Delayed Reaction: Ophelia

Premise: A different take on Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective.

 

I love the idea of alternate takes on stories. When it's done well, it feels like a magic trick. I love how a story changes entirely when seen from that different perspective or when given additional context*. Complete creative freedom is great and all, but I'm also a huge fan of when someone is tasked with a set of sometimes insane boundaries and has to find room to make something good in its own right. I love all forms of this. Give me the multiple perspectives of the same story in a Rashomon or Vantage Point. Give me a prequel. Give me a concurrent story. Give me time-travel. I'm intrigued by all forms of it. I'll put up with a lot of half-assed attempts in search of a Hannibal (the series) that fundamentally changes and enriches the thing from before.

 

*In my teens, I spent a lot of time developing a series of stories that started as Zelda fan fiction. The idea was that there were several stories that overlapped. I was never that great at the actual writing part, but I was obsessed with the different ways that the stories could intersect and figuring out timelines.

 

So, I'm all on board for this Ophelia movie in theory. I love Daisy Ridley and Naomi Watts. Ophelia is an under-explored character in need of some nuance. I've even seen this done successfully with the Hamlet story before in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I did end up liking Daisy Ridley in the lead role. She brought a lot of interiority and strength to Ophelia. Naomi Watts is having a great deal of fun playing dual roles. The movie looks good too with great costuming.

 

The unchangeable restrictions set by the Hamlet play are quite a hurdle though. Ophelia doesn't really clear them. It fails the "Would I rather be watching a Hamlet film with this cast?" test. And it struggles to integrate the Hamlet scenes into the movie. They feel reverse engineered. Like, the only reason this Ophelia goes insane or has to fake her death are because that's what happens in Hamlet. They don't feel natural to this story. Ophelia ends up being a noble failure. Great idea. Excellent casting. It can't quite crack the story though. It's like a well-made musical with a poor songbook.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend