A
Midwinter's Tale
Reviewed
by Leonard Heldreth, November, 1999
Alternately titled In the Bleak
Midwinter, this film with a portmanteau title from A Midsummer Night's
Dream and A Winter's Tale, follows the attempt by a group of unemployed
and unevenly talented actors to stage a Christmas production of Hamlet.
Filmed in glorious black-and-white and parodying acting, Shakespeare,
and whatever else gets in the way, it was directed by Kenneth Branagh
before he filmed his big-budget version of Hamlet. Whatever connections
exist between these two films by one director, both involving Hamlet,
may be purely coincidental.
The film's charm is not in its plot, which has few surprises,
but in the witty lines and the characters involved. The actors auditioning
for the parts supply the first comic relief—"Hamlet is Bosnia.
Hamlet is me. Hamlet is this desk. Hamlet is my grandmother"—and
the actors cast in the parts keep up the repartee. The director's
agent (Joan Collins in a curious bit of casting) says to him when
she hears of his plan to stage Hamlet, "I love it when you go
all visionary." One of the actors whips through crossword puzzles,
but it turns out that he doesn't pay any attention to the clues. He
just fills in the blank spaces with letters—any letters—because
"it keeps my mind off the awful business of acting." Most
of the expected types show up as well as a couple of unusual ones—the
young stud as Laertes, the aging actor trying to break into Shakespeare
as Claudius, the drag queen as Gertrude, the beginning actress as
Ophelia, and the director, of course, as Hamlet. Each of the players
also becomes personally involved in some of the conflicts and themes
of the play. The man playing Gertrude identifies with the queen's
conflict with her son because, in his single sexual encounter with
a woman, he fathered a son with whom he is now having a conflict.
Ophelia is pulled into the theme of loss and goes to pieces when she
remembers the death of her young husband. The actors offer support
for each other as these emotional crises surface and are dealt with.
The scene designer creates a set that looks exactly like the church
in which they are rehearsing. Even Sir Laurence Olivier catches a
few sharp jabs, especially in his production of Hamlet.
The opening credits have as background music Noel Coward's
Why Must the Show Go On? and several times during the film, characters
ask each other essentially the same question, but it does go on with
plans to open on Christmas Eve. Additional complications arise, however,
including some unexpected arrivals, yet, despite some rather unbelievable
plot turns, all ends more or less well, as one would expect with a
film in which the characters are wishing each other a Merry Christmas
over the closing credits.
The pacing is fast, and the repartee is often witty, although
many of the best lines are tossed out casually and almost lost. A
satiric comedy usually builds to a laughing climax, but this one really
didn't do it—it opted for the warm and fuzzy rather than the
barbed conclusion. This partial switch in tone was disappointing,
since I was hoping for a hilarious finale, but clearly that was not
Branagh's intent. Such mixing of humor and drama is typical also of
Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, which critics always have had trouble
classifying. A Midwinter's Tale is a film that should appeal to devotees
of Waiting for Guffman and other films that poke fun at the raw egotism,
mindless drudgery and hopeless aspirations of the performing arts
while yet acknowledging their irresistible attraction.
