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Asian Shakespeares on Screen: Two Films in Perspective, special issue, edited by Alexander C. Y. Huang, Borrowers and Lenders 4.2 (Spring/Summer 2009).
Hamlet proposes that theater is capable of stirring the soul - "The play's the thing" (2.2.604).1 He suggests that a good player does not artificially perform his role, but in fact "forces his soul so to his own conceit" (2.2.553). Hamlet draws our attention to a world with blurry divisions between the internal and the external, being and performing. Instead of being two distinct states, the external performance often induces inward change. These concepts of selfhood and identity, which remain among the most important concerns of the current critical debates surrounding Hamlet, are reconceived in The Banquet, the first Chinese feature film based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by Feng Xiaogang and released in 2006.
The film relocates Hamlet to ancient China during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, an era plagued by widespread turmoil. A key feature and motif of the film is a dance with white masks that purportedly originated in the Yue region of southern China. The opening scene of The Banquet portrays the melancholic Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) and other players dancing with white masks in a bamboo compound. The dance movements bear traces of Japanese noh conventions. The masks not only create an illusion of multiple Hamlets, but also conceal the characters' emotions by projecting an outward dimension of the self. This is revealed again in a dialogue between the prince and Empress Wan (Zhang Ziyi) after a staged duel:
Empress Wan (Gertrude): Why do you wear a mask when you perform?
Prince Wu Luan (Hamlet): It transports an actor to the highest state of his art. Without a mask, happiness, anger, sorrow and joy are simply written on his face. But with a mask, a great artist can convey to the audience the most complex and hidden emotions.
Empress Wan (Gertrude): You are incapable of even the most basic play-acting. Your sorrow, anger, bitterness, and uncertainty are there for...