Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Movie Review

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

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Written by: Tom Stoppard
Directed by: Tom Stoppard
Starring: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, Iain Glen
Rated: PG
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Plot
Two minor characters from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet stumble around unaware of their scripted lives and unable to deviate from them.

Verdict
This is creative and inventive. It examines two minor side characters, but instead of giving them backstory it constrains them to the source material. They never know what's going on, have no agency, and are generally lost. Since they didn't experience Hamlet in full, they don't know the plot. It's a great way to revisit Shakespeare without generating yet another version of his plays. It's also an intriguing way to explore life, creating a metaphor with all of life's constraints and hindrances. But it's less a movie and more an intellectual exercise.
It depends.

Review
Based on Stoppard's own existential, absurdist 1996 stage play; in the original Hamlet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two old friends of Hamlet's. They are invited by Hamlet's parents Claudius and Gertrude to find out what is wrong with their son.

In one of the early scenes Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) are puzzled by how all the coin flips land on heads, defying probability. Then they are transported to the castle when needed. These are two guys trapped by a script but unaware of what or how they are trapped. They must play along with no other choice, at a loss as to what's happening. You could only do this with Shakespeare. You need a property that's well known to serve as the basis for this wild ride that straddles the line between joke and existential rumination. The two proceed as instructed believing that will free them of this reality which has ensnared them.

Gary Oldman, Tim Roth play Rosencrantz, Guildenstern

It's easy to guess this was a stage play with the back and forth dialog and word play. This is focused on the words first as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern traverse the sets. With this premise, what does it mean? Why take two minor characters and give them agency in the framework of a play that prevents them from changing the course of events? It's counter to most narratives where the main characters are the ones that force the action. Here they don't, pawns to their own movie. All they can do is complete the story most of us already know.

Gary Oldman, Tim Roth play Rosencrantz, Guildenstern

It's an inventive way of doing Shakespeare without doing Shakespeare. The known story is just a framework for these two to discuss what's happening with a broader point of view. They stumble through the play with no real backstory, confused on why they're present and what they're supposed to do. They know their lines to their disbelief, but not much else.

It's clever. The movie is a joke, taking two minor characters that exist just for the plot. This doesn't try to add any information. The joke is that these aren't characters. We watch them wallow through parts of Hamlet when they're needed. When they aren't in Hamlet proper, they wonder what's happening, who they are, and what it means. I've wondered that myself, and that's the broader perspective. We all think we're main characters when it's likely we are just the side characters, stumbling through someone's story. If you take the title literally, this is some sort of purgatory for the characters, forced into a story without ever knowing their role, lost and bewildered.