Note:  Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet is the only unabridged film version of this Shakespeare play. Rated PG-13, it shows several split-second clips of nudity and other sexually implicit scenes, as well as a disturbing amount of blood. As with all films, please use your own judgment in viewing.

In almost any piece of literature, whether sacred or secular, religion and faith are portrayed in some way by the story. Sometimes it is a particular religion; other times, it is merely providence or fate, or even the goodness of man. Shakespeare’s Hamlet has many religious themes, as it is set in a Roman Catholic society. Already in the first scene, Marcellus says:

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated
This bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then they say no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome… (1.1.157–162)

There is a faith that their faith itself will somehow protect them. In Branagh’s film of Hamlet, however, religion at its best is dark and confining, and at its worse, deceptive, offering hope of the impossible. This is particularly true for Ophelia, King Claudius, and Hamlet himself.

To Ophelia, religion is mainly dark and confining throughout the film. This is especially evident when her father advises her and Laertes (1.3) in the chapel, the central location of religion. It is dim from the beginning, but it darkens as Laertes leaves, so that only the silhouettes of Ophelia and her father are visible against the candles in the background. There is no music, only distant church-bells and the squeaking of the heavy gates as Polonius closes them. Throughout the conversation, cuts of each of their faces alternate with cuts of Ophelia’s thoughts. In the chapel, she stands in darkness with light only on her face. A lattice behind her looks like bars of a cage or a prison, shutting her in with Polonius’s rebukes and shutting her out of the life for which she longs. Her father’s words confine her further, to the place of a child, an inferior:

You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance….
Marry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby;
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. (1.3.108–114)

In her thoughts, however, the lighting is level and dim, without sharp contrast of light and dark. There she is free: free from critical eyes, free from fierce light and black darkness, free from shame, as she and Hamlet kiss passionately. There she is happy; in the chapel, she is crushed. When her father finishes his instructions, he leaves, and she is alone. To Ophelia, the chapel and the religion that it represents are only chains to keep her from her dreams. Later, those gates, which shut her in with her father’s rebukes, shut her out, screaming, from her father’s corpse as it is borne away; and still later, her own dead body is shut in the iron-gated churchyard, shut out from life and the living.

Religion is a prison also to the king, who prays in the chapel after the play (3.3). Unlike Ophelia’s, however, his is a prison offering hope, which later proves false hope. Religion is confining to the king in that it is contrary to his will. He feels constrained to repent the murder of his brother, but he does not wish to give up all that he has gained by it. He sits in the corner of the closet, beneath a small crucifix, and by the time he says, ‘What then?’ the rest of the chapel has disappeared as the long cut zooms in. It looks as if he is shut up in a little box, with only the lattice behind him, like the door of a cage, to look on the outside world. ‘O limed soul,’ he cries, ‘that struggling to be free, art more engag’d.’ Still, though he is mostly in the dark, there is a narrow shaft of light on his face, coming not from the side with the latticed window but as if from heaven. It seems to offer hope, of repentance and even of life. However, when he has said, ‘Words without thoughts never to heaven go,’ a new cut shows him in profile behind the lattice. The light makes his blonde beard thin and white, and he looks tired, like an old man long imprisoned without hope of freedom. Neither does his repentance last long, as he goes on to plot Hamlet’s death. What seemed to be an open door was merely a passage back to the original darkness.

Hamlet himself never enters the chapel, but he is deceived by the providence of the story. Before the fencing match (5.2), he tells Horatio, ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ recalling passages from the Gospels in which Christ encourages his followers not to fear: ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.’ (Mt. 10:29 NKJV.) Hamlet continues, ‘If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come.’ He turns his face to the window as he speaks, so that it is all light. After wearing black for most of the film, he now wears light brown, blending with the soft, natural colors of the background. The music is tranquil and sweet. Hamlet turns back to Horatio and finishes, ‘The readiness is all.’ He and his friend embrace, perfecting the intimacy of the moment. This Providence seems not that of the chapel and the churchyard, but a kinder, closer Providence that will guide Hamlet to victory and, afterward, peace. In the final scene, however, there is neither victory nor peace for him: only violence and, at last, defeat. The promise is false; Hamlet is alone.

Although these three scenes differ widely from each other, they all tie the darkness and hopelessness of the film to the darkness and hopelessness of religion and faith. This subtle portrayal through mise-en-scene undercuts the just place allowed to religion in the text. There it seems weak and under the control of humans, and its faults are those caused by human evil. Fate wins out in Hamlet’s downfall, but still, in the end, he is obviously responsible for the actions that led to his death, and so his end is just. In the film, however, doubt remains about Hamlet’s guilt. As he is carried out dead, his stiff arms are stretched back as if he had been taken down from a cross. It implies that he was an innocent man suffering for the evils of others. But Hamlet is not the Christ. He did not conquer death and sin; instead, he, as well as those around him, was conquered by them. The darkness is of the characters’ own making.