Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's most well known pieces, even so where it has three highly regarded directors in Franco Zeffirelli, who has tackled Romeo and Juliet as well, Kenneth Branagh, who has directed or starred in many adaptations of Shakespeare, and Michael Almereyda, a director most well known for his modern take on Hamlet. I believe that Zeffirelli's take on the ghost scene out of the three was by far the best. When first reading it, I envisioned this as an emotional scene, very eerie and heart filled. I believe that Mel Gibson was able to portray the proper emotions in the proper order which was: fear and distress, sadness and sorrow, and lastly fury and wrath.
Meanwhile Branagh made it more about the death rather than the emotional burden this scene must of had on Hamlet, I feel like Branagh was just scared, then kind of skimmed through sadness and anger. When you throw in the music and how there was none in the Zeffirelli's version, just an ominous howl of the wind, while you had this joyous music in Branagh's version, it just continued to kinda make the scene worse. The Branagh version just completely threw me off, it left me with the sense that Hamlet was fulfilled? Like the movie was ending and that I should in a way be happy for Hamlet, but that's not the case at all.
All in all I believe that Zeffirelli's interpretation of the scene was leaps and bounds ahead of Branagh's version. Comparing the two to Almereyda's version is a little bit harder because he set it in a modern day world, which really kinda changes the game. All in all I feel like sticking to what Shakespeare wrote, Zeffirelli's version takes it, while Almereyda's version had it strengths in the symbolism, but still wasn't quite there, while Branagh's take was just a complete let down. Sometimes the creative approach doesn't always work.
