{"id":3961,"date":"2024-08-27T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2024-06-06T20:26:53","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T02:26:53","slug":"movie-rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead-1990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/27\/movie-rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead-1990\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RosencrantzRosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1990
Rating: PG
Length: 117 minutes \/ 1.95 hours<\/p>\n

While there are plenty of perfectly fine adaptations of William Shakespeare plays, I can appreciate the ones that take a different approach than just recreating the source material. Whether it\u2019s making it into a musical like West Side Story<\/em> (1961) did to Romeo and Juliet<\/em> or shifting the setting to feudal Japan like Throne of Blood<\/em> (1957) did to Macbeth<\/em>, these plays are deep enough to allow for creative interpretations. Case in point is Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead<\/em> (1990), an adjacent adaptation of Hamlet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Most people know the events of Hamlet<\/em> but few consider what these characters are doing when not in the presence of the main character. This movie tries to remedy this by following Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) as they discuss a variety of intellectual concepts\u2014most of which might just come off as absurdist humor. Covering such ideas as probability, gravity, and logic, these two characters don\u2019t end up doing much of anything interesting when \u201coff stage.\u201d Yes, it might answer the question about what they were doing when Hamlet (Iain Glen) was setting up his plan, but I don\u2019t think many people were asking that question.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead<\/em> is still an adaptation of Hamlet<\/em>. The problem is, there\u2019s so little of the original play there that you start to realize that without it, anything else is mostly just boring. Sure, you get some fantastic performances from Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss, but is it worth it when they don\u2019t really have anything to do but talk in circles? This movie is great as a thought experiment when considering the lives of minor characters. That\u2019s the problem, though\u2014they\u2019re minor characters.<\/p>\n

A somewhat amusing Hamlet-adjacent story, I give Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are DeadYear: 1990Rating: PGLength: 117 minutes \/ 1.95 hours While there are plenty of perfectly fine adaptations of William Shakespeare plays, I can appreciate the ones that take a different approach than just recreating the source material. Whether it\u2019s making it into a musical like West Side Story (1961) did to Romeo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[1719,90,3811,2577,13,8,3813,3810,1109,3812,1802],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-movie","tag-1719","tag-adaptation","tag-adjacent","tag-hamlet","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-richard-dreyfuss","tag-rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead","tag-shakespeare","tag-tim-roth","tag-william-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3974,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions\/3974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}