‘Hamlet’ Review: Riz Ahmed Can’t Save a London-Set Take on Shakespeare’s Tragedy With No Reason to Be
William Shakespeare left no instructions as to the right way future dramatists should tell “Hamlet.” We have only the text, which reveals fresh insights each time someone new recites it. With director Aneil Karia’s new interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be. (Ahmed previously starred in Karia’s Oscar-winning short, “The Long Goodbye,” which suggested real promise for future collaborations.)
Transposed to modern-day London, where Hamlet belongs to a wealthy family of Indian heritage, Karia’s version preserves the original text, albeit abridged, reordered and occasionally spoken by different characters entirely. Screenwriter Michael Lesslie oversaw this adaptation, which carries with it unfortunate relics of an earlier time — not the iambic pentameter, which is sacred, but references to kings and lords and a royal society that doesn’t translate one bit to the modern corporate world.
Here, Elsinore is a corporation and the murder of Hamlet’s father by his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) and hasty marriage to his mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) is all part of a hostile takeover that doesn’t feel nearly dastardly enough to justify the tragic bloodbath that ensues. Shot on badly lit digital video — which smooths faces and distorts scenery — the film’s handheld look recalls Michael Almereyda’s relatively stylish, if similarly ill-conceived Y2K version, starring Ethan Hawke. Ahmed’s Hamlet is similarly mopey and disaffected, apparently dealing with issues of mental health in addition to those of family betrayal.
Side characters, like Morfydd Clark’s Ophelia and her brother Laertes (Joe Alwyn), are so thinly drawn, it requires a preexisting familiarity with the play for their relationships to be clear. Ophelia’s a longtime friend of Hamlet’s, but her tragic fate makes little sense in this telling, nor does Hamlet’s gory treatment of her father Polonius (Timothy Spall, who gets the film’s most disturbing death scene, but little else to do).
All the good lines go to Hamlet, whom Ahmed embodies as a deeply agitated young man. When Claudius sends him away (to Dehli, in a rare tweak of dialogue), Hamlet is driven to a construction site late at night — passing signs that say “Elsinore” and graffiti that reads “Rotten” — where he’s beaten by his uncle’s thugs. This unexpected action scene brings a welcome dose of excitement. For a moment, it feels like we might be dealing with an organized crime family, which would actually be a fairly original way to reimagine the play.
Karia finds a unique way to present Hamlet’s suicidal soliloquy: behind the wheel of a fancy BMW, hurtling down rain-slicked London streets like a Danish prince with a death wish. So much of his world feels soulless, as Hamlet and Ophelia are surrounded by fellow rich kids, tempted with cocaine and caviar, with no sense of how life might have been better when Hamlet’s father was alive. Scenes with the ghost (Avijit Dutt, lying dead at the outset, later seen at a distance) do little to dispel the notion that Hamlet is losing his mind, though his “madness” is presented with a 21st-century empathy for mental health.
It all builds to a spectacular Indian-style dance number at Gertrude’s wedding banquet, where the brooding “prince” instructs the performers to re-create the crime in order to gauge his uncle’s reaction. The movie peaks early with this vibrant scene, which is far more effective than the climactic duel, though Claudius’ reaction is unclear. As the dancers pantomime the murder, funneling blood-red poison into the sleeping king’s ear, it’s not clear if this is meant to be how Claudius killed his brother or Hamlet’s interpretive-dance take on the famous play for which he’s named. It’s a bit like watching a zombie movie where you can’t help but wonder if the characters have ever seen a zombie movie before, or whether they live in a world where it’s an altogether new concept.
Do these tragic fools exist in a world without Shakespeare, or are they merely doomed to repeat him?
Transposed to modern-day London, where Hamlet belongs to a wealthy family of Indian heritage, Karia’s version preserves the original text, albeit abridged, reordered and occasionally spoken by different characters entirely. Screenwriter Michael Lesslie oversaw this adaptation, which carries with it unfortunate relics of an earlier time — not the iambic pentameter, which is sacred, but references to kings and lords and a royal society that doesn’t translate one bit to the modern corporate world.
Here, Elsinore is a corporation and the murder of Hamlet’s father by his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) and hasty marriage to his mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) is all part of a hostile takeover that doesn’t feel nearly dastardly enough to justify the tragic bloodbath that ensues. Shot on badly lit digital video — which smooths faces and distorts scenery — the film’s handheld look recalls Michael Almereyda’s relatively stylish, if similarly ill-conceived Y2K version, starring Ethan Hawke. Ahmed’s Hamlet is similarly mopey and disaffected, apparently dealing with issues of mental health in addition to those of family betrayal.
Side characters, like Morfydd Clark’s Ophelia and her brother Laertes (Joe Alwyn), are so thinly drawn, it requires a preexisting familiarity with the play for their relationships to be clear. Ophelia’s a longtime friend of Hamlet’s, but her tragic fate makes little sense in this telling, nor does Hamlet’s gory treatment of her father Polonius (Timothy Spall, who gets the film’s most disturbing death scene, but little else to do).
All the good lines go to Hamlet, whom Ahmed embodies as a deeply agitated young man. When Claudius sends him away (to Dehli, in a rare tweak of dialogue), Hamlet is driven to a construction site late at night — passing signs that say “Elsinore” and graffiti that reads “Rotten” — where he’s beaten by his uncle’s thugs. This unexpected action scene brings a welcome dose of excitement. For a moment, it feels like we might be dealing with an organized crime family, which would actually be a fairly original way to reimagine the play.
Karia finds a unique way to present Hamlet’s suicidal soliloquy: behind the wheel of a fancy BMW, hurtling down rain-slicked London streets like a Danish prince with a death wish. So much of his world feels soulless, as Hamlet and Ophelia are surrounded by fellow rich kids, tempted with cocaine and caviar, with no sense of how life might have been better when Hamlet’s father was alive. Scenes with the ghost (Avijit Dutt, lying dead at the outset, later seen at a distance) do little to dispel the notion that Hamlet is losing his mind, though his “madness” is presented with a 21st-century empathy for mental health.
It all builds to a spectacular Indian-style dance number at Gertrude’s wedding banquet, where the brooding “prince” instructs the performers to re-create the crime in order to gauge his uncle’s reaction. The movie peaks early with this vibrant scene, which is far more effective than the climactic duel, though Claudius’ reaction is unclear. As the dancers pantomime the murder, funneling blood-red poison into the sleeping king’s ear, it’s not clear if this is meant to be how Claudius killed his brother or Hamlet’s interpretive-dance take on the famous play for which he’s named. It’s a bit like watching a zombie movie where you can’t help but wonder if the characters have ever seen a zombie movie before, or whether they live in a world where it’s an altogether new concept.
Do these tragic fools exist in a world without Shakespeare, or are they merely doomed to repeat him?