Hamlet is in theaters on April 10.
From Laurence Olivier to The Lion King; from Branagh to Bollywood and The Bad Sleep Well; few stones have been left un-turned when adapting Hamlet for the big screen. And yet, the possibilities remain infinite. The Bard’s greatest work even took center stage in this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominee (and Best Actress winner) Hamnet, which delves into the play’s tragic origins while making the case for re-interpretation. So, it should come as no surprise that we’re now presented with such a novel remix as Aneil Karia’s Hamlet, an emotionally middling but audiovisually intriguing film with Riz Ahmed in the title role.
Transposing the story to an Indian business community in contemporary Britain, the result is alluring in texture and rife with great performances, but unfortunately, it brings nothing new to the table. The movie does, however, make for an interesting artistic curio; it’s fun to look at and listen to, even if it does little to stir the soul, or challenge (or even rigorously reinforce) William Shakespeare’s original text.
You know how it goes: Hamlet, a Danish prince plagued by ghostly visions, seeks revenge against his uncle, Claudius, for usurping the throne by murdering his father and marrying his mother, Gertrude. The story’s grand tragedy is practically foundational the world over, a tale of familial betrayal and vengeance gone awry that has practically become a soap opera template. Films and shows from South Asia and its diasporas feel especially indebted to Hamlet — it’s such a Desi favorite that the first ever Hamlet sound film was produced in India, in 1935 — making it a natural fit for Karia’s re-telling.
It opens with a Hindu funeral, as chants of the Gayatri Mantra and images of cremation gesture towards the idea of purification and letting go. Hamlet (Ahmed), however, remains emotionally and psychologically stained, as he begins glimpsing his departed dad (Avijit Dutt), who speaks to him from the shadows in flowery, subtitled Hindi. Courtesy of Stuart Bentley’s handheld camera, the frame remains tight and intimate, forcing us into Hamlet’s uneasy orbit as he reunites with his grieving mother (Sheeba Chadha, who also plays Ahmed’s mum on Bait) as well as with Ophelia (The Rings of Power’s Morfydd Clark), his former flame.
Through quiet stretches in the enormous rooms of family mansions, the characters’ dynamics are all made crystal clear thanks to each performer’s subdued gusto. They all appear to be bursting at the seams, eager to deliver each monologue and exchange which, although originally written for the stage, they instead whisper under their breath, forcing viewers to lean forward and intuit the subtext. This works wonders — up to a point. It’s forcefully, daringly cinematic, but this level of restraint ensures that, apart from Ahmed’s occasional outburst, the movie quickly runs out of steam.
The movie’s conception, although it rests on great actors like Joe Alwyn and Timothy Spall (as Ophelia’s brother Laertes and her father Polonius), ends up far too straightforward for a text this rich and varied. Hamlet, the play, is a lengthy prospect. It generally takes four hours to perform, but it works because it has a psychological ebb and flow. And while Karia’s streamlined movie knows how to hit the gas pedal — at times literally; “To be, or not to be” becomes a distraught, midnight drive — it’s hard not to wonder if it ought to have let up just a little, or pushed the pedal to the metal twice as hard.
A work of such visual intensity either needs a little breathing room to let its emotions gradually land, or else it needs to, in academic parlance, go f*cking balls to the wall and help Ahmed let loose with obsessive fervor. As Hamlet descends from London’s posh interiors to its temples and homeless shelters, the actor-producer puts on a considered clinic of haggard desperation, but the film around him never matches his unhinged energy — the way, say, Bornila Chatterjee’s culturally similar adaptation of Titus Andronicus, the New Delhi-set The Hungry, so often does.
Instead, what we’re left with is a vision of Hamlet on aesthetic auto-pilot, whose top-down structure can’t help but feel mechanical. While several individual moments and scenes are crafted with curiosity, the film as a whole never grabs you by the throat the way a story of this stature should.
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