Scarlet Review – Mamoru Hosoda turns Hamlet into a story of wandering knights and profound “nothingness” | film

FFlag versions of Hamlet are the new buses. You wait a long time for one, and then three come at once: first Hamnet, then Riz Ahmed confronting Danish Indecision, and now this anime reinterpretation. But while visually charming, Scarlet is a major disappointment from director Mamoru Hosoda, a standout from whom we expect more than just an incoherent, overbearing fantasy.

Hosoda kicks things off with the Danish exploitation version: Claudius (voiced by David Kaye in the English version) and Gertrude (Michelle Wong) bragging about their intention to kill poor King Amlet (Fred Tatasciore) and seize the throne. His offspring Scarlett (Irene Yvette), as in the play, is left hesitant about revenge – but Claudius gets there first by feeding her a vial of poison. She is granted a reprieve, though, when she awakens in a wasteland of purgatory inhabited by a usurper and his wandering knights. After being dispatched, these minions dissipate into the deeper “nothingness” that also awaits her if she is unsuccessful in her quest for revenge.

The director has a serious past teasing alternative worlds, all the way to the shimmering virtual reality of his latest film, Belle. But Scarlet’s underworld feels provisional and arbitrary, from the raison d’être of Claudius and his hyperactive henchmen, to the lightning-spewing juggernaut that whirls across the sky at narratively appropriate times. Or why medic Hijiri (Chris Hackney) is the only modern resident of this universe, other than being a spokesman for Hosoda’s sentient tendencies; It could be forgiven in his other films, but it’s weakly and frankly dramatized here. Playing a foil to the revenge-minded princess, Hijiri upholds his pacifism to an often ridiculous extent, such as when he is attacked by bandits on horseback.

Paired with a line of empty philosophy (“What is death? And what is living?”), Scarlet never quite rises to the lyrical heights of Shakespearean humanism—no matter how many times it presses its hero to learn “tolerance.” The only obvious knock is the animation: the noble, sharply etched, 3D-enhanced character work, which, set against the pristine sand and near-realistic ruin views, reminds us of the great comic book artist Jean Giraud at his otherworldly best. What’s even more mysterious, then, is why sections of Elsinore are often languished in a sloppy, clunky 2D fashion – this is supposed to be a stylistic choice, but the inconsistency is all too common in a frustratingly scattered journey down the rabbit hole.