Final Rating: 2.5/5
Mamoru Hosoda takes his interpretation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet into the Otherworld, a life after death that offers a wealth of narrative and thematic possibilities. Following the titular princess after her failed attempt to avenge the death of her father in the opening act, Scarlet is a journey through the afterlife as she hopes to get another shot to kill her traitorous uncle.
The primary plot beats that galvanize Scarlet should be familiar to anyone who’s read the bard’s original play or seen any of the endless list of adaptations it’s received prior to this one. Likewise, anyone who has seen Hosoda’s previous film, Belle (itself an adaptation of the equally familiar Beauty and the Beast), will instantly recognize the animation.
In fact, Princess Scarlet and Suzu (Belle’s protagonist) are remarkably similar in design. The similarities don’t extend much further, fortunately, and the team at Hosoda’s Studio Chizu creates a variety of gorgeous landscapes, action sequences, and characters to flesh out this world.
After Scarlet, voiced well by Mana Ashida, watches her father be publicly executed, her drive is singlefold: kill her Uncle Claudius (Kôji Yakusho). Unlike the main character of Hamlet, Scarlet isn’t content to wait around for an opportune moment. She’s headstrong and brash, meeting almost every scenario she encounters with violence before she’s even had a chance to fully ascertain what’s going on. For a character like that, it’s quite understandable that she would be killed almost immediately. With her focus trained so narrowly, she doesn’t recognize dangers lurking in the corners, which is precisely where someone like Claudius prefers to operate.
In the Otherworld, Scarlet dispatches adversarial roadblocks left and right: many with ease, some with a good bit of struggle. Eventually, she encounters someone she doesn’t want to kill. Enter Hijiri (Masaki Okada). He doesn’t realize he’s in the afterlife at first and he’s also not from the same century as Scarlet. He’s a modern EMT who counterbalances Scarlet’s bloodthirst with a need to help, heal, and befriend everyone he encounters.
The dynamic between Scarlet and Hijiri is mildly compelling, if predictable. Once they’re on screen together, their journey forward unfolds without much surprise. Scarlet runs headfirst into conflict while Hijiri does everything he can to prevent anyone from being hurt. One of the highlights of the film is the musical element it takes on with Hijiri’s arrival. He sings and brings a much-appreciated emotional fluidity to contrast Scarlet’s rigidness.
Thematically, Hijiri’s presence creates a dialogue that doesn’t exist in Hamlet. In the original work, Hamlet’s prolonged pursuit of vengeance results in a bloodbath. That outcome serves as the message to ward against acts of revenge. As the saying goes, ‘an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind’. In Scarlet, that conversation is happening throughout the film. Hijiri and Scarlet are confronted with those choices all along their journey. And as the film nears its climax, the question as to whether or not Scarlet will commit to the hatred she feels over the loss of her father becomes deafening.
What’s frustrating about this film is that the theme Hosoda chooses to put most of his energy into exploring doesn’t lead anywhere new or interesting. And along the way, more alluring threads present themselves that aren’t pulled. Given how expansive the Otherworld seems to be, the possibilities for who Scarlet could encounter are endless, but outside of Hijiri, the vast majority of them are ones from her own time and even from her own city.
The film plays a wonderful trick in spending so much time in the Otherworld that you can even forget that everyone in there has died. This is used to great effect in the film’s most affecting scene where a young girl shares the same revelation with the princess. That single exchange leaves a stronger emotional impact than all of the ones she has with Hijiri combined, which often feel like checking off boxes, especially toward the film’s end.
Hosoda creates a lot of moments in Scarlet that, if approached differently, would have made this an invigorating entry into the Hamlet oeuvre. Instead, the choices are safe and the story ends up feeling flat. The animation lives up to the reputation Hosoda has earned and, fortunately, a safe version of Hamlet is still an adaptation of one of humanity’s greatest written works.
Thank you to Mongrel Media and Star PR for the screener.
