Julia Stiles' Ophelia is rebellious in everything she does down to the very clothes that she wears. This Ophelia lives in her own loft and quite obviously has had Hamlet there before. The two are together in one seen kissing in her dark room: this is not a sexually naïve Ophelia. Ophelia protests spying on Hamlet, but she is eventually overpowered by her father Polonius and forced to wear a wire; she cries while the wire is put on against her will. Ophelia later howls in madness and has to be dragged away. Her last act of defiance is when she drowns herself in a fountain.
Hamlet Directed By Michael Almereyda (2000)
Julia Stiles as Ophelia
Reviews
“Ophelia wears baggy raver pants and sneakers. Together they are the sullen outsiders at the shareholders meeting…”
“And Ophelia is no reclusive virgin. She is a feisty young woman who has her own East Village studio loft with a darkroom to develop her films.”
“We are shown Polonius wiring the recalcitrant Ophelia before he "looses" her on the unwitting Hamlet. Hawke’s Hamlet, though wary, cannot resist this passionate Ophelia. They embrace and as his hand caresses her body it encounters the wire–the uncontestable evidence of a hi-tech betrayal.”
“Julia Stiles was determined to play Ophelia as a strong young woman rather than as the fragile victim. She is not a conventionally pretty actress and she abandons any appearance of innocent naiveté. Laertes still has the lines of cautionary advice to his sister on preserving her 'chaste treasure' but this petulant New Yorker does not conjure up an image of virginal chastity on the screen. Her strong willed Ophelia goes howling with rage into madness–not because she is broken by the murder of her father by Hamlet, but because it is the only way she can protest what these men have done to her.”
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