I risk excommunication from the intelligentsia for saying it out loud -- or at least the faux-intellectual territory that movie critics occupy -- but I've always had a hard time relating to the works of William Shakespeare.
The poetry is so dense and antediluvian that you spend most of your mental energy just trying to comprehend the words the people are speaking, leaving little bandwidth for actually getting immersed in the story or emotionally invested in the characters. It's like trying to follow a fast-moving conversation in a language you studied for a couple of years in high school.
The Bard's plays are meant to be read rather than seen, at least by today's lights.
I've seen a few film versions that caused some sparks, notably Kenneth Branaugh's "Henry V." But yeah, for the most part they're pretty challenging and listless onscreen, like Ralph Fiennes' noble attempt at "Coriolanus."
So I'm open to the idea of reinterpreting Shakespeare's plays, ditching most of the flowery language and shifting around the perspective, as has been done with the often enchanting "Ophelia." Director Claire McCarthy and screenwriter Semi Chellas adapt the novel by Lisa Klein in which she, not Hamlet, is the central figure in perhaps his most seminal work.
Daisy Ridley, best know as Rey from the new "Star Wars" films, plays the scarlet-haired lover of Hamlet, a common girl who finds herself caught up in the deadly intrigue of the Danish royal court. George MacKay is relegated to secondary, possibly even tertiary, status as Hamlet, disappearing for large stretches of the movie.
Heck, we don't even get the "Alas poor Yorick" scene.
What's more, we find we don't miss it.
It's a gorgeous-looking film, filled with earthy textures and sweaty confrontations. Clive Owen fumes and schemes as Claudius, the uncle of Hamlet who killed his father, stole the throne and married his mother, Gertrude. She's played by Watts, who's absolutely terrific, portraying the queen as delicate but steely, easily swayed yet capable of moments of great emotional authority. She also plays Mechtild, Gertrude's long-list twin sister, now witching it up in the forest with her plots and potions.
Ridley is given a mostly reactive role as Ophelia at first, sort of a Cinderella figure who's taunted by the other ladies-in-waiting of the queen and sexually threatened by Claudius' surly guards. She eventually begins to take matters into her own hands in the last act, as the story cleverly shifts around some of the classic tale in subtle ways to make Ophelia the initiator of events rather than the victim of them.
For example, the fatal scene where Ophelia appears to have gone mad in front of the entire court and then drowns herself in the river becomes something very different in this telling.
Tom Felton is solid in the smallish role of Laertes, Ophelia's brother and Hamlet's dueling opponent; Devon Terrell plays Horatio, a friend to both Hamlet and Ophelia; and Dominic Mafham is Polonius, Ophelia's father and unfortunate curtain-lurker.
Rosencratz and Guildenstern show up, ever so briefly, but then they got their own movie years ago.
"Ophelia" doesn't so much reinvent the Shakespeare wheel as turn it sideways and gives us a whole new look. Vengeful princes can be oh so dreary, especially when his lady love is much more interesting.