Hamlet's Soliloquy Film Techniques

In Shakespeare's day, an audience would have watched Hamlet’s soliloquies from their seats. Modern audiences have a choice whether to do the same or watch it on screen. The film allows directors to manipulate the audience's view through camera shots, sound, setting, and lighting. Russell Jackson believes ‘film has other means of access to the characters’ interiority, to which speech may even be a hindrance. However, this is not true speech a soliloquies speech cannot be replaced by techniques used in a film. As shown in Michael Almereyda’s 2000 Hamlet these devices can overwhelm and distract audiences taking away the emotional essence of the soliloquy ‘to be or not to be’. In comparison, Gregory Doran’s 2009 adaptation uses unimpressive and minimalistic film techniques which allows for

Speech has zero hindrance on Doran’s ‘to be or not to be’ and the film techniques he uses such as setting are successful only due to their accompaniment to this. Doran’s lack of setting allows him to use lighting more effectively to reflect the melancholy madness of Hamlet. Using the film technique chiaroscuro Doran shows Hamlet’s dark thoughts as he is constantly cast in a shadow. In particular, this enables Doran to highlight Hamlets face which during this soliloquy shows the anguish portrayed in his facial expression. However, speech remains center stage here as this is a very simple film technique only used to visually expand the speech of the soliloquy and the actor's ability. Doran’s simplification of film techniques in Hamlet proves completely opposite to Jackson’s thesis. Doran uses film techniques such as setting and lighting selectively as though these ‘may even be a hindrance...for direct address to the audience.’ Employing restraint in his film techniques creates a deeper connection to Hamlet as Doran focuses all the attention on Hamlet and his