I'm a sucker for folded, reflexive and referential narrative, and especially so when built on Carroll or Shakespeare. So take this comment in that spirit. You will probably find this movie juvenile, but there are some clever things going on.
The overall shape is based on the play and not on people or romance. Each performance of Hamlet in this world is a reincarnation of a complex being at war with itself. Over thousands of performances, it tries to resolve its inner conflicts, sometimes going back. There is a complex secondary karma as these performances sweep up the actors and sometimes the audience, "infecting" them with energetic plasma.
To negotiate this story, we enter through the eyes of a potential savior, each intelligent director being the next fresh soul to attempt to bring order to the play. His life has its own dramas and the players and situations in his life fold into the play. Tensions involve sex, death, blood, being. It springs from Stoppard as much as from Shakespeare.
So far so good, a standard Hamlet.
The key participants are the sons of John Lennon and Dustin Hoffman. They have no idea what is going on, none. There are some women, and some attempt to weave a universal female around Ophelia, but she is played by a talentless model. Everyone involved in the actual staging of this play decided to pretend to be inept so as to hide their ineptness.
Good stuff spoiled. We could have had a "Shadow of the Vampire" crossed with "Tampopo." What we have instead is unwatchable, except for the first few moments with Bijou Philips in a fairy costume. The camera loves her.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
The overall shape is based on the play and not on people or romance. Each performance of Hamlet in this world is a reincarnation of a complex being at war with itself. Over thousands of performances, it tries to resolve its inner conflicts, sometimes going back. There is a complex secondary karma as these performances sweep up the actors and sometimes the audience, "infecting" them with energetic plasma.
To negotiate this story, we enter through the eyes of a potential savior, each intelligent director being the next fresh soul to attempt to bring order to the play. His life has its own dramas and the players and situations in his life fold into the play. Tensions involve sex, death, blood, being. It springs from Stoppard as much as from Shakespeare.
So far so good, a standard Hamlet.
The key participants are the sons of John Lennon and Dustin Hoffman. They have no idea what is going on, none. There are some women, and some attempt to weave a universal female around Ophelia, but she is played by a talentless model. Everyone involved in the actual staging of this play decided to pretend to be inept so as to hide their ineptness.
Good stuff spoiled. We could have had a "Shadow of the Vampire" crossed with "Tampopo." What we have instead is unwatchable, except for the first few moments with Bijou Philips in a fairy costume. The camera loves her.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.