In order to get the most out of a film adaptation, it's worth taking into account everything the DVD has to offer - in this case, I watched the film through once in it's entirety, then watched the production documentary, and finally rewatched with the director ocmmentary turned on.
While there are some big names in the lead roles, I found myself drawn to the character of Rosencrantz, though I'll admit I'm not sure if that's because the actor looks rather disarmingly like someone I know. Naturally being an RSC production the entire cast is necessarily comfortable with making the language feel natural - the setting was modernised and I noticed some extra not quite verbal vocalisations which I'm not sure were in the script but serve to help the flow of the lines feel more up to date.
My thoughts yesterday about the wayward heir as a trope or archetype in Shakespeare was somewhat vindicated in the commentary - it was mentioned that a lot of these plays were being written during a time when the succession to the throne out in the real world was in question, along with the effect certain options might have. So that tells me perhaps one of the options was a young prince, treated as any normal youth of the day by his friends and openly out in the world rather than shut up at court, and the potential death of the king by various means was being used as a testing ground in a lot of these plays.
Not just the death of the king though - in this play once again the death toll is at least half the main players, and suicide used as a way out of awkward situations. In light of these being commentary on the day, using suicide as a sort of excuse for those in court not outwardly taking responsibility for their mistakes - Oh, I'm sure inside they are wracked with guilt and literally dying of it... except these are not comedies. If someone today staged a play where some of the major world leaders who've recently been seen to fuck up in all kinds of interesting ways suddenly being remorseful behind closed doors and sucking a bullet for it... they'd get a standing ovation, or arrested for treason. Or both. It'd be nice to think that the advice I was given by an older girl at school would hold here - I'd come into rehearsals one day, aged about 12 and close to tears from a day of relentless teasing over whatever it was that day... and she didn't know me that well, we were maybe a week into rehearsing and she'd not seen me before that. But she sat me down in the wings and told me, "you're safe here. On stage, no-one can touch you". And perhaps it's true of playwrites too - and maybe that's what he's getting at by (several times) including a daring, plot-revealing, accusatory and life-reflecting play within a play. I never thought of it that way before, but it could be taken as sort of dick-waving for his own audacity in dealing with thinly-veiled issues of the day.
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