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Page 176 thine eye look like a friend on Denmark’’ (1.2.69), Hamlet ignores her gesture and reciprocates intense glares with Claudius, who, in a fatherly manner, twice places his arm around Hamlet’s shoulders when warning of the dangers of mourning. Despite the directorial notes provided in Branagh’s screenplay, which describe Claudius’s behavior here as “chilling,” the effect in performance is the opposite (Branagh 1996b:14–15). Jacobi’s Claudius appears as if he sincerely wishes to become Hamlet’s paternal substitute, as if he wants to claim not only the affection of his brother’s wife, but also the filial devotion of his brother’s son. In Hamlet’s soliloquy that follows, the nature of the triangular relationship is apparent: Branagh throws away the line “frailty thy name is woman” (1.2.146) to stress, instead, that Gertrude “married with mine uncle,/My father’s brother” (1.2.151–52), accentuating Hamlet’s hostility toward Claudius over his disgust with Gertrude. These early scenes set the pace for the entire film, in which Jacobi’s Claudius emerges as the prominent figure, second only to Branagh’s Hamlet. The paternal emphasis of Branagh’s Hamlet is introduced even earlier, during the film’s opening credits, when the title Hamlet appears engraved on the gigantic statue of Hamlet, Sr. This film thus announces itself as a Hamlet about fathers right from the start— both the literal father and the figurative “Law-of-the-Father,” or the law that governs the Symbolic order in Lacanian theory. According to Lacan, once the human subject enters into the social order, it is forced into laws of division and repression instituted through language, which employs the male sign as its governing principle. In Branagh’s film, both the father and the Law-of-the-Father are symbolically embodied in the huge stone memorial of the dead king. As the film continues, this stone sculpture transforms into an enormous Ghost, played by the fleshy Brian Blessed. In his scene with Hamlet, the monstrous specter pushes his son to his knees and then accosts him face-to-face, the phantom’s piercing blue eyes appearing wolf-like in their stare. As he speaks the lines “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.25), the camera zooms in for an extreme close-up of Blessed’s mouth, creating a bizarre effect of exaggerating his speech, emphasizing every syllable of his commands. Overblown and exaggerated, the spirit of Hamlet, Sr. signifies the paternal law, not just the lost father. At the film’s close, this statue is ceremoniously decapitated on the heels of Fortinbras’s victory, an obvious image of castration signifying the usurpation of the father by the “son,” young Fortinbras, and the ushering in of his |
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