🎬 Hamlet in the Business World

The very title of the film, which is a loose paraphrase in Czech of the Finnish title "Hamlet Goes Business," already suggests how far Aki Kaurismäki allowed himself to go in his film adaptation of this canonical work of world literature and drama. Shakespeare's timeless model, based among other things on the interweaving of power and family ties, is transposed into contemporary Finland. In searching for period and character parallels, the Finnish director proceeded with almost bemused ingenuity. As though committing a kind of loving blasphemy while simultaneously wanting the force of the source material to work upon the widest possible audience. Today's Hamlet is a fresh heir to a significant share in an enterprise now run by his uncle Klaus. He writes below-average poetry, watches his weight, and is only slowly beginning to emerge from the infatuation that life represented to him until the moment of his father's death. Moreover, as is the case for all those who are at least somewhat familiar with Shakespeare's work, there is one great dark secret here that casts a shadow over family history. Its revelation conditions Hamlet's enlightenment, or indeed his coming to a sense of responsibility and sound judgment. Unlike the previous film adaptation of this classical literary work, his debut Crime and Punishment, the film Hamlet features distinctly more elements of comedy, though characteristically for Kaurismäki, broken by strong irony. Since this is one of the few films whose heroes find themselves at higher rungs of the social ladder, manifestations of social injustice are criticized from the perspective of Kaurismäki's social sensitivity through irony and work with absurdity. For Hamlet here is not merely a catalyst for the drama produced by family relationships, but also a representative of a certain social status and political power. Among the director's great strengths is that he is well aware of the impossibility of finding absolute answers and definitive solutions, which words are simply inadequate for. Hamlet's character (his fate), despite the initial possible "repugnance" due to profligacy and irresponsibility, reveals itself as the drama progresses not only as deliberately tragic, but above all as comprehensible and (possibly) sympathetic to the viewer. Drama today is clearly no longer dispensed with only on the boards that mean the world.