For Shakespeare’s Hamlet “the world is out of joint”. In screen writer Michael Lesslie’s collage of Shakespeare’s play, directed by Aneil Karia, Riz Ahmed’s intense, grief-wrecked Hamlet pays a high price as he tries to “set it right” in a corrupt corporate world.
This Hamlet is a radical adaptation that mostly uses Shakespeare’s words but relocates to contemporary, uber-wealthy south-Asian London. Hamlet has had a south-Asian makeover before now, most famously in Haider; a 2014 action packed Hindi film set in 1990s Kashmir. Karia’s Hamlet, however, is far moodier, more muted and uneven. Some of it is brilliant, some less so. But there is a stunning pay off at the end.
The recent film Hamnet repositioned Hamlet as a response to Shakespeare’s son’s death. Ahmed’s prince also returns the focus to fathers – after all Shakespeare’ father died around the time Hamlet was written. The film asks the audience: whom can we trust?
