Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead izione: Regno Unito] [Import anglais]

Great performances from all the stars.

A really good movie, don't buy it from here though it's much cheaper on e-Bay and they don't overcharge you for postage by pretending it was sent separately and not in a package with another item.

"Rosencranz and Guilderstern are dead" is the film Tom Stoppard made from his own post modernist version of Hamlet - one where two minor characters (so minor that many directors just erase them) get the centre of the stage, and don't know what to do once there. The text pokes fun at more than one thing: at classical drama, at absurdist plays (R and G are a bit like de-lux Vladimir and Extragon in "Waiting for Godot"), at modern philosophy. In the film version, you have the extra bonus of Gary Oldman (before Dracula) and Tim Roth as the protagonists, two men who are so thick they don't even recognize their own death when they see it on stage in the "play within the play", which is, by the way, the best scene in the film, giving you a kind of vertigo. And let us not forget Richard Dreyfuss as the travelling actor - brilliant. To sum up,the play is very good, the film version very funny - that is, unless you are allergic to "po-mo" and its games. As for the dvd ("korean import all regions"), the only subtitles are in Dutch, and sometimes they are invisible, black print on black screen. But I had been waiting to get the film in dvd for ages, so that's fine anyway.

Written, directed and adapted from his own play, Tom Stoppard’s tour de force film is a mesmerizing verbose meditation on fate and the inevitability of death, where Mel Brooks meets Samuel Beckett within a Shakespearean setting, namely The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In my opinion, to fully appreciate the exquisite quality of writing a more than cursory knowledge of the Bard’s play is needed since the masterful interweaving of Stoppard’s own script with the original source material is a delight to behold as we accompany two of the play’s peripheral characters stumbling unwittingly towards their ultimate nemesis. The excellent performances from Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the bewildered eponymous protagonists are nearly eclipsed by the exuberant turn by Richard Dreyfuss’s thespian scallywag, while sound support is provided by Ian Richardson, Donald Sumpter and especially Iain Glen (Game of Thrones’ Jorah Mormont) as the melancholy royal prince. The interplay between Oldman and Roth is sublime, the level of humour alternating from Abbott and Costello slapstick to Oscar Wilde urbanity, my particular favourite sequence being the rapid-fire Questions competition on a badminton court. I have read a number of less than complementary reviews from some movie critics who regard this film as being inferior to the theatrical version they have experienced. That is as may be. However, I would definitely recommend at least one viewing, and perhaps a purchase.

I first saw this on TV in the 1990s and thought it was very funny, witty and clever, and was impressed at how it wove itself into the original Hamlet play.As I write this about 25 years later, having just watched the DVD, I am left baffled as to why it made such an impression on meIt ought to be good, considering the talent of the main players, i.e. Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, and the directorship and writing of Tom Stoppard, but it no longer seems to work for meMy take on it now is that it's just two incompetent w**kers who believe they're intelligent and constantly try to philosophise in pseudo-shakespearian tongue wihilst never having a clue about what's really going on around them. I can find little wit and even less humour in their inane drivel and irrelevant observations. Even the blurb on the back of the DVD cover describes them as Laurel and Hardy, but I find that to be an insult to the genius of L&H.Maybe I just grew up, evolved, or became a grumpy old git. You choose.To qualify this review, I still laugh a lot at L&H, The Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Life Of Brian and much more besides. But not at this. I also deeply admire and respect the works of Shakespeare that I know and love.

I saw this great play during its first London run nearly 40 years ago. Until recently I had no idea there was a film version, and was even more surprised to see that Stoppard himself directed (the circumstances of which he explains in the fascinating additional dvd). It is essential to note that this is not a filmed stage performance. It is a fully realised and visually rich piece of cinema with a number of additions and adaptations to the original script.Nonetheless the original conception remains fully intact. These hapless and entirely expendable minor characters from Hamlet, whose deaths are mentioned only in passing at the end of the play, are put centre stage. Their kinship with Beckett's pair of tramps in 'Waiting for Godot' (which Stoppard acknowledges) is clear but takes nothing away from the brilliance of the concept or the irresistible humour of the repartee as our hapless protagonists try to make sense of it all as they head towards the abyss.For the viewer much of the tension, and fun, derives from knowing what R and G cannot - the plot of the Hamlet. This is, of course, in stark contrast to Godot, where the audience can make no more sense of things than the characters. Nevertheless there are mysteries and internal contradictions in Hamlet which also feed into Stoppard's youthful masterpiece.Finally, here is a chance to see Roth, Oldman and Dreyfuss, in their younger days, making the most of the script and clearly having great fun in the process. Don't miss. Dave Willow

I'm amazed that this film won Best Picture at the Venice Film Festival.When Gary Oldman and Tim Roth (as R & G) are just the two on screen talking nonsense (as they are for much of the film) it is utterly boring. That may be the point, but where's the entertainment ?It improves slightly when other characters appear, but I found myself fast- forwarding to find somethimg worth watching. I was influenced by the praise that this film got but now regret buying it.