It's a simple device and yet it signals us that the passions roiling inside this man will soon equal and eventually dwarf the pageantry we've been regaled with. Branagh's Hamlet never loses the name of action. When he is thwarted in his deeds the action comes from the knife's-edge sharpness of his line readings. His words mock and wound and draw blood and yet the bitterness never obscures that this mourning son is in intolerable pain. That the public didn't get to see it widely is due to Columbia's decision to release it to art houses.
Nobody complains about movie lengths more than critics.
At last, here was something they could point to justify their grumblings about what they saw as Branagh's egocentric ambition. Only Welles and Olivier had ever before adapted, directed and starred in Shakespeare adaptations. It's worth remembering that Branagh set his first scene, Derek Jacobi delivering the prologue, on a movie set. It was also Branagh's way of announcing that his ambition was not filmed theater but movies. Maybe Branagh's detractors would have tolerated him more if he were that kind of obvious faker.