A Game of Questions

[tealin]

WARNING: Excessive consumption of this script may be hazardous to your sanity.

Lately, while working, I've been listening to the DVD of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It's well-acted and very dialogue-dependent* and the script is fantastically clever and entertaining. The trouble comes when you actually try to figure things out. It's – well, it's theatre of the absurd, so... it's absurd, but one can't help trying to piece things together and try to explain why the title characters are there, how they got there, and ...well, why anything. My roommate has a theory, and it goes like this:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ... are dead.

This is a fascinating theory, and if you pay attention you can pick up all sorts of clues that might back it up, but what does it actually solve? Is this some sort of wacky afterlife? How can they die again? Or do they die? Someone reports they do, which isn't conclusive in itself, but in the words of whoever said it, 'That's all we have to go on.'

Now, the theory I had come up with** upon viewing this film in high school is that the Players (or rather the Player and his cohorts) insert these hapless travellers into a work of fiction; they get literally 'caught up in the action' as the Player had promised – so the whole time they're at Elsinore, they're in the play. Not as actors, pretending, but the play, the fundamental thing that a stage production seeks to reproduce. It's sort of like a virtual reality except without the goggly things and the suits; they are actually there.. This is the purpose to the random pages that keep blowing through scenes: they are a visual reminder that we are in a work of fiction. This is an old game to the Players, and I suspect they have gone through this a lot with any number of victims. The Player himself does say he has been here before, and knows his way around – probably the plot as well as the castle, if not better.

This still doesn't explain why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are wandering around the woods in the first place, or who summoned them ... but for that I draw inspiration from Jasper Fforde: they are fictional characters. The summoning – the first thing they remember – is the author calling them into being, the woods are the sort of inter-fictional limbo from which they must jump into their assigned roles, and the Players and their cart are the intermediaries who perform this function.

Like I said, complete rubbish.

An interesting line, though... when describing what they do, the Player says 'We transport you back into a world of intrigue and illusion' – Back? Is it just an endless cycle?

All scholarly postulating aside, I am still of the opinion that it would be wicked cool if Dreamworks made an animated version with Miguel and Tulio in the title roles. Road to El Dorado is practically theatre of the absurd already (whether it was meant to be or not) and they've got almost exactly the same personalities as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so why not? At least this movie would actually have a PLOT. And cleverness. And be marketable to a grand total of ... ooh, five people?

*I have to keep my eyes on my work, see. Triplets of Belleville would not be a good movie to listen to while working. I like movies that might as well be radio plays for this purpose.
**Or arrived at without really thinking about it so therefore it's probably all rubbish.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I WOULD WATCH THAT. Rosencrantz and Guildersten Are Dead is absurd goodness. Good theory for not thinking...

Miguel and Tulio as the leads...corr, I'd pay money to see that...

Rambly comment to a rambly post

[pyri-prongs.livejournal.com]

ARGH! My sanity! It's being...hazarded! ^_^;;

No, seriously, this ramble - without knowing anything about this film - makes me really want to see it. It sounds really cool! And after a quick imdb.com search, it sounds even cooler because it's Hamlet-based!

Also, Road to El Dorado: love that film. Not sure why. But you could add me to the five people to which this animation would be marketable if it was like that.

Also also, I really enjoy listening to the tv. Tv as a visual medium is wasted on me, since even when I'm not busy doing homework, I still only look at the screen 60% of the time (less if I've seen it before, and know what's coming next).

Also also also (oh dear), Triplets of Belville: so great and weeeeeeird and non-aural.

......that was a bit rambly, wasn't it? Must be something in the air, this afternoon.

[tannhaeuser.livejournal.com]

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I shall reply to this scholarly and intelligent dissection of the perception and nature of fate with something hopelessly airheaded and trivial:

It's not an appropriate project for animation, no, but it would sure be cool.

[tannhaeuser.livejournal.com]

[moonythoughts.livejournal.com]

I think everything you said in this post occured to me right after watching the movie, but in a much more vague form. I was kind of afraid to give it serious thinking lest it ruin the whole thing for me, but the way you put it definitely works too.

[killerqueen42.livejournal.com]

Hmm... if it would theoretically be animated, I'd go for claymation myself. I guess claymation seems to easier to convey the ideas of the play, probably cause stuff done in that style tends to be more cerebral and experiemntal.

But hell yeah I can see Tulio and Miguel as Ros & Guil:) Lots of duos have that dynamic, my favorite being Bert and Ernie. Which of course brings to mind many amusing scenarios involving Guildenstern collecting paperclips and admonishing Rosencrantz for eating cookies in bed. And then Rosencrantz singing about how his paper boat makes bathtime so much fun. And Guildenstern doing the pigeon walk. And Bert and Ernie playing Question Tennis and Oh I could go on and on:)

ros and guil

[thelowkeyloki.livejournal.com]

i prefer the theory that shakespeare just shoved in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet as filler. characters are expendable, dependable, lovable, they serve the purpose that the author wants them to serve, while others focus on the characters as whatever they want them to be. for instance, i thought Zabini Blaise was an Indian girl when i read Harry Potter, until i was informed otherwise. this is why spin-offs and fanfiction (to a degree) works after all, doesn't it? people take unimportant characters and make them important, or major characters and completely change the author's description to suit their own purpose to express their point. Stoppard took two minor characters and puts the question like this: what were they really doing for the whole play anyway? this one question therefore makes a completely amusing play/movie, and it offers a plausible theory of what they were doing in Elsinore, blending in with their actual Hamlet scenes. Hamlet, one can argue, has a theme of questioning existence, like Hamlet contemplating suicide and death. naturally, Ros and Guil would question their existence (as university students, one would suppose that they study philosophy and other greek works.) Ros and Guil are Dead is actually an excellent example of "what if" or "what was". it really makes you think.


oh yeah, i used this type of theory on my AP Literature exam last year

[sparrowofjack.livejournal.com]

that endless cycle thing... I know the feeling. read the Dark Tower books. it happens, in a very strange way, throughout the whole series.

[amy-is-my-name.livejournal.com]

Try reading or listening to 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett. Now that is one absurd play (pun intended). But if you get the chance, you should see R&G on stage, it can be a little different from the movie.

[veronikamg.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with Hamlet, but I take it R and G were bi-characters in it? Well, in that case they ARE dead! I saw the film in high school, and much the only thing I remember is that they all died. Every single person.

We're learning about Shakespear in litterature right now, and his opinion was that all the world was a stage. Just let me get my notes, and I'll post a long boring comment. ;)

[just-curious.livejournal.com]

The point of the play is that Stoppard wrote R&G as a background to Hamlet, a backstage. Whilst Hamlet and Horatio are doing there thing, Stoppard is explaining what R&G are up to, and what lead them to their eventual demise. So, at the end of the play(s), both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, but are they like this at the beginning of the film? I would say that this is not Stoppards intention, it seems to me that it was an absudist way of explaining Horatio's comment to the First Ambassador at the end of Halmet "He never gave commandment for their death." An odd phrase, because Hamlet did command their death, yes? When he wrote the paper ordering the british (?) to kill them on arrival.

However, at the crucial moment in stoppard's play, when Ros and Guil discover they are going to die... they do nothing about it, and thus they cause their own deaths.

So, are Ros and Guil dead? I don't think so, not until the end. Did I make sense? Hell no! :D

And be marketable to a grand total of ... ooh, five people? Oh, be nice Tealin! I'd say at least a dozen... on a good day!

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

they do nothing about it, and thus they cause their own deaths.

They're on a boat ... there's no way off. It's die at the hands of the players or die in the ocean.

[just-curious.livejournal.com]

But they didn't die on the boat, and the players didn't kill them, they were hung in England (? - darn, why can I not remember the country!) because they still gave the english government the letter. That's why they caused their own deaths, and that's the tragedy of the play. They discovered Hamlet had set them up to die, but rather than actually change their future (like run away, or destroy the letter) they continued on with the pre-written plot.

[gabbysun.livejournal.com]

I must be the only person in the entire world that has not seen this movie.

I boggle.

the play

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm an usher at a Shakespearian festival and so I've seen the play three or four times now. I agree partially with your theory. I think they are in the play Hamlet, that's why they can't remember anything beforehand and why they can't remember who's who (because in the minds of audience, author, and characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are basically one person). I don't think the players had anything to do with it though. They are well adjusted because they accept that they are in a play, moving towards an unchangeable end, whereas R&G are resisting their position.

[jesidres.livejournal.com]

*Wanders in off the street* Sorry, came for the Discworldy goodness, and end up in R&Gness... (did I mention I loff your Carrot?)

Anyway, a pervailing theory about R&G as portrayed in the movie between my friends and I is that subconsciously Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know they are fictional characters within a book (thus even they cannot tell who is who), and know that thier fates- acted out continiously in the dumb plays (a technique, you no doubt know, lifted from Shakespeare). The forest is character limbo- since they themselves are never defined other than the passing references within Hamlet, they, in effect, have no history save the day they were summoned. Much of the movie (book, play, etc...) is about them trying to fight what they subconsciously know is going to happen, but they're just actors caught in the play, unable to deviate from the script. (This is acted out both by the players, (who are in essence the audience, well ready to lead the duo to their death) and in the movie (at least, I forgotten the book) by Oldman's character (I refuse to give them set names) attempts at discovering the world outside the book- his fiddling in physics, as it were). They accept their fate in the end because of this subconscious knowledge, and the fact that they've been let on that they'll have another go, soon enough.

Hope that's not TOO confusing. All else fails, think like Carrot. Works for me.