You almost suspect, at first, that even the ghost will be dispensed with as nothing more than a fanciful story. We don’t even get the ghost, at first, don’t get that scene with Horatio and the guards confronting the spectre.

Hamlet absolutely is totally in control of his faculties, even if he is a moody, sulky bastard. Gertrude (Glenn Close) absolutely is hot for the new king (Alan Bates). Normally, with any other story, that might be a bad thing, but most productions of Hamlet tend toward the ambiguous - is Hamlet crazy, or isn’t he? is he faking? does the faking actually make him crazy? does Gertrude really love Claudius? is she faking in order to secure her position? and so on - so there’s something kinda refreshing about a production that, punning aside, makes no bones about it. There’s nothing meta about it - there’s little open to interpretation. I like how different it is from almost every other production. I saw the 1990 Franco Zeffirelli mounting of the story of the Mad Dane years ago and I must admit that it didn’t really make much of an impression on me then, but now, having watched it after seeing a whole bunch of different interpretations of what could be the greatest play ever written… I like it. Yeah, he’s shouty, like he always is, but I kinda like Mel Gibson as Hamlet.

Hamlet full movie 1997