Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Existential dilemma

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Cast: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, Iain Glen
Cinematography: Peter Biziou
Editing: Nicolas Gaster
Written and directed by Tom Stoppard
Prime Pictures

Tom Stoppard had "nothing to prove" and "nothing to lose" when the playwright decided to make Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his successful play, into a film. Shot on a modest budget, mostly in Yugoslavia, the film came some three decades after the play, and the cracks were showing.
On independent viewing, they are still felt in this Golden Lion Award winner at the Venice International Film Festival. (But at least let us thank the DVDs that 15-year-old films do make it to your living room.)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is recommended to lovers of serious cinema, not as an entertainment vehicle, but as a brilliant study material on the integration of theatre and cinema as two diverse media, and the pitfalls therein.
The theatre hangover pervades the screen version, and it wouldn't have been a bad thing, after all, if the set-piece constructions haven't been so out of favour with audiences today. What Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lacks is the spontaneity, which you might forgive in theatre but not in cinema.
Fishing out two peripheral characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet and narrating the tale we are familiar with, including some of the bard's lines, from the perspective of the two, is an intelligent story-telling technique. It worked for Stoppard in theatre. It works to a certain extent in cinema too, especially, when Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) play their game of words.
Indeed, much of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play of words and despite the risk of its getting repetitive, Stoppard brings out the existential dilemma of two unknowns who don't know what they are set out to do, or even who they are.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confuse their own identities and cannot recall why they have been brought to Denmark. They don't know if Hamlet is their friend, they don't know what they can do to help the man in distress. And yet, like every bit-character, they believe they are somehow crucial in the overall scheme of things.
Stoppard's brings out the disorientation of the two minds well, but after a point, it really doesn't matter because we, unlike the heroes, know fully well their fate.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead works chiefly for its underlying sense of humour. And despite its theatre-heavy compositions, some of the frames impress like magic. Be it be cinema or theatre, visual media can indeed transcend boundaries and even become one.
That perhaps is the singular beauty of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Sadly, Stoppard doesn't get it all the way through.