#I’d also argue that one of the key principles of roz n guil is the main characters’ total dysfunction coming around to bite them

[daisyachain]

Looking up clips around the place, it seems like on-stage interpretations veer towards straight and straight-up comedy for The Undifferentiated Duo. It is a comedy, yes, but the movie’s got a stifling air to it that verges on the horrific. Even the continued bit of Rosencrantz (if that’s the one he is) choosing the wrong moment slips from slapstick to painful as you go on. By the time Guildenstern crushes the paper airplane it’s actually sad. Not to mention the bit of lying down on the tomb to monologue. The play is about two people going to deaths they can’t avoid, foresee, or even understand as they’re happening.

Taking into account that the movie’s directed by the playwright, the sinister aspects seems to be as true a part of it as the jokes. Filmdenstern is constantly screaming at random, the straightman/wiseguy routine verges on domestic abuse black comedy (I know what I sound like at this point but I’m sticking to it). The film version is so wincingly uncomfortable that it feels like you’re talking about Ros and Guil behind their backs. The audience is made complicit in their deaths moreso than if the tone is ‘look at these fools bumbling graveward. Lmao’