = at night, with skyscrapers and traffic lights, reminding how futuristic everyt= hing is. Heaven is the sky, earth the grounds, and earth and ground in New York = are an unfathomable matrix of steal, wire, and technology. In the next scene, Ophelia is ordering a movie via movie phone.

= ;

Almereyda brilliantly addre= sses the challenges of adapting to change in the postmodern world, not through acade= mic discourse but through postmodern art itself. Be= tween the lines, or perhaps more accurately between the frames of this film, is a commentary on how mechanical and digital reproduction have reshaped = the arts and simultaneously our way of understanding them. Through the films exploration of continuity and discontinuity between Shakespearian metadrama= and postmodern metacinema, we find a study of the evolution of the visual arts = that offers great insight into the future of cinema by grounding our exploration relation to a familiar past. The postmodern “entrapment in perpetual present” (Rasmus 161) is self consciously reflected by Hamlet’s= “entrapment within the world of the past” (Rasmus 161)The future, we discover, li= es in bridging the past with the present. In order to become masters of our own destiny, we must work backwards, and consider first how the present has been shaped by the past.

“= 230;the idea of Hamlet as an internal filmmaker has created an opportunity to explo= re the themes of memory and entrapment within the world of the past. It is a f= orm of mourning, masochistic torture and a kind of alternative reality for Haml= et, unable to live in the present.” (Rasmus 161)

This “alternate reality” of Almereyda’s film comes out of a study of the evolution of post= modern cinema, through cinema itself, and may well be cinema’s gateway to the future. Instead of losing itself in ti= me, the film reflects the historical evolution leading to the present moment in order to give direction to the future.

Utilizing the powerful tools of cinema, Almereyda’s Hamlet advances cinema theory directly through film, addressing essential philosophical issues that until now have been extremely difficult= to approach indirectly through academic discourse alone. It’s not that h= is film is necessarily better than other postmodern productions; in terms of quality, I think Pulp Fiction, for example, is a better postmodern producti= on. But in terms of paithing the way for the future of film, Pulp Fiction it is= so original that the academic world is much less prepared for it, and in acade= mic terms, we don’t know how to interpret it (though its influence is obv= ious in my nonlinear writing style). Almereyda’s Hamlet addresses postmode= rn issues through highly familiar terms but in a uniquely original way. His fi= lm confronts the problems facing postmodern cinema by linking them to history, grounding the discussion in a way that is original enough to be engaging, y= et familiar enough to be recognized, thought through, and developed into theoretical terms that can and will advance cinema and cinema studies.

The postmodern successfully references the present, but too often gets stuck on the question “whe= re do we go from here?” But Hamlet has already addressed this issue of b= eing stuck in the present, concluding that the only thing worse than contemplati= on without action is action without contemplation. Progress requires the combination of action with contemplation. And in terms of film, this means combining the action of the film with the theory of film, thereby addressing the concerns over the future of cinema within cinema itself and not just fr= om far removed academic circles. In other words, film theorists need to become filmmakers, and teach theory through example instead of just words. As Hamlet reveals, the beauty of lang= uage can often spurn the action it implores, but thoughtful actions wisely made = can open many doors.