Over on my other blog I'm rabitting on about movie versions of Hamlet.
One of the things I mention is that in the two versions I've seen which try to modernise the costumes and settings, the sword fight seems odd and tacked on.
If you take it out of some sort of historical setting, it just doesn't seem like a natural conclusion that the play would end with a sword fight. Even though there is a comment in the text earlier in the piece about Laertes getting into mischief such as carousing, womanising and fencing, it doesn't actually sink in at any point that these people actually fence as a sport. That every time someone mentions "sport" in the play they are, in fact, talking about sword fighting. It's not obvious that this is something they do, and that they are therefore likely to dare each other to fencing bouts later on.
It's almost a little like you took an otherwise normal crime thriller, and right at the end someone said: "I know how we can solve this problem! To the kayaks!"
Sure, a kayak race might not be completely unlikely, out of character, or ridiculous - but if you hadn't seen any reference to kayaks before this moment it's a bit disconcerting.
If there had been images of "the boys" in their fencing gear, some pieces of equipment (like swords or masks) lying around the place or some footage of a few of them actually going through some training exercises scattered throughout the film, then it would have seemed perfectly natural - even inevitable - that the play would end with a sword fight.
Chekhov pointed out that a gun hanging over the mantelpiece is bound to be fired at some point. If it's pulled out of a cupboard, though, you feel as if it has come out of nowhere (which, in a way, it has).
With these modernise/modern dress versions of Hamlet, the fencing scene was pulled out of the cupboard. They could just as easily have decided to have a kayak race.
Which, now that I think about it, sounds like a great way to end a story full of death, betrayal and ghosts.
"To the kayaks!"
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