Riz Ahmed and Shakespeare? Sign me up. Aneil Karia’s Hamlet features the Oscar-nominated (for acting; Ahmed and Karia previously both won the Oscar for their live-action short “The Long Goodbye”) star as the tragic prince, placing the story in modern-day London. The 2025 iteration of Shakespeare’s magnum opus focuses on the betrayals and heartaches among a South Asian community, the “royal family” of which are the magnates of Elsinore Construction Group (haha). As I write this, I am aware of other middling reviews for this film, which is only now getting a wide release in the U.S. But I also feel like this endeavor would have been more acceptable were it a smaller-scale stage play rather than a movie; Shakespeare productions are a dime a dozen, and any change in scenery is welcome.
All things considered, Karia does a decent job of translating Hamlet to a new setting. It is in the writing and editing that it gets messier. Performing some very famous monologues, Ahmed leans into emotional breathlessness when he could be enunciating the words a bit more. Extended close-ups are favored during these scenes, and while Ahmed is good, he isn’t so good here that after a while the shaky camera holding on him doesn’t bore, rather than offering great character insight. I even think the legendary “To be or not to be” speech, delivered as Hamlet is toying with crashing his BMW into an oncoming semi truck, could have worked if it hadn’t opened with him nearly screaming his first lines — that off-kilter start affects the whole scene.
On the other hand, this Hamlet pulls off some striking moments that really capture the acute grief and uncomfortable intimacy of the whole situation. The film opens with Hamlet preparing his father’s body (Avijit Dutt), the title drop happening as soon as the cold metal door of the crematory slams shut. Ahmed especially excels at portraying Hamlet’s discomfort and increasingly erratic public outbursts due to his widowed mother Gertrude’s (Sheeba Chaddha) swift marriage to his uncle Claudius (Art Malik). The wedding is the strongest sequence in the film, with the reenactment of the murder that Hamlet arranges to provoke Claudius being performed by a South Asian dance troupe. But the ceremony itself highlights exactly how Hamlet is expected to show respect and affection for his father’s killer, partaking in cultural rituals as his uncle marries his mother.
The Gertrude and Claudius performances are both revelatory. Malik gives Claudius an austere gentleness that casts his move to install himself as the new patriarch in a more unsettling light while also suggesting he is horrified by what he has done; Chaddha is reserved and stately as her demeanor implores Hamlet to accept her remarriage, before she explodes with sadness and pleads for forgiveness. Morfydd Clark is underused as Ophelia, but she also has potent scenes that illustrate her closeness with Hamlet and the feelings of betrayal between them as the plot progresses. Clark’s performance, as well as that of Joe Alwyn as her brother Laertes, is devastating if brief, particularly when they react to the news that Hamlet has killed their father Polonius (Timothy Spall). With Hamlet’s genuinely remorseful expression at their distress, you can fully appreciate the parallel between the prince and the siblings in having lost their fathers.
Both the messy construction and the effective familial drama are set against the backdrop of an attempt at commentary on capitalism, as Elsinore clearly isn’t the most benevolent entity. A late twist reveals another connection to the primary text in the form of an encampment of unhoused people displaced by Elsinore’s construction ventures. This storyline could have been better developed, rather than vaguely gesturing to “Hamlet’s family is super corrupt.” However, Ahmed still plays Hamlet’s awakening to the realities of his family’s regime well. The scenes that come after this turning point are even better, as crushing grief rears its head again for both Hamlet and Laertes upon Ophelia’s death (the way this is played does not grant her much agency; it’s just another box to be checked in the sequence of Hamlet plot markers). How the final confrontation and the poisoning of multiple characters is transferred from a public spectacle to a shady meeting behind closed doors is also poignant and very Succession-esque.
This leads up to a dark and minimal final shot that points out how some staff member is going to find all these corpses strewn about the grounds in the morning. This Hamlet is choppy, dropping characters like Horatio (effectively transferring his role to Ophelia) and critical monologues like “Alas, poor Yorick” and Ophelia’s descent into madness. The translation of some of this dialogue into Hindi is an elegant addition to the ghost scene upon a London rooftop. The film is not flawless, but if you were writing a paper on Hamlet, and you wanted to watch every possible adaptation you could get your hands on to see how different creatives interpret different scenes, lines, and emotions, I would still recommend this one. There’s some good stuff.
Hamlet
2025
dir. Aneil Karia
114 min.
Opens Friday, 4/10 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, West Newton Cinema, and AMC Assembly Row
