Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
This is the best film I have ever seen! I was so happy after I finally managed to tape it, but my lucky sisters have managed to tape something else OVER IT!!!!!!!
So, I'll just have to wait for a re-run or find somebody who has it on tape till I'll be able to show it to you. :((
The play was written by Tom Stoppard and is thus basically a theatre play and has later on been made into a film. The film has kept a lot of theatrical elements and I just loved that. Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dryfuss were my favourite actors for years since that!
The play takes two minor characters who are almost indistinguishable in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and makes them the main characters. They have been summoned to Elsinore, but do not know why. They are even uncertain of their own identities. There are episodes from Hamlet, particularly the players’ scenes, but Rosencrantz and Guildernstern never understand what is going on. Instead they pass the time talking, flipping coins, and playing word games, discovering basic laws of the physic...
In the last act they are on board of a ship, going to England. They discover that Hamlet is carrying their death warrant, and decide to accept this: at least their deaths will give them a brief moment of identity.
R : I've never known anything like it.
G : He's never known anything like it. But he has never known anything to write home about, therefore, this is nothing to write home about.
R : Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect.
You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking:
"Well. At least I'm not dead."
...passing time in the royal tomb...
G: What's the first thing after all the things you've forgotten?
R: Oh, I see. (...pause...) I've forgotten the question.
R: Twenty seven questions he got out and answered three. I was waiting for you to delve.
G: When's he gonna start delving,' I asked myself.
R: We got his symptoms, didn't we?
G: Half of what he said meant something else and the other half didn't mean anything at all.
...'questioning' Hamlet ...
R : With the knowledge that for all the points of a compass, there's only one direction; and time is its only measure.
G : Death is the ultimate negative. Not being. You can't 'not be' on a boat.
R : I've frequently not been on boats.
G : No, no. What you've been is 'not on boats'.
R : Dark, isn't it?
G : Not for night.
R : No. Not for night.
G : It's dark for day.
R : Oh yes. It's dark for day.
R : We're just not getting anywhere! Not even England. And I don't believe in it anyway.
G : In what?
R : England.
G : Just a conspiracy of cartographers you mean.
"...that on the knowing of these contents without delay of any kind, should those bearers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...put to sudden death."
R: Not that letter!
G: Give him the other one.
R: I haven't got another one.
The play takes two minor characters who are almost indistinguishable in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and makes them the main characters. They have been summoned to Elsinore, but do not know why. They are even uncertain of their own identities. There are episodes from Hamlet, particularly the players’ scenes, but Rosencrantz and Guildernstern never understand what is going on. Instead they pass the time talking, flipping coins, and playing word games, discovering basic laws of the physic...