The nearly four-hour Hamlet offers first and foremost a dazzling time-travel trip to the final relaxed breaths of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation’s TV theatre, at a tiwhen everything still seemed possible to them as the cultural institution they are best remembered as.
At 9pm on January 2nd, 1992, the country had just recovered from the first New Year’s without the Soviet Union, when the broadcast of a new interpretation of Hamlet began on TV1. At the same time on TV2, quiz show Kymppitonni was on before the lovely Italian Valentina, while TV3 was showing the ‘80s movie Soul Man. In the years before the channel overhaul, the competition between them was not yet bloody, but already a year from this TV1’s traditional theatre would be replaced with the Kotikatsomo slot with its seasonal series and TV films.
How many things did we lose with Hamlet, one could ask the gatekeeper’s of today’s television.
Hamlet represents a total artistic vision, where Marilyn and Marx meet on the same wall. Jotaarkka Pennanen‘s uncompromising direction and Heikki Kinnunen‘s incomparable presence are welded together seamlessly. The recently departed Seela Sella is seen in Gertrud’s role. The end result is possibly the best Finnish Hamlet, best at least among the television versions. (Lysti Manni)
Language: Finnish, no subtitles
In the presence of Heikki Kinnunen, Jotaarkka Pennanen