Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
The characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remind me a little of Händel’s Agrippina, because the Boston Lyric Opera also made this joke about how Pallante and Narciso are practically the same character and Claudio, at that point still emperor, confuses who is who. Unfortunately for this play, the Boston Lyric Opera only makes that joke once and it made me laugh, but for some reason this play/movie has a tendency to recycle jokes over and over. It might be the play’s biggest problem.
In fact, for the large part of the film I have been bored. I had to look up a summary of Hamlet again (it’s been so damn long since I have read it, and the storyline appears more convoluted to me than I remembered it), but even with enough knowledge of the Hamlet-related scenes most of the dialogue in the play failed to gain my interest. Is it because I am not into Shakespeare that much after all? (Unlike considering my intense love for his Midsummer Night’s Dream and how I enjoyed reading almost all of his plays.) Is it because I don’t like theater plays all that much after all? That is even less likely, and I love almost all movies referencing theater plays. It’s just that this film should have hit all the chords with me, but ended up not doing so. I didn’t exactly have high expectations for it, but I like absurd theater and I love pointless dialogue. But a good absurd play has something inexplicably deep underneath its seemingly senseless and simplistic dialogue, and the dialogue in this film just seems absolutely banal to me. I absolutely love the concept of characters who ignore whatever politics and meaningful bullshit is around them to enjoy the wonders of life with curiosity and questions about literally everything. It’s just that I wish it actually was literally everything. Instead, we get the same jokes over and over.
Next time I think I should go back to see one of the Monolith films instead.