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cold, virginal vastness of space, diametrically opposed to the dark and claustrophobic interiors featured in Olivier’s and Zeffirelli’s versions. Through its iconography, Branagh’s Hamlet averts the subject of mourning and the memory of maternal loss, thereby escaping the dilemma it poses for the male subject and eliminating any impediments to the construction of masculinity and sexuality in accordance with the paternal law, the legacy of the Oedipal myth.

In contrast to earlier filmed Hamlets, Branagh’s prince and Julie Christie’s queen refrain from excessive embraces or lingering kisses; and although the two play out the closet scene with Gertrude at first seated alone on her bed, they do not engage in imagined or mimed sexual intercourse. Instead, Branagh’s Hamlet speaks to his mother “as if he were a priest about to pronounce eternal damnation,” as indicated in his screenplay (Branagh 1996b:105). As the scene progresses, the two end up seated on a sofa “like two lost children,” as Branagh describes them (112). This staging, although it rejects the popularized psychoanalytic interpretation, ironically suggests the scene of analysis itself. If anything, Branagh plays Hamlet-as-analyst in a closet scene that more closely resembles a frustrated therapy session than a passionate encounter.

No longer Lacan’s demanding (m)Other, Christie’s Gertrude fades into the blank white background, her own desires obscured by those of Claudius and Hamlet. Her appearance in a wedding gown with Claudius in the opening scene at court suggests the symbolic ‘‘incorporation” of her and the maternal in Hamlet. Gertrude only exists as an object in relation to Claudius, an object-of-(his)-desire, as is visually illustrated in the flashbacks that accompany the Ghost’s exposition speech. In a brief clip designed to connote the queen’s sexuality, the camera, shot from Claudius’s perspective, shows Christie’s back as he lustfully unlaces her corset from behind. Otherwise, the film shifts its focus from Gertrude to Ophelia as the object of Hamlet’s desire. As in Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, Christie’s Gertrude and Kate Winslet’s Ophelia are linked in Branagh’s version by their similarity in physical appearance, if not age, and also through sympathetic looks exchanged between them at key moments, such as Ophelia’s reading of Hamlet’s letter before the king and queen. Only after Ophelia’s mad scene, when Claudius orders his wife to “[g]ive her good watch” (4.5.71), a command designated for Horatio in the play text, does Gertrude disobey his commands, which implies that Ophelia’s distracted behavior has profoundly affected her.

This connection between Gertrude and Ophelia serves other uses

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