Hamlet 9/11: Sound, Noise, and Fury in Almereyda's Hamlet

What effects does terrorism's moving warfare "into the symbolic sphere, where defiance, reversion, and one-upmanship are the rule" have on the complex codes through which contemporary cultural artifacts are read? The impact of the terrorist attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001 resonated within the symbolic sphere, setting off a hermeneutic shockwave upon any cultural objects that can be implicated in its emerging narrative. Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (released in 2000) is a case in point. We read the film differently now. The events of September 11, 2001 overwhelm the film's attempt to establish a stable and persistent interpretive framework for itself, and the new, now transfigured, symbolism of the New York cityscape inclines viewers to re-read the film's pervasive paranoia, shifting the locus of this Hamlet from the inner, private, and individual to the outer, public and geo-political.