Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead...or are they?

In my Lit class, we have been discussing Existentialism on and off for the past couple of weeks. During one of these discussions, the subject of writing from the point of view of an obscure character came up. So naturally we discussed the play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. I had read this play in high school and greatly enjoyed it so I wanted to watch the movie and see how the themes fate and destiny, and whether we can really ever escape it, are portrayed in the film adaptation.

The film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), directed and written by Tom Stoppard, follows the characters Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) from Hamlet. The story is really about fate and whether we really have control of our lives because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern keep reliving their life from the beginning of their journey to see Hamlet and ends when they are ultimately hanged. The story is more focused on the idea of fate and how we are merely players in the game of life. However, the film is very playful. It is playful with its dialogue, its editing, and story. Stoppard really draws the viewer in with witty and clever dialogue, and through a surprisingly engaging story told via the point of view of two very minor and insignificant characters from one of the greatest stories of all time.

The film begins by following Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on a journey somewhere yet unknown with Rosencrantz decides to start flipping a coin. Each time he flips the coin, it lands heads. In the beginning it seems to just be a random occurrence that it lands heads so many times. But after 76 times of landing heads, Rosencrantz begins to think it means something while Guildenstern thinks it is just random. Of course the coin landing heads so many times is NOT random. At the beginning of the film it may be unclear as to why the coin never lands tails, but by the end it is evident that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are stuck in a type of limbo that affects the outcome of the coin. The coin landing heads may also allude to the fact that they both end up getting hanged.

What is interesting about the film is how it is structured. The film is linear, per se, but the transitions between scenes are discontinuous, much like how I would imagine life in Limbo to be. An example of this in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is when they are watching a travelling show and then suddenly the camera cuts to them in a castle draped in curtains that have fallen upon them. Also in the castle, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to leave the room they magically appear in only to end up at the opposite entrance of the room. They are trapped within the room because they are unable to make other choices outside of what fate had laid out for them. Even though the idea of their limbo is to try to figure out what they did wrong and change it. The editing style is definitely unique and supports the idea that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in some type of supernatural place.

The ending line of the film (“There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time.”) suggests the two are stuck in a cyclical Limbo in which they are forced to relive their lives over and over again from a certain moment. There are other lines through out the film that allude to the fact that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, in fact, dead. For one, there is the title of the film, the fact Rosencrantz and other people keep mixing up their names, and they can’t remember what the first thing they did that day was.

The best scene in the movie is when they are playing the game, “Questions”, which is when two people keep asking each other questions and the game ends when one of the players says a statement or asks a question with rhetoric. The point of this scene, besides being very visually interesting to watch, is to play with the idea that questions are more important than answers. If you ask the right question, then maybe you will begin to better understand life and its meaning. The scene is very visually interesting because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are playing this game on a badminton court and are acting like there words are volleys. So each time they lob a question, they move across their side of the court. The scene juxtaposes a very playful game with a very serious message about life and its purpose.

What makes this film so strong, other than the script, are the actors (Oldman and Roth). Their portrayal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being stuck in some sort of Limbo is believable through their body language. Even the subtlest movement fits so perfectly in the story because each little facial tick or shrug tells just as much as what is said. In Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead what is said is just as important as what is left unsaid.

The film is really a brilliant adaptation of an equally genius idea to take on a story from the point of view of a seemingly unimportant character, or characters in this case, about how fate is something we can never escape or change.

Symposium Response

The Film Symposium was actually a lot of fun and really interesting. I found both Dr. Peary and Dr. McElhaney discussions lead me to think about film criticism and Advise and Consent, respectively, in different ways. I think the symposium went really well because, at least for me, I got to talk to a lot of people outside of the classroom, whom I would not normally talk to, about the movies. The conversations I had were stimulating and insightful and these conversations were only happening right outside the auditorium. It is refreshing to talk to people who are interested and educated about the same things as you. It makes the conversation much more enjoyable. I learned to look at films in a certain way from my peers that I would have never thought to or would have seen myself. People are so similar yet have such different views on something we all watch.

I especially thought this way during the discussions after Dr. Peary’s film on American film criticism (For the Love of Movies) and Dr. McElhaney’s lecture on Advise and Consent. 

With the documentary on American Film Criticism, it is safe to say that most in the audience learned much more about the history of film criticism than they did before. I really liked how the profession originated from trying to promote the films and then gradually evolved into more of a study and critical look on how people were trying to put in words what that certain movie was trying to accomplish and what it did well. I also like how American film criticism then develop several theories about film as a way to explain the techniques and styles of different directors. The way this profession has grown is truly tremendous. 

What is interesting about For the Love of Movies is how differently the students saw the job of being a film critic from the professionals in the documentary. The idea that anyone can be a critic did not only seem foreign to me but to others as well. I do think a person has to be educated in order to be an informed and good critic. Sure everyone can have an opinion about the movie they saw but in order to be a GOOD critic, one has to include so much more. There has to be an attention to detail, knowledge of film history, an efficient writing style, and personality. The argument that anyone can be a critic is like saying anyone can be anyone can be a psychologist. If I read up enough textbooks about psychology and get a handle on the profession, I can be a psychologist too, right? NO! That is not how it works. People who are educated and have degree in their profession know better than those who are amateurs. People can now study film and how to be a good film critic and those are the people who are qualified. So the critics in the documentary upset me because they are the ones giving the amateurs on the internet power by saying, “anyone can be a film critic” instead of actually empowering themselves by saying they are more knowledgeable on the subject because they studied and are affluent in film.

What made For the Love of Movies such a powerful documentary for me was it made me want to be a film critic and that was not my professional original goal. It made me understand that if I love movies so much, I should make it my job. Films that have the power to persuade someone into a dying profession are certainly good ones.

This documentary was successful because it sparked a lot of conversation once it was done and a lot of people had strong opinions from what was said in it. Especially about the critics because unfortunately being a film critic is a job where it is better if the person is younger so once he/she becomes older, he/she has to find something else to do, such as teaching. However, the older film critics do not realize this and are still trying to write even though they are producing and saying things that are outdated and are not really in touch with the younger generation and what is going on in films.

Dr McElhaney’s lecture on Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent was very interesting and insightful. I learned a lot of new information about the film that I did not previously know. For instance, it was interesting how Preminger changed the clear moral message from the novel Advise and Consent into a more ambiguous film without a clear message. Obviously the film was very controversial with its moral ambiguity and also how the film had a homosexual scene in the film that either was or was not homophobic, depending on how the audience member personally viewed the scene. Also, I found interesting how the author hated the adaptation because of the changes made and because there was no strong message against communism and homosexuality.

What I did not know was that many people and critics did not like the film because it was basically about nothing. Which makes complete sense because the audience is engaged in this movie for more than two hours and they are invested in some resolution to the problem at hand but such a solution never comes. It is the biggest, anti-climatic movie of all time. The critics and the audience were certainly justified in this opinion because the movie is a let down and I am not surprised that audiences thought this.

I appreciate that though, for the majority, critics did not like the film, they did respect the way it was filmed and the way in which Preminger employed deep focus shots and long, sweeping takes instead of the normal quick cuts.

What I found most interesting about the presentation was when Dr. McElhaney showed the trailer. The two points that stood out most to me were how the movie was more advertised around the director and his status rather than the story and the actors in it and how the trailer gives away that Brig Anderson kills himself. I personally thought that to be one of the twist in the movie that an audience member would not see coming, yet the theatrical trailer chooses to divulge this information upfront instead of letting the audience be surprised. Maybe if this information was left out of the trailer, people would have responded slightly better to the film because there was a twist in it. I know I appreciated the film because of that little surprise.

The discussion after the lecture was interesting because there was one audience member who kept asking a lot of questions about the film and its subject. She took the discussion in a direction that was different from what how most people viewed the film and she had not even see Advise and Consent, yet it was interesting to hear her opinions and thoughts on the film because they added a new perspective.

I am glad and honored I was able to be a part of such a successful and fun event. I learned a lot from the variety of events and felt my understanding of the cinema, 1962 and other eras, and American film criticism was greatly increased through the film symposium.