There is treachery plus several on-screen killings. Profanity is limited to exclamations such as “God’s Blood.” There’s some sexual language, such as when the insane Ophelia (Helena Bonham-Carter) flirts suggestively with a guard and recites a poem about how men don’t marry girls who’ve already gone to bed with them (human nature hasn’t changed much in the last 400 years). This is a morality play tragedy follows tragedy as the sins of Claudius ultimately lead to many deaths. By Claudius’ reaction, Hamlet knows that the accusation is true, and he commits himself to avenging his father. Hamlet reasons that the spirit he saw might have been a demon imitating the spirit of his father and deceiving him (good thinking, because in real life that’s in all likelihood what it would have been) so to be certain of Claudius’ guilt, he arranges for a troupe of actors to put on a play with a scene that reproduces the murder. Hamlet’s offense is heightened after his father’s ghost appears to him and reveals that his death wasn’t an accident, that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear while he slept. Hamlet, the prince of Denmark ( Mel Gibson), is offended that his mother Gertrude ( Glenn Close) has married his uncle Claudius (Alan Bates) only a month or so after the death of his father the king (Paul Scofield), and that Claudius has taken the throne for himself.
The acting is emotional and convincing, even though everyone is speaking an obsolete dialect of English. This adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous play is abridged and altered, as are most other versions (it’s been filmed at least 25 times including a 1948 Best Picture Oscar-winner), but preserves the intent of the original.
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