Over the years, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been adopted in numerous ways. For a play so well known for multiple reasons, adopting it can be daunting. However, Paul Warner’s Hamlet/Horatio is a breath of fresh air.
The Hamlet/Horatio is beautiful in so many ways and brings remarkable new ideas with amazing artistic and gorgeous cinematographic. It is an exciting new adoption that brings centuries-old play into the limelight through a new perspective.
How It Is Different From Shakespeare’s Original Hamlet?
In the original play, Horatio was an uninteresting character, and Shakespeare presented as a non-person. He had no effect on the dramatic development and performs no action despite having a lot of lines and appearances in several scenes. It is because the original play was about the King of Denmark’s son, Hamlet, and Shakespeare’s focus was mainly on that. In the play, Hamlet is a reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at Wittenberg University. But after the demise of his father, he is told to avenge his death and kill the new king. So he returns to Elsinor Castle but doesn’t know where to turn as he is surrounded by people he doesn’t trust. There comes Horatio to comfort Hamlet. He is Hamlet’s most trusted and faithful buddy and for the rest of the story both spend almost all their time together.
In the original play, the story is told through its main character’s eyes and in his soliloquies. However, Written by David Vando Hamlet/Horatio is a film re-staging of Hamlet from Horatio’s perspective. It means instead of telling the Hamlet story from the viewpoint of Prince Hamlet, Hamlet/Horatio flips the notion on its head and tells the story through Horatio’s perspective.
The film has a classic touch with a modern concept that will bring the centuries-old drama into the spotlight again. According to the official synopsis, Hamlet/Horatio celebrates the power of love to transcend corruption and evil driven by Horatio’s mission to keep Hamlet’s spirit alive, even after death.
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The Team Behind This Concept
David Wenzel, who is also the producer of Hamlet/Horatio, is the main person behind this concept. He played Hamlet in several NYC productions that were produced, and this is how they came up with a new concept of the tragedy of Hamlet. This film has been a 20-year collaboration between David Wenzel, David Vando, and Sundance Award winner Paul Warner.
In a press release, David Wenzel stated, “David Vando and I, David Wenzel, felt it was a need to introduce Hamlet/Horatio in a new concept to make it more relatable to a newer audience that might have been standoffish with Shakespeare in the past.” “We have known Sundance Award Winner Paul Warner for over 20 years and was a logical choice for him to direct.”
The film is starring Andrew Burdette as Hamlet and Themo Melikidze as Horatio and is distributed by Glass House Distribution. The whole team has done an incredible job to make this film a huge success. And it is depicted from the praise it has managed to receive by winning multiple awards at different film festivals, including the Los Angeles Film Awards and the New York Cinematography Awards.
Released Date and Streaming Platform
Hamlet/Horatio, the modern re-telling of the classic Shakespeare play Hamlet, is now available on Amazon prime video from June 1, 2021. So if you like Shakespeare or artistic indie films, go to Amazon and rent or buy the movie for as low as $4.99! Try it, I bet you won’t regret it.