A Comedy of a Tragedy

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Dir. Tom Stoppard;  117 minutes; rated PG
Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss



Anyone for a game of questions?

I went to the theatre last night to watch the local group perform Tom Stoppard’s 1967 Tony award winning play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”.  I laughed till I cried and then came home to dig out my copy of the movie version.  Although not up to the level of a great stage performance, the film is still worth a watch.

You might be familiar with Tom Stoppard’s work, even if Ros/Guil (as it’s called) doesn’t ring a bell.  He’s been writing plays, screenplays, and television programming for decades.  He wrote Squaring the Circle for TV in ’84 and Shakespeare in Love for the screen in ’98, to name two of his better known pieces.  Over and over, Stoppard turns to Shakespeare for inspiration, and Ros/Guil is no exception.

The plot is simple, assuming you paid attention in High School English class!  Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) were minor characters in Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” (ah....Mel Gibson with a sword!).  Ros and Guil were Hamlet’s friends and they were brought to the palace to cheer up the moping prince (who had taken to hanging out in the basement and talking to himself).  When Ros and Guil failed to bring Hamlet back to normal, they were stuck with the task of taking Hamlet to England (where the English king would “take care” of Denmark’s problem child).  Hamlet didn’t think much of the plan and ran off, leaving Ros and Guild to be executed in his place.  In a single line at the end of the original Hamlet, a messenger arrived at the court of Denmark to tell the king that “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”.  Of course, by this point, most of the court of Denmark is also dead, so Ros and Guil really shouldn’t feel left out.

Now, Stoppard’s play deals with what happens to Ros and Guil while the events in Hamlet are taking place.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the only characters Stoppard has liberated from the Shakespearean drama, and as a result, they’re more than a little confused.  When other characters from Hamlet wander on screen their dialog is straight from the pen of the Bard, but when Ros and Guil are alone, Stoppard steps in.

This might not sound amusing, but believe me, Stoppard makes it work.  Ros and Guil bumble their way through Hamlet.  They don’t know who to trust, who to believe, what they are supposed to be doing, or even who they really are (a running gag has them uncertain as to which one of them is which).  Ros and Guil are left to fend for themselves, debating the meaning of life (“you can’t not be on a boat”), the meaning of death (“dead, in a box, with a lid on it...”), just what is wrong with Hamlet (“Denmark’s a prison and he’d rather live in a nutshell?”), and which way the wind is blowing (“there isn’t any wind”).  After they meet the Player (skillfully played in turn by Richard Dreyfuss), Ros and Guil realize that they are stuck in the middle of a dramatic and heroic story, but that they themselves are neither dramatic nor heroic...they just want to go home and eat dinner.

The Player adds yet another surreal and cryptic character to the mayhem (“We’re actors!  Death is what we do best”) and Dreyfuss acts the role to the hilt.  Dropping hints and suggestions, the Player and his troupe act out the scenes of Hamlet, taking the play within a play to new levels.  Watch the movie, and when you reach the shadow-puppets you’ll understand.  The viewer, watching the actors, watch the troupe of players, who are watching other players, who are watching a puppet show...but all telling the same story.

Stoppard weaves a web of insane dialog and madcap scene changes (just follow the sheet music!), and the medium of film is perfect for jumping from thought to thought and place to place.  However, in a play the audience is part of a whole, and in a film you can never be more than a viewer.  Some of the energy found in the play is missing from the film, and several of the supporting roles could have been cast better.  However, the main actors are amazing, the verbal acrobatics amusing, and the leaps of illogic more than worth the three dollar cost for a rental.  Check it out, put down your logic, and get ready to laugh!

 

Drew Taylor grrl-e-grrl.com resident film freek