Hamlet Blog Post #2

Note: For the sake of this assignment, I have chosen to temporarily switch my character to Hamlet as my initial choice, Horatio, does not appear in Act II.




"I don't know what's right any longer" admits Hillary, one of the main characters in Top Secret. The movie centers around American singer, Nick Rivers who, when invited to East Germany for a cultural festival, gets roped into aiding the French resistance by Hillary Flammond. The two are out to rescue Hillary's father, a scientist who was kidnapped and forced to build a dangerous weapon for the German government. With help from many others in the French resistance, the two manage to rescue Mr. Flammond and escape the country.

The character of Hillary greatly loves and respects her father, a sentiment I share though I have so recently lost my own. Since my father’s passing, “it goes so heavily with my disposition that . . . the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory” (2.2.273-274). For Hillary as well, life is meaningless without her father with her and just as it is important that I avenge my father’s cruel and untimely murder, it is important that Hillary rescues hers from the German government. I have devised a plan, as she and her fellow resistance members did, to help my father and prove my uncle as his murderer. I am sure that, “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.532-533). But before she can help her father, she too must deal with spies. My wretched uncle has called two close friends to spy on me. They betray me and yet still act as though all is fine, remaining jovial in conversation, being, as they said,  “Happy, in that we are not over-happy” (2.2.218). Likewise, Hillary’s long-lost friend, Nigel, turns out to be a spy for the Germans. He greatly hinders the French resistance secretly throughout the movie. Unlike Nigel’s evil intent, at least my companions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not mean me ill will. They rather wish that, “Heavens make [their] presence and [their] practices pleasant and helpful to [me]” (2.2.38-39). I am in part thankful for that, as it seems their loyalty is not completely lost, only misguided. As I feel I am in the ways of love, a thing “whose violent property fordoes itself” (2.1.101) and has caused an awful mess for me, for Ophelia, and for Polonius. Hillary’s attraction to the singer, Nick Rivers, is also disastrous in that it pulls him into a battle in which he has no part. Still, I envy the lovers as they do not allow their predicament to pull them apart as Ophelia and I have done. Yet Hillary does put Nick into danger in asking him to continue to help her in her mission. She says that he should stay, “If not for [her], for the cause of freedom” admitting that she requires his help to keep going. Just as I require the support of my good friend Horatio. A member of the resistance remarks of Nick and Hillary’s accomplishments, they will “hear it in the hearts of the people” and “as long as we do, we know that we are not alone in our fight”; just as my father will be remembered as he was, “so excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.139-140), a well beloved and righteous king.