Ophelia
Ophelia, directed by Claire McCarthy and based on the Novel of the same name by Lisa Klein, is best described as if Tumblr had gotten the feature film rights to William Shakespeare — a recipe that is an utter and total painful disaster.
Forgettable, dull and unholy uninspired, Ophelia, recounting the story of Hamlet from the titular character’s perspective, is one that is immensely populated of a series of extraordinary comatose delivery and comprehension. From its conventional noncyclical start that is just missing a record scratch of predictability to its utterly silly and all smiles finale, Ophelia is dominated with the feeling of ironic tragedy.
Every element of its conception screams a Tumblr aesthetic. An oversaturated and blinding colour palette and one-note quintessential generic characters are wrapped in a dire narrative that forces its characters to make the utmost dramatic and consequential actions over nothingness. It is this very forced nature that burns out before long and ultimately drowns the viewer in an overblown and overdramatic tone of characters that are painfully obtuse and sincerely unlikeable.
That is before the patronising and intolerable score by composer Steven Price becomes sentient. This Shakespearian tale's score is made up of lo-fi hip-hop and cheap renditions of love songs that would not break the top ten thousand chart, nevertheless conquer the romantic side of this disastrous debacle. Granted, Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet did something very similar in Craig Armstrong'sscore but such an inclusion felt authentic, considering the contextual modernisation of the world built. In Ophelia, it stands so far out of the crowd in such an overly conscious and brazenly ineffective fashion. Most apparent and ferocious in the finale of the film, of which is plucked straight out of the most flamboyant and tension reduced Game of Thrones series.
Daisy Ridley crafts the most intriguing character, not out of talent but purely due to the fact she is performing as the titular character and is afforded most of the screentime. Much like her performance in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Ridley has one facial emote that is evoked at every stage. It is predictable, flat and unsparingly uninspired to provoke any emotional or engaging material to be that much more compelling. The delivery of dialogue is flat, clunky and, at the best of times, feels somewhat hollow with its intended weight.
Ridley's charisma with George MacKay as love interest Hamlet is another stupendous disappointment. The energy is paper-thin and the charm is so astonishingly transparent it may have been better for the relationship to have been between two lifeless brick walls — a cheaper but more engaging partnership, no doubt. This coupling delivers every moment of supposed conflict in the most thematically offensive and unendurable conundrum imaginable at every torrid turn. It becomes a conflict in its own right to make it through and watch develop, rather than be authentically overpowered by its sincerity and impact.
OPHELIA is released November 22nd 2019
