“When you have Shakespeare, why do you need movies?”: Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins and an anti-Hamletian Hamlet

Abstract

Neil Jordan has suggested that “when you have Shakespeare, why do you need movies?” This article seeks to highlight the analogies between some key themes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Jordan’s Michael Collins in order to suggest how Jordan’s question is, perhaps, ironic. Importantly, recourse to Hamlet is shown to supply an alternative method for the analysis of Jordan’s film and, in turn, demonstrate how literature per se can be deployed as a critical tool. An important aspect of this discussion includes a psychoanalytical framework that draws upon the work of Slavoj Žižek and a concept termed “extimacy”.