Scarlet: To See or Not to See an Animated Japanese Hamlet - That is the Question

By Chris Knight

Rating: B+
Hamlet has never really died (except in Act V, scene ii). There are dozens of film adaptations of the play, from 1900’s two-minute Hamlet with Sarah Bernhardt as the Prince (just Act V, scene ii) to Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour epic, and even Bob and Doug McKenzie’s Strange Brew.

But it’s hard to deny the story is having a cinematic moment. Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell’s book, is up for eight Oscars including best picture and the newly created award for best casting. Riz Ahmed stars in a version that opens in the U.K. on Feb. 6. And on this side of the pond (though hailing from across another ocean) is Scarlet an animated adaptation from Japanese writer/director Mamoru Hosoda.

It’s a looser telling than many. Though set in Denmark, circa 1600, and featuring characters named Claudius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, etc., it has replaced the title character with Scarlet (voiced by Mana Ashida), a princess who watches as her power-hungry uncle murders her beloved father.

A thirst for vengeance takes hold of her heart, but before she can act on it, she is poisoned and awakens in a stunning afterlife that looks like a cross between Dune’s desert planet Arrakis and the more scraggly corners of Middle-earth. Claudius is there too, and so she has her work cut out for her - posthumous vengeance, this time for good. (Apparently if you die in the Afterlife, you die in real life, or something like that.)

Scarlet is aided by Hijiri (Masaki Okada), a modern-day paramedic who has that annoying habit of the newly departed of denying that he is dead at all, since he can’t recall his death and doesn’t feel deceased. There’s one in every afterlife. Hijiri patches up any enemy that Scarlet doesn’t dispatch, and tries to convince her between battles that maybe vengeance is not the wisest course of action.

But hey, at least this Hamlet/Scarlet embodies very little of the dithering and self-doubt of Shakespeare’s original. There’s no “to be or not to be” moment here; the closest the film comes is lines like: “Will the day ever come when we understand the meaning of life?” Close but no slings and arrows.

In truth (and without giving too much of the plot away), Scarlet suffers the most where it departs furthest from the original. That’s not to say that Hosoda’s take is bad; just that it’s hard to outdo the Bard.

And the visuals are incredible — an impossibly large dragon passing overhead like a living lunar eclipse; a trippy sequence to rival the stargate from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and some beautifully expressive animated faces, not least that of the protagonist, who can shift from dead-eyed dour to astonished and then on to battle ready in a heartbeat. For an animated character, Scarlet feels remarkably real.

Hosoda has said he was avoiding both traditional 2D animation and "Hollywood-style CG” in favour of a third way. The results (and four years of production) are clearly worthwhile.

As to the big question — “to see or not to see” — all I can say is that if you decide to go, spring for the higher ticket price and watch it on an Imax screen in its Imax-exclusive first week of release. Don’t fact-check me on this, but I’m pretty sure Polonius’ advice to Hamlet included: “Go big or go home.”

Scarlet. Directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Starring Mana Ashida, and Masaki Okada. In theatres February 6.