MOVIE · 1991

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

ComedyDrama117 min

On the road to Elsinore, two baffled courtiers from Hamlet keep getting pulled toward a story that barely seems to belong to them. Gary Oldman’s Rosencrantz and Tim Roth’s Guildenstern drift from coin flips and word games to a meeting with a troupe led by the Player (Richard Dreyfuss), then reach court just as they’re asked to help untangle Prince Hamlet’s strange behavior. Tom Stoppard puts Shakespeare’s side characters at the center, building the film around misheard orders, theatrical detours, and their mounting sense that fate may have already written the script.