‘Hamlet’ review: A powerful Riz Ahmed fuels unfussy Shakespeare adaptation set in modern London

Dir: Aneil Karia. UK. 114mins

A muscular adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tale of the doomed Prince of Denmark, Aneil Karia’s contemporary take on Hamlet is propelled by Riz Ahmed’s arresting central performance. Playing the title character as a fragile man dangerously unravelling, Ahmed brings considerable passion to indelible lines – but the real force comes from the emotional authenticity he lends one of drama’s most formidable and familiar roles. With the action set in modern London within a British South-Asian community, this Hamlet sticks to the narrative essentials to produce a terse, pitiless retelling.

 A gritty, visually striking remake 

After its Telluride premiere, the screens in Toronto before moving on to London (a trajectory also followed by Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, about Shakespeare’s writing of Hamlet). Ahmed should be a huge draw for arthouse crowds, and he’s reunited with Karia, who directed him in the Oscar-winning 2020 short The Long Goodbye. Mixed reviews may impact Hamlet’s commercial prospects, but Ahmed’s cutting portrayal, joined by a strong supporting cast, should help court buyers.

Ahmed plays Hamlet who, as the film begins, is taking part in a Hindu ceremony for his dead father. In the midst of his grief, the heartbroken son soon learns the shocking news that his mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) will be marrying his father’s brother Claudius (Art Malik). But then comes one more upsetting revelation: late at night, his father’s spirit (Avijit Dutt) appears to him, explaining that Claudius secretly poisoned him. Hamlet vows to avenge his father.

Drawing mostly from Shakespeare’s language and plot, Karia and screenwriter Michael Lesslie imagine a gritty, visually striking remake that pares away supporting characters and incidents. (There is no Horatio, no gravedigger, no Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.) As a result, the adaptation zeroes in on Hamlet’s descent into sorrow and madness. Ahmed attacks the text with a directness that allows for few theatrical flourishes. His Hamlet is a wounded, intense individual, and the actor puts us inside the head of the emotionally shellshocked character. Working with editors Mikkel E.G. Nielsen and Amanda James, Karia moves the picture along at a steady clip – but it’s Ahmed who provides the soulful throughline.

Both the London locales and the focus on a British-Asian family add vitality to a story of vengeance and grief that also makes time for a discussion of economic inequality. Some of Shakespeare’s narrative has been shifted to accommodate modern realities — Elsinore is now a powerful corporation — and Karia makes good use of Asian cultural traditions. (Gertrude and Claudius’s colourful wedding and Hamlet’s accusatory play depicting his uncle’s crime are dazzlingly staged with the help of choreographer Akram Khan and production designer Chris Oddy.) When Hamlet is accosted by his father’s ghost, the sequence is filmed in noir-ish rundown London neighbourhoods, with cinematographer Stuart Bentley giving the set piece a ghostly quality while grounding the proceedings in the real world.

That unfussy attitude is reflected by the whole ensemble’s lived-in performances, which include a superb Chadha as Gertrude and Morfydd Clark as Hamlet’s unhappy love Ophelia. But this Hamlet’s star is clearly Ahmed, who is commanding as a meagre young man whose growing rage will result in bloodshed. Karia and Lesslie tinker with the storyline in the film’s second half, creating surprises for viewers who know the text well. But the changes are in service to Ahmed’s vision of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, which in this telling has the steely air of cold destiny — as if the terrible events that will occur had been determined long ago.