# Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

### reviewed by
Pedro Sena

    FILM TITLE:                 ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
    DIRECTOR:                TOM STOPPARD
    COUNTRY:                  USA ( 1990 )
    CAST:                          Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreifuss, Ian
    Richardson
    SUPER FEATURES:         BASED ON THE DIRECTOR'S PLAY

          !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a play more for Shakespeare aficionados than it is for film go-ers specially anyone who is into entertainment and escape.

But this play, were it not for its famous 'mother', is an excellent exercise in having a little fun, and see two goons get gooned around until they themselves get done away with it. The two actors, much like the requirement for the stage production, are extremelly good and very tight, meaning that there is a smoothness of interplay which is very enjoyable throughout the whole production.

And unlike the original play, this story is not locked into a theatre stage and has much more freedom to move around and show another side of the characters and players than we otherwise could really get. While travelling to Denmark we see the rough terrain, and the forests which help the two characters play word games to while away the travelling time. All of a sudden, the play is not a fun, wordy, game for two actors, but an entertaining exercise in filling in the boring spaces in one's life.

The story concerns the two characters which Claudius hires to go kill Hamlet in Denmark, during the latter's exile. Shakespeare makes these two characters look like a pair of little kids, playing a deadly game in an adult world, which I tend to think that Tom Stoppard wanted to change. In this film, they are not so much two kids as they are a pair of pawns caught up in a much larger chess game than they could imagine, and they do not realize that they are getting involved in a game which is not specially friendly or fun.

I have been involved in one production of this play, and like it a lot, not only because of its avant-garde style, but also because it always invokes settings for a stage which are very colorful and 'symbolic' if not totally based on a 'visual' image. The play works very well within the confines of the absurdist theatre, with a stage that could be almost all too empty. And the film answers all the questions and problems which it might have on the stage.

This film is worth seeing.....but a requirement is necessary that you allow for time to let events shape up.....thus the story will become a bit clearer to you. Excellent acting and very good, sometimes funny, directing.

    Richard Dreifuss is very good.

    4 GIBLOONS
    Copyright (c) Pedro Sena 1994

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