OUR DEVICES STILL ARE OVERTHROWN: InstaPundit links to this tribute to Charlton Heston’s acting skills. I suppose this is the time to confess one of my less pleasant moments. I really disliked Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” movie–I thought Ophelia was directed very poorly, Branagh couldn’t handle the soliloquies (neither could Mel Gibson, whose “Hamlet” was on balance the better movie; at least Gibson didn’t jump around as much as Branagh), and the whole thing felt very choppy and incoherent. But one actor did stand out: the Player King. He was grimly majestic, bringing out the famous “purpose is but a slave to memory” speech that usually gets buried because “everyone knows” the Player King is a bit part and so we’re not conditioned to pay any attention to him. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the movie well enough to give more specifics–I’m not even sure if I’d still like the Player King portrayal today–but I do remember my shock when I found out that the role had been played by Charlton Heston. This is what I mean by “one of my less pleasant moments.” Heston was, I’d been told, a buffoon (“Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!”), a reactionary idiot, sort of William Shatner in a KKK hood. (I certainly had never heard that he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.) That was the received standard wisdom of the generalized New York Times-y atmosphere in which I moved. But Branagh’s “Hamlet” showed me Heston as a genuinely great actor. Now that I also agree with Heston’s most famous political stance, I like him even more; but it was good to be reminded, back then, that even people we sharply disagree with can be extraordinarily talented and sensitive artists. Anyway, Heston was terrific in “Hamlet”–and now seems like a good time to recall and celebrate his triumphs.