30 years Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
On September 10, 1990, Tom Stoppard's film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
Anyone who has read "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare knows that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" is a phrase from the final scene of this brilliant play. A film with this name was directed by Tom Stoppard based on his own play, which is usually called an absurd tragicomedy.
Tom Stoppard's production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" was first presented to audiences in 1966 at the Edinburgh Theater Festival. Then this play was successfully performed on the stages of Broadway. There were 480 performances in total. In 1968, Tom Stoppard received the Tony Award for Best Play.
The MGM film company acquired from Tom Stoppard the rights to film his play for 200 thousand dollars and planned to attract director John Boorman, Stoppard's friend, as well as world cinema stars Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney and others to the film adaptation. But something prevented the implementation of these plans. And for a very long time MGM, like a "dog in the manger", did not shoot and did not allow others to shoot a film based on this play. This explains the time gap between theatrical production and film adaptation in more than 20 years.
This film was the only one in the work of Tom Stoppard as a filmmaker, although as a screenwriter and producer he took part in the creation of many wonderful films, for example, "Brazil". It can be assumed that Stoppard's decision to stop filmmaking was influenced by very hard-hitting reviews from film critics, in particular, the guru of American film critic Roger Ebert: "As a play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" is fascinating; we use our knowledge of "Hamlet" to piece together the half-glimpsed, incomplete actions of the major players, whose famous scenes we see a line or a moment at a time. As a movie, this material, freely adapted by Stoppard, is boring and endless. It lies flat on the screen, hardly stirring."
In approximately the same vein, but much more sharply, the film reviewer of The New York Times Vincent Canby, who wrote in his review, spoke about Tom Stoppard's film: "On the stage, this sort of thing can be great fun, an end in itself, somewhat like music. In the more realistic medium of film, so many words can numb the eardrums and weigh upon the eyelids like old coins."
However, the opinion of the jury of the Venice Film Festival turned out to be diametrically opposed to the opinion of leading American critics. Tom Stoppard's film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by the decision of the jury chaired by the American writer Gore Vidal was awarded the main prize of the festival - the Golden Lion. And this despite the fact that among the nominees was Martin Scorsese's film "Goodfellas". By the way, the jury included the famous Soviet film director Kira Muratova.
The evaluations of Tom Stoppard's film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by Russian film critics turned out to be much more favorable than those of their American colleagues. So, the famous film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev gave the film 8 points on a 10-point system and in his review noted: “when in 1990 Stoppard himself decided to debut in film directing and film his old play, giving the opportunity to the British actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth who had managed to establish themselves masterly, even with postmodern chic to play the title “reluctant heroes”, he, perhaps, unexpectedly for his own fans, tried to give the initially mocking history signs of a completely classical tragedy. Heroes over the past centuries have really shrunk and vulgarized, but the present time is by no means of Hamlets but truly of Rosencrantz's and of Guildensterns." What's true is true.
I must admit that I managed to watch the film till the end only on the fourth try. But after watching it, I did not regret the time spent. The film is very theatrical, but this is understandable given its background. When and where else will you watch a British theatrical production with translation into Russian?
64% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film ratings from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Tom Stoppard's film "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" according to FilmGourmand's version was 8,345, which allowed it to take 392nd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
