Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

2/8/19911h 57m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself. ~

Overview:

Two minor characters from the play "Hamlet" stumble around unaware of their scripted lives and unable to deviate from them.

Director:

Tom Stoppard

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

fate
existentialism

Cast

Gary Oldman

~ as ~

Rosencrantz

Tim Roth

~ as ~

Guildenstern

Richard Dreyfuss

~ as ~

The Player

Iain Glen

~ as ~

Hamlet

Ian Richardson

~ as ~

Polonius

Donald Sumpter

~ as ~

Claudius

Joanna Miles

~ as ~

Gertrude

Joanna Roth

~ as ~

Ophelia

John Burgess

~ as ~

Ambassador from England

Livio Badurina

~ as ~

Tragedian (Alfred)

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

Filipe Manuel Neto
Written 1 year(s) ago
4
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must remain in the theater.

This film is perhaps the proof that not all successful plays are good enough to work in the cinema. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two characters from “Hamlet”, by William Shakespeare, but it is difficult for anyone to remember them without being very knowledgeable about the literary work in question. They really barely matter to the action. Here, they are the main actors, and we are invited, in a way, to see things through their eyes. In theater, this is interesting. In the cinema, and for a general audience that doesn't know “Hamlet” so well, this doesn't seem like a good idea.

Gary Oldman and Tim Roth brought the main roles to life with great panache and value, and the film ends up not being an absolute waste of time thanks to these two magnificent and valuable actors, full of talent. There is a high dose of “nonsense” in the dialogues between the two, and this can become tiring, but it generally works without surprising. The rest of the cast does not have such good material and opportunities to stand out, thus leaving the film somewhat devoid of good characters other than the protagonists.

On a technical level, the emphasis is on the costumes and sets. I can't say that there is great historical rigor here: historically, Hamlet's life is located in Denmark in the Year One Thousand and what we see is Renaissance, much more suited to people and figures who would be contemporary with Shakespeare. But I didn't have any problems with that, and that's not even a problem because all of this is fiction and can be situated in time whenever you want. Much more difficult to bear is the slight feeling that we are watching a kind of recorded play instead of a film.