Response To Course Material #5

I just finished annotating Hamlet today.  Hamlet in my opinion is like one of those movies that have five or six really great parts that are interesting and thought provoking but the movie as a whole is kind of silly.  The scenes where Hamlet is sneaking around town manipulating all the characters while investigating everyone are brilliant.  The other interesting thing about Hamlet is how much of it is left up for interpretation.  "Is Ophelia pregnant?" and "What were Fortinbras' true motives at the end of the play?" have sparked interesting discussions during class.  Unlike the other Shakespeare plays I have read, the entire story doesn't feel carefully calculated making sure everything fits together nicely and everything has a reason for being in the play.  The pirates taking Hamlet's ship felt like one of those silly plot twists in an tv show whose plot has drifted towards an unwanted direction. Reading Hamlet felt like watching one of the later seasons of 24 where the plot seemed predictable while being filled with unimaginative plot twists.  The other Shakespeare plays I have read are much more like Breaking Bad, where no stone is left unturned and everything fits together perfectly at the end of each season.

We also watched two different Hamlet movies.  The BBC version was hard to watch because of "soap opra like" camera angles and filming techniques.  On the other hand, the version directed by Kenneth Branagh was very visually appealing.  Branagh's version didn't leave much up for interpretation unlike the BBC version.  Despite enjoying Branagh's movie much more, the BBC version is much closer to what Shakespeare would have intended the movie to be like.

Coming up we have the TERMS TEST ROUND THREE! I think it will help being familiar with the text we analyzing before we are identifying literary terms in it.  Each time I have studied the literary terms I felt like I understood them a little better so I'm hoping that that trend will continue.