The Motive and the Cue: This film is a Hamlet you’ve never seen
A potential rift in the thespian generation gap is the tantalising set-up to The Motive and the Cue, a film of Jack Thorne’s play that premiered at London’s National Theatre in 2023.
“We won’t go around the room as everybody forgets the non-famous names and knows already the famous ones.”
That’s John Gielgud addressing the assembled cast on day one of rehearsals for an experimental production of Hamlet on Broadway in New York.
It’s 1964 and that quip identifies the elephant in the room. Gielgud, 60, who did Hamlet when he was 25, is the director. His leading man is the 39-year-old movie star Richard Burton, who has just married the equally famous Elizabeth Taylor.
A potential rift in the thespian generation gap is the tantalising set-up to The Motive and the Cue, a film of Jack Thorne’s play that premiered at London’s National Theatre in 2023 under the direction of Sam Mendes.
Mark Gattis is Gielgud, Johnny Flynn is Burton and Tuppence Middleton is Taylor. They are brilliant, as is the support cast. Gatiss, Mendes and the play itself are up for Lawrence Oliver Awards, which will be announced on April 14.
The Gielgud-Burton Hamlet did happen in 1964. This play, inspired by cast member William Redfield’s 1964 book Letters From an Actor, imagines what happened behind the scenes.
The main stage is the rehearsal room, where director and star disagree over the Danish Prince’s personality and how to play him. This goes to the titular motive and cue, taken from Hamlet.
When Burton, who drinks, forgets his lines, Gielgud says them from memory. “It’s distracting,’’ Burton says, “that you don’t need a prompter”. Tempers are lost and hard words are spoken. Gielgud tells Burton he’s wasted his talent “getting rich, fat and famous”.
Burton reminds Sir John how much he, the rich and famous movie star, has helped him. Gielgud admits that he is “stale toast” in the Hollywood-driven world and that this job is “the best offer I have had in some time”.
Burton has his own insecurities, starting with the fear he will flop.
Flynn has to do Hamlet well and badly. His performance is astonishing. Mendes, who has won awards on stage and in film, including an Oscar for his 1999 directorial debut American Beauty, understands the tension between the two.
The screen director, Matthew Amos, uses the cameras to bring a play onto the screen. It’s great to see Gielgud’s face in close-up as Burton delivers his lines.
There are scenes away from the rehearsal room, including in Burton and Taylor’s hotel suite. It’s Taylor, perhaps divining the 1981 comedy Arthur, who tells Gielgud that “there’ll be a moment when the world adjusts and you’ll be treasured again”.
This is an inventive and entertaining play, full of drama, doubts, passion and laughs, that has been captured on film as part of the National Theatre Live series.
There are so many fine scenes but the standout is when Gielgud and Burton open up to each other about their respective fathers and then the star, at the director’s suggestion, does the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy.
“That,’’ Gielgud tells him when he’s finished, “is a Hamlet I have never seen.” Viewers of this film will share that feeling.
The Motive and the Cue (E)
160 minutes
In cinemas
★★★★½