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The Hamlet Syndrome – Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2023

Reviewer: Helen Tope

Writers and Directors: Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski

Charting the evolution of a unique stage production, documentary The Hamlet Syndrome goes behind the scenes at a Ukrainian theatre. Directors Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski follow a small company as they examine their experiences of war, through the lens of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The theatre director, Roza Sarkisian, uses the famous ‘To Be or Not to Be’ soliloquy as a means of digging into past and recent trauma. The question of action, or inaction. Making impossible choices. The group of five actors are asked to imagine they are Hamlet. This is no mere intellectual exercise. Taking in the events of the Ukrainian revolution, the actors begin to disclose details of the horror they have faced.

Slavik was captured by Donbas separatists; threatened and tortured. Katya also fought on the front-line: the film peels away from the intensity of the rehearsals to an interview she conducts with a former comrade. Roman, who undertook a paramedic role during the conflict, describes the chaos of working in a war zone. Graphic, violent flashbacks continue to haunt him. We cut to Roman attending a therapy session: The therapist reassures him that he did all he reasonably could. No member of the group is unaffected: Oxana is thinking of leaving Ukraine altogether, and Rodion is painfully aware of his vulnerable status as an LGBT+ person.

There are several points where life and theatre merge, and these are the film’s best moments. Oxana’s flag scene – a wordless but provocative interplay of scenarios featuring the now-iconic blue and yellow stripe – is seen as disrespectful by some cast members. Questioning patriotic values, against a background of post-war trauma, stirs up a whole raft of emotions. The question of how far art should go in unpicking old wounds, and whether there is a line to be drawn in the most extreme circumstances, is a central theme. Niewiera and Rosolowski don’t lead us to a conclusion, but in Roza’s energetic but compassionate onstage work, there is a commitment to see these ideas through.

The Hamlet Syndrome’s use of rehearsal and interview footage allows us privileged access to the creative process. More than that, it is a process formed under pressure. This is all taking place just a few months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Watched from our perspective just over a year later, a sense of foreboding seeps into the narrative. This calmer period, with space to reflect, cannot last. The glimpses of an everyday Ukraine: Katya fruit-packing with her Mum; Rodion’s night out with friends at an art gallery, are poignant reminders of what has been lost.

While this documentary confronts the cost of war, there is also reason for optimism in the resilience of the performers. It is the final note of defiance that leaves its mark. Even as the film’s postscript announces that three of the performers have returned to the front-line, the opening of a dialogue on the psychological impact of war, offers the possibility of unburdening those who have been traumatised.

Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2023 takes place in venues across London 9 March – 27 April.For further information and tickets:https://kinoteka.org.uk/

The Reviews Hub Score:

Creative process under pressure

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The Reviews Hub Film Team is under the editorship of Maryam Philpott.

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