Dogmatic Shakespeare: a 'recognition of ghostly presences' in Thomas Vinterberg's 'Festen' and Kristian Levring's 'The King is Alive'

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between a number of film products of the Dogme New Wave and the various intertexts at play in their creation; it poses questions about the very nature of adaptation and the interplay between so-called precursory texts and their seemingly adapted offspring. In particular, it interrogates the ways in which Vinterberg's Festen (1998) and Levring's 'The King is Alive' (2000) echo, at a conscious or a subconscious level, performative and ideological facets of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' (1601) and 'King Lear' (1608) respectively.