Impressed as I was by the film, when I sat down with Almereyda and star Ethan Hawke, I still couldn't shake the question that arose the first time I heard of the new film's existence: "Why?" Why Hamlet? Why now? Why again?
Did the impulse to make the film come from the play itself, or were you looking to explore certain ideas about the culture--individuals vs. corporations, for example--and realized, "Oh, of course, Hamlet!"
MICHAEL: The first impulse was to work with Shakespeare, and then, almost reluctantly, I came around to the feeling that the most exciting and available, charged adaptation I could come up with was Hamlet--even though it had been done so many times, and seemingly to death. Everything in the movie really does derive from the reading of the play, thinking about the tradition of it, and thinking about how contemporary reality refracts or reflects what's in Shakespeare's plays. It's an attempt at Hamlet; it doesn't pretend to be definitive. But it's heartfelt and it does have things that are new. And it was as intimate and urgent as we could make it.
Shakespeare adaptations always tread the line between defending the sanctity of the language and modernizing the context to keep audiences interested. Yours feels inherently contemporary, not just like a novelty update.
MICHAEL: Even the archaic language feels contemporary. Four-hundred-year-old text sounds very alive. That's just proof of how great Shakespeare is.
ETHAN: It's clear in the movie, this idea of feeling oppressed by the weight of a society entirely oriented on making money, like you might feel oppressed by a dictator or a king. Hamlet's last line, "The rest is silence," comes from somebody that's been seeking some kind of peace, some kind of authenticity, and not being able to find it. And [since the film is] set in this modern world--we're inundated with advertising, with sounds and noise of all kinds. I think you get that all from the play, but we have them be modern noises.
Hamlet's struggle in your film is primal and real, but not so vaunted that he's unassailable as a character. I mean, I don't think anyone would say he's a coward....
MICHAEL: Well, I think a lot of people would say that, but whenever you say that, you say more about yourself than you do about Hamlet. An essay by a guy named Harold Goddard pointed out that there's nowhere in Shakespeare that you can see that murder is good. Killing never leads to anything good. Shakespeare never endorsed murder. So he played devil's advocate in this play by making the whole plot-pivot be this character's inability to kill, and playing into the audience's impatient bloodlust.
But if the ghost is the projection of the vengeful side of himself, and the play is the battleground of these two warring Hamlets, the frustration, I think, isn't that he doesn't kill Claudius, but that he can't resolve this struggle within himself.
ETHAN: [Not acting] is his most frustrating quality. But it's actually in many ways, really admirable. He doesn't want to kill this guy. It's what's really beautiful about the guy that gets destroyed.
MICHAEL: But I think it's a false hypothesis to say that Hamlet is weak, Hamlet is cowardly, that he should kill Claudius. In fact, he's justified to resist. Vengeance is not a good thing. Murder is not a good thing.
