Final Rating: 3.5/5
After more than 50 adaptations of Shakespeare’s seminal work, the natural first question is: why do I need to see this Hamlet? It’s not even the only adaptation of the play about the grieving Danish prince to release this year alone, let alone last year’s major entries in the canon in the form of Oscar-winning Hamnet, animated twist Scarlet, and indie docu darling Grand Theft Hamlet. 425ish years after the play was first published, Hamlet is kind of having a moment. Which also means that Hamlet fatigue could easily set in.
So it is a relief to see from the first frames that Aneil Karia is doing something surprisingly different with his Hamlet, set in modern London’s Southeast Asian community, with Riz Ahmed in the title role. We open on Hamlet himself, preparing his father’s body for his funereal rites. Horatio and the guard, the usual first scene of the play, aren’t in the movie at all – most of the numerous side characters didn’t make the cut from the Bard’s behemoth (his longest play) to a film less than half its runtime, a trim 1h53.
This version of the story never leaves Hamlet’s perspective, from this initial quiet moment establishing the depths of his wells of grief to (turn-of-the-17th-century spoilers!) his dying breath. The succession of Fortinbras (here a corporation) is suggested but not shown. The story has been pared down to focus on the raw emotion that sends the central character slowly spiraling from an uncomfortable sort of calm intensity that gradually degrades into erratic behavior that alienates those left to love him.
It is perhaps the most realistic depiction of Hamlet’s growing “madness,” which this version of the story suggests is more than feigned. Hamlet’s “to be” speech has never felt more dangerous. The story’s many deaths occur not because the script demands it, but more often because they feel like an inevitable result of the steps taken to reach that moment.
Do not look to this movie for the likes of Kenneth Branagh’s mid-’90s hysterics. This is a take that is comfortable sitting in silences, while Hamlet processes his inner turmoil away from the constant rat-a-tat-tat the play’s other characters are presumably busy having somewhere offscreen. It is replaced by a droning, throbbing score. Not a word is spoken for the first five minutes, until unsubtitled Hindi, murmurations of consolation break the silence.
The text trimmed will upset many – there is, for one, no poor Yorick to alas; the names Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are never mentioned. This more intimate adaptation has no interest in fan service. Hamlet’s humorous asides are wholesale stripped away, leaving a dark crime-family thriller in its place.
With so few characters left over from the original, Polonius (Timothy Spall) and his children Ophelia (Morfydd Clark) and Laertes (Joe Alwyn) take up even more room in the story – their whiteness lending them an additional outsider status, and an extra dimension of tension in Hamlet and Ophelia’s troubled romance.
Clark in particular communicates her heartbreak in devastatingly relatable reaction shots, though perhaps not enough for the end of her character arc to age any better than in any other version. Hamlet’s mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) also feels somewhat underused by the script – especially in contrast to her role again playing Riz Ahmed’s mother in the new Amazon Prime series Bait, where she has the opportunity to show more range.
The intent and effort – the dismantling and reassembly of the story, with language that blends seamlessly between Shakespeare’s original words and new connecting linguistic threads – is an admirable one. The ambitions were large. In “The Name of Action,” a nine-minute documentary about the modern relevance of Hamlet, Riz Ahmed says that, to him, “Hamlet is about someone who is grieving the illusion that the world is a fair place” – an interpretation whose modern relevance is only too clear in recent years.
The result is not always a perfect film: The shaky-cam cinematography can be distracting. The grainy film texture and dim lighting at times lend grounded realism, at others feel dated. The ghost sequence feels…underproduced.
But every Hamlet aficionado should set aside two hours to explore the new angles this fresh look unlocks. And those who think Hamlet is not for them may find themselves pleasantly surprised by the gritty, almost Noir staging, complete with Asian dance spectacle and a plunge into an underground tent city.
Thank you to Vertical Entertainment and Route504 for the screener.
