BRANAGH'S DOUBTFUL DANE DOES JUSTICE TO THE BARD : THE FACTS.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

``To be or not to be,'' muses Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, gazing at his own multiple full-length reflections dashingly swathed in designer black.

What's this - the Melancholy Dane a closet clotheshorse? Was Shakespeare's most famous scene really a wily premonition of Donna Karan menswear?

Like most things in this gloriously intelligent, intensely perceptive new reading of the Bard's best-known tragedy, there's more to the prince's suave mirror image than first meets the eye. There can be no doubt, though, that Branagh's elegant new ``Hamlet'' is beautiful to behold.

Sumptuously attired in red, black, gold and white, it unfolds amid the chilly splendors of a desolate European winterscape, frozen in crystalline corruption. Parading like peacocks through the Elsinore court, the royalty and their minions resemble Christmas-tree ornaments, the men decked to the eyeballs in medals and braided epaulets, the women dripping sensuously with frills and frou-frou.

With such shimmering narcissism on display, it's no coincidence that at least half the film will unravel in that same mirrored hall where a suicidal Hamlet confronts his various selves.

Symbolizing Elsinore's self-absorbed decadence, those mirrors are but one of many visual motifs brought exuberantly to life by Branagh's screenplay, one of the most daringly inventive of any big-screen ``Hamlet.'' It's a further mark of Branagh's witty cinema scholarship that the looking-glass world of Elsinore will shatter in a climax that manages to evoke both an Errol Flynn swashbuckler and Orson Welles' ``The Lady From Shanghai.''

Predictably, one or two reviewers already are frothing that this is the ``definitive'' take on Shakespeare's tragedy. Maybe so, maybe not. What matters far more is that Branagh, his savvy production team and a marvelous trans-Atlantic troupe of actors have found a ``Hamlet'' that speaks movingly to our own times, while covering Shakespeare's in laurels.

Though its four-hour length may induce panic, don't bother with the truncated version unless you've got a colicky infant at home. Pay the sitter overtime, and treat yourself to the Bard's fullest, most confounding text, delivered in a style that's the absolute antithesis of Britishy thespian-speak.

Once again reaching for the triple crown of adapter/director/star, Branagh betrays some of the same rookie enthusiasms that dogged his ``Henry V'' (1989) and ``Much Ado About Nothing'' (1993). In ``Much Ado'' Branagh went slightly gaga with lap dissolves. This time he's infatuated with 360-degree pans, which he uses to conjure the swooning ambience of the cloak-and-dagger Danish court.

Bearing traces of the gothic ghoulishness that swamped ``Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,'' the movie gleefully exploits B-movie horror cliches. Trees shudder and the ground shakes like the San Andreas Fault when the ghost of Hamlet's father (Brian Blessed) appears to tell his son that he must take revenge against Hamlet's murderous uncle, Claudius (Derek Jacobi). Characters are constantly darting through false bookcases and vanishing behind trapdoors. Branagh's hand, like the camera itself, is least steady on these occasions.

Two other qualities mark this ``Hamlet'' as distinctly modern and distinctly Branagh-esque. One is its deeply skeptical view of warfare and its spoils. The other is its way of making Shakespeare's larger-than-life characters seem fully, fatally human, with their emotional transitions cleanly marked.

Casting, of course, is key, and this ensemble of mish-mashed acting styles adds up perfectly. This is one of a handful of ``Hamlets'' you're likely to see - on stage, screen or anywhere - featuring a truly sympathetic Claudius, a Gertrude (Julie Christie) who fights back against her bullying son, a Polonius (Richard Briers) who isn't a doddering old windbag, and an Ophelia (Kate Winslett) who's not a sex-starved neurotic from her opening lines. Branagh's brilliantly inconoclastic view of his fellow actors brings all the right baggage to the roles.

That leaves Branagh's own portrayal, a characterization that someday may take its place alongside those of Gielgud, Olivier and Burton.

Bleached-blond and ghostly pale, he's visibly suffering, either from grief over his father's death or iron-poor blood. Branagh convincingly takes the 30-something prince from weeping boy-man, barely able to rein in his rage and disgust, to the scheming seducer and politician of the later acts.

Fascinating in his line readings, Branagh give us a Hamlet of rare emotional intensity. If this be madness, there's Method acting in it.

Yet the quality that finally distinguishes this ``Hamlet'' is the same one that made Branagh's ``Henry V'' almost unbearably moving: its savagely ironic depiction of the wretched waste of violence.

Set in an indeterminate phase of 19th-century saber-rattling, the movie offers a chilling vision of bluebloods playing parlor games while the barbarians are literally battering down the gates. Given an appropriately epic grandeur by cinematographer Alex Thomson, whose last outing in 70mm was ``Lawrence of Arabia,'' the production is flush with plumed helmets and ceremonial pomposity.

In Elsinore, warfare has been raised to an art and a political fashion statement. But the fencers who parry in the background foreshadow the less-civilized carnage yet to come.

As Hamlet meets his fate, the statue of his dead father is pulled down by Fortinbras' inrushing army. While the bloodied prince has won a psychological battle, his kingdom has lost the war.

The film: ``Hamlet'' (PG-13; violence, sexual situations).

The stars: Kenneth Branagh, Richard Briers, Julie Christie, Brian Blessed, Derek Jacobi, Gerard Depardieu, Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Billy Crystal, John Mills, Jack Lemmon, Rufus Sewell, Kate Winslet and Robin Williams.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh from the play by William Shakespeare. Music by Patrick Doyle. Produced by David Barron. Released by Castle Rock.

Running time: Three hours, 58 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Royal.

Our rating: four stars.

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Photo: Kenneth Branagh and Julie Christie portray son and mother in ``Hamlet.''