After the death of his father, Hamlet spirals into madness and murder in Aneil Karia’s raw and powerful version of Shakespeare’s play, led by a furious Riz Ahmed.
Hamlet is so hot right now. Between the Academy Award winning Hamnet using it as a narrative basis, the iffy anime Scarlet adapting and expanding, Robert Eggers’s underseen The Northman (a few years back I admit but I love it and wanted to menton it), and this weeks in director Aneil Karia’s stripped down modern adaptation, this one using the title but chanching a great deal to make this version work. Starring Riz Ahmed as William Shakespeare’s titular prince, this Hamlet is a raw, intimate affair, drilling into the character, striking an open nerve.
Directed by Aneil Karia, Hamlet is retuned to today’s London. With his father, the head of construction corporation Elsinore, dead, Hamlet returns to the sprawling mansion of his youth. Coming home, finds his mother, Gertrude, about to marry his uncle, Claudius. He doesn’t take this well. This news rocks his world, starting (continuing?) a spiral of self-destruction (self, yes. Others? Also yes). Make it known, in this version, he’s not playing at madness; he is failing and flailing and taking everyone down with him, including the family of company schemer Polonius and his kids: friend Laertes and romantic interest Ophelia. Yes, friend Laertis: normally a foil for Hamlet, Laertes fills the deleted Horatio role, along with Ophelia, for many of his parts are split betwixt them. 
One can’t help but compare the base of the contemporary update with the Ethan Hawke-led version from 2000, but while both use the modern business world as a shift from the 1300s, Fassbender’s Macbeth adaptor Michael Lessie’s script keeps everything close to the chest and the characters. That one plays more to corporate backstabbing; Lessie’s keeps it personal. The business backdrop is mainly that, a backdrop, outside of altering Fortinbras to a collective of people pushed out of their land by the Elsinore company’s buildings. This hard focuses on Hamlet’s internal thoughts, the larger picture be damned; a hard spiral into madness and murder, the excited mental state, and how it throws any and all plans by other players into chaos.
It’s a bit tough to parse truly. Honestly, one who doesn’t know Hamlet well coming in may be lost. It’s not an entry point, but an exploration. It’s tight, terse, and driven. Cutting to necessity keeps a strong grip on Hamlet himself, never moving from him. If he’s not in the scene, it didn’t make it here. For all taken away, (Shakespeare’s longest play, a full run is over 4 hours long; see Branaugh’s 1996 version if that’s what you want), it keeps to the emotional truth under all the playings of the court and King.
Riz Ahmed, continuing to prove his amazing worth as an actor after Sound of Metal, hits a raw nerve as Hamlet. Wracked with guilt and grief, he’s pushed out of a complacency, coming to face his place within the corrupt world of his family’s company. I’ll admit, he gets a little quiet whisperer and hard to hear at times, but he does so with a simmering anger, building to a boiling point that I didn’t mind so much because of how focused and locked in his reading was, boiling off the screen. He sells his madness and loss with strength. His work on The Soliquiy is impossible to look away from, heartbreaking, and tense; I adore the way it was used within this version. His whole performance has a truth, layered and affecting.
For the remainder of the cast, those causing and caught up in the chaos, there is a great set. Art Malik’s Claudius wears his corruption on his chest, an imposing figure; but more chilling is right-hand man, Polonius, as performed by Timothy Spall. His Polonius isn’t a sniveling syncophant but a terror; he’s utterly chilling, oozing a palpable menace, delivered with spit and spite. Morfydd Clark’s Ophelia stands out. She’s always been an interesting actress in Saint Maud, Netflix’s Dracula, and His Dark Materials, and she’s given much to work with. Ophelia shoulders the guilt, shame, madness, and machinations of all around her, and Clark brings the heartbreak and loss, confusion, and taking too much to bear. The “county-matters” translation sequence has an inescapable power. The sequence on the whole stands out, with an astounding and beautifully choreographed take on the play that catches the conscience of the king. Joe Alwyn, as Laertes, gets the short end of the stick, though. He’s fine, but here he’s just around to play off of and move Hamlet around. Funny enough, he was just in Hamnet!
Keeping with the close emotional contact, Karia keeps the camera tight to his subjects, only going wide when needed to connect a feeling. Keeping close, the camera moves in a handheld, slightly shaky cam method; moving in and out, ever keeping still. Hamlet’s emotional state via cinemateophehy. It shouldn’t be enough to make people sick, but if you’re susceptible, know it. Also, two sequences have strobe effects.
Aneil Karia gives a stage for Riz Ahmed to wow his audience with a personal and raw Hamlet. While I can see that this version might not grasp others with the expectation to be familiar with the material, the often mumblecore speech methods, and closeness of it all, for me, it worked. Focused, tight, and emotionally powerful, Hamlet proves there is continued life in stories told again and again, even multiple times in the same year.