I’ve written about Grigori Kozintsev before, the Russian film and theater director whose career began in the ’20s but climaxed with three sophisticated literary adaptations: Don Quixote (1957), Hamlet (1964), and King Lear (1969). Many film scholars place his adaptations at the top of the form (at least in the ranks of Welles’ adaptations), but Kozintsev’s films continue to elude popular summaries; the dubious Ruscico has distributed fine all-region DVDs in the last couple years, but Facets Video has finally released Hamlet in North America.

Kozintsev was more than a director; he was also a scholarly Shakespearean aficionado who published two books on the subject: Shakespeare: Time and Consciousness (1966) and King Lear, the Space of Tragedy (1977). The former includes his summary and critique of Hamlet‘s reception in its day and its cultural export to France, Russia, and Germany, where “hamletism” (largely thanks to Goethe) emphasized the Prince’s vacillation and inability to act over his more heroic qualities. “The meaning of Shakespeare’s tragedy lies not in the inactivity of its hero,” Kozintsev counters, “but in the tragedy’s provocation to action. Hamlet is a tocsin that awakens the conscience.” Elsewhere, he compares Hamlet to Pascal’s fragile but noble “thinking reed.”

Kozintsev sees the play as a dramatic conflict between two systems embodied by Hamlet’s beloved Wittenburg, the site of his university and the center of Renaissance enlightenment, and Elsinore, the setting for the drama’s corrupt and oppressive court. “The characters of the Elsinore story perish from more than physical causes,” Kozintsev writes. “They were finished long before the poison had gotten into their blood streams from a scratch or a drink.” In his shooting diary for the film, he writes:

“Laurence Olivier followed his own method in his film: he cut lines belonging to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Fortinbras, and both the monologues on the greatness of man and the revolt of Laertes. To make up for it, there are almost no cuts in the remaining lines. Having seen his movie (excellent in its way), I wanted to film Hamlet even more. Olivier cut the theme of government, which I find extremely interesting. I will not yield a single point from this line.”

Kozintsev emphasizes the imprisoning moral architecture of Elsinore, not by obvious claustrophobic visuals, but by a rich, widescreen frame and purist, black-and-white imagery that captures the towering palace and cavernous rooms, moving through their spaces and shadows with their multitudes of opportunities for spying eyes and ears. Renaissance tapestries and ancient battlements connect by innumerable doors that open and close with an almost Bressonian regularity; Hamlet (played by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) is enveloped in luxury and often surrounded by people, but he’s continually immersed in spiritual solitude.

Kozinstev has spoken highly of the great theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig‘s 1912 Moscow production of Hamlet, saying, “His great book Towards a New Theatre is, I think, Towards a New Cinema, and I was greatly impressed by his ideas, his understanding of the tragic meaning of space, his understanding of big visual imagery in Shakespeare.” Yet Craig’s abstract production was directed by Stanislavsky, whose interests in realistic performance can be felt in Kozintsev’s psychologically nuanced actors. (The script was penned by Boris Pasternak, who favored a less academic, colloquial translation.)

The film begins by evoking the eternal–long, contemplative shots of Elsinore’s shadow (in reality, the famous Swallow’s Nest in Crimea; the Elsinore set was constructed separately) looming over the slowly rolling sea. Kozintsev’s feeling for the natural elements are as tangible in his film as they are in King Lear: recurring seascapes emphasize the ongoing march of time, stone walls and iron weaponry evoke the era’s government and rampant militarism, a large fireplace crackles and sputters, filling the air with anxiety when Horatio first speaks of the roaming ghost of Hamlet’s father.

The ghost itself provides one of the film’s central visual moments: appearing as a swirl of light and shadow, the towering figure in flowing cloak is filmed in low angles and slow motion, lending it massive stature as it glides through the stormy landscape. Filmed largely in silhouette except for a breathtakingly brief glimpse of its old, sad eyes, the ghost exudes an electrifying presence that permeates the rest of the film–even the later scene in which it reappears in Hamlet’s mind before his mother, a vision Kozintsev keeps offscreen; not only does Smoktunovsky’s fevered expression suffice for audience comprehension, but composer Dimitri Shotakovich‘s reprisal of his crashing ghost theme dispenses any doubts regarding the content of Hamlet’s gaze.

Shostakovich’s bold score plays an important role throughout the film, from repetitive military fanfares to frilly courtroom tunes to Ophelia’s delicate harpsichord dances that are increasingly touched with sorrow. One suspects the filmmakers’ love for music is not the only reason Hamlet’s rebuke of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern–insisting he will not be played like an instrument–is such a pivotal scene in this adaptation, even dramatically outweighing, with its public exchange before a crowd, the traditional “to be or not to be” monologue. “Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me,” Hamlet intones, and authoritatively exits the room as the camera tracks back before him and his conspiring cohorts recede into the background. For Kozintsev, the Prince of Denmark’s contemplation and conscience is a heroic fight against the silent corruption around him.

On the surface, Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Who’s Camus Anyway? (2005)–recently released on DVD by Film Movement–is a breezy, playfully cineliterate account of a group of Tokyo university students making a movie. And while it’s chock full of film references (Altman, Tarantino, the French New Wave), colorful characters, and social eccentricities, its true sophistication emerges gradually, posing complex questions about the roles of fantasy, identity, and volition in modern life.

The film is Yanagimachi’s first after a ten-year hiatus; in the interim he taught a university course for three years, an experience that informs the sociological fabric of the film. And while it’s a highly observant portrait of Japanese youth and university culture, Yanagimachi’s renowned tendency to describe rather than ascribe keeps the film’s enigmas and nuances alive, waiting to be plundered. “The movie is a portrayal of reality,” he has said. “I had no intention to protest or praise.”

A recently widowed professor assigns his students a subject based on a 2000 murder case in which a 17-year-old boy randomly killed an elderly woman simply for the experience. Their resulting script–”The Bored Murderer”–inspires one student, assistant director Kiyoko (Ai Maeda), to reflect upon Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1946) with its story of a detached and unemotional killer, but director Naoki (Shuji Kashiwabara) seems intent on making an emotionally obvious movie, and star Ikeda (Hideo Nakaizumi) shrugs confusingly, “Cam-moo?” The students seem too obsessed with movies, pop culture, saakuru activity clubs (everything from hip-hop dance to Spanish guitar to mime), and–most of all–their interrelated romantic lives to engage much else.

Yanagimachi brilliantly establishes this hermetic world in a nearly seven-minute opening tracking shot that winds its way through the university campus, connecting various people and groups. At one point, two film students compare the tracking shot lengths in Touch of Evil (1958) and The Player (1992), but Yanagimachi isn’t merely being cute for the cinephiles; like Mizoguchi (whose long shots one student contends “are never for show”), he’s carefully emphasizing the interconnected relationships of these characters in a fluid manner.

Similarly, the film subtly uses the university’s architecture in evocative ways; the student staff room and studio sit atop a long flight of stairs on which various characters continually meet and converse throughout the film; combined with a climbing wall that figures prominently in one scene and a rooftop and ladder that figure in another, Yanagimachi uses vertical space as a metaphor for the rising aspirations and risky personal tensions of the various characters.

The professor (Hirotaro Honda) and an emotionally fragile student named Yukari (Hinano Yoshikawa) are obsessed with disinterested lovers; Yukari trails Naoki wherever he goes, whining about the future of their five-year relationship, but Naoki has become disenchanted. The students jokingly nickname the professor and Yukari “Aschenbach” and “AdËle” after the romantic obsessives in Death in Venice (1971) and The Story of AdËle H. (1975), respectively, socially marginalizing them but never hesitating to utilize their assistance. “Someone should tell our director to watch [Truffaut's film] to learn about women,” one student suggests, blurring a line between fantasy and reality that will continue to dissolve for several characters (as well as the viewer) throughout the film.

“I need my freedom,” director Naoki tells Yukari, but never appears to do much with it except bed or proposition women he has little personal connection with, nor does he seem inordinately enthusiastic about anything other than completing his film. As connected and dependent as the various characters are, they seem closer in proximity than in emotional terms, often communicating through cellphones or arguing about conflicting expectations. Yet the group dynamic is profound, and none of the characters seem superficial or caricatured in their listlessness. As tensions mount and opportunities arise, several characters make rash decisions that echo the protagonist of their film, simply to experience them. Yanamigachi suggests the line between thoughtful decision and random spontaneity is often fleeting.

Among the film’s many cultural references is Michel Houellebecq, the controversial French novelist who emphasizes the contemporary commodification of human relationships (the film adaptation of his Atomised has just been released on DVD in the UK). And W. Somerset Maugham is cited, whose conflation of fiction and reality in his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915) seems as relevant to Yanagimachi’s film as the novel’s frustrated protagonist, concerns about personal freedom, and ambiguous ending.

Like many of the film’s references, the authors highlight Yanagimachi’s conviction for his story and provide clues toward its vaguely elusive meanings. For a story as simple as a film student project and as sugar-coated for cinephile consumption as it is, Yanagimachi remains true to his career-long propensity for asking questions rather than offering answers, and the film’s disquieting climax lingers long after it ends. (I’ve been able to find precious few interviews with the filmmaker, but if anyone can read Japanese and would like to offer a translation of this, I’d be highly grateful.) Who’s Camus Anway? remains buoyant and enchanting, even as its unforced depths–like its endlessly traversed staircase–slowly ascend to prominent consideration.