Since 2018’s Mirai enjoyed substantial international acclaim, and was nominated for an Academy Award, Mamoru Hosoda seems to be on a bit of a Western kick. 2021’s Belle was a free adaptation of a classic Western tale: Beauty and the Beast. And now, Scarlet is an even freer adaptation of an even more classic Western tale: Hamlet. Departing from its source with similar wild exuberance, this version of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy has some of the same characters and themes, as well as a genre- and era-bending fantastical quality that all but completely reimagines the Bard’s story with an almost experimental creativity. It also produces mixed results.
That it shares any DNA with Hamlet comes as a surprise even within the movie itself. Only after a foreboding opening sequence in which a young woman, eventually revealed to be the titular heroine, wanders a desolate landscape in rags before collapsing, vomiting, and encountering a spirit, does Scarlet suddenly switch. Now, we’re in 16th Century Denmark, where King Amlet (Masachika Ichimura) is betrayed by his scheming brother Claudius (Koji Yakusho), and wife Gertrude (Yuki Saito), after unsuccessfully trying to convince them of the importance of pursuing peace with neighbouring lands. Moments before his execution in front of a distraught public, Amlet delivers a message to his young daughter, Scarlet (Mana Ashida), one she cannot hear over the crowd’s noise. Bereft and enraged, she spends her teenage years training to avenge her father, but is foiled by her uncle — as she prepares to stab him in his sleep, she discovers that he’s poisoned her.
And so Hosoda takes his retelling of this centuries-old story astray, following Scarlet into the Otherworld, an afterlife barren to behold but rich in violence and peril. The same spirit from the opening scene informs a bewildered Scarlet that her father has passed on from this realm, but that her uncle resides here now. Evidently, time operates differently in this dimension, and the movie is equally disorienting in its pace and structure. Hosoda never settles, never facilitates comfort, neither in his headlong rush through Scarlet’s backstory nor in her odyssey-like quest through the Otherworld. Moments of respite are scarce and swift. Dazzling animated effects distort the viewer’s senses, and a lack of musical score amplifies the bleakness. The narrative moves forward in jagged bursts of energy, sporadic longueurs, and disconcerting ellipses. If our heroine’s journey is an uncomfortable one for her, Hosoda makes it uncomfortable for us, too.
Time’s uncertain operations in the Otherworld bring Scarlet into contact with Hijiri, a paramedic from her future (and, presumably, our present), whose pacifism and sympathy for the many targets of her violent passion initially baffles her, but eventually comes to persuade her of the futility of her quest for revenge after a pivotal encounter with one of her father’s executioners. Hosoda appears to argue that a person like Hijiri might have resolved many of the problems that beset the various tortured figures in Shakespeare’s tale, if not quite prevented the problems from occurring. His physical healing skills are of less value than the compassion that lies behind those skills. Conversely, their enmity lies behind their brutality, emotions driving actions inspiring emotions driving actions, a vicious circle only breakable by a force from outside — in this case, a person from another era.
Yet Hosoda’s reworking of Hamlet is too busy in its whirlwind mishmash of characters, both familiar and unfamiliar, narrative detours, vibrant stylistic flourishes, tonal clashes, contradictions, and coincidences to boast the same richness, and thus it never develops its own ideas with much substance or conviction. The contradictions may be interesting, as in a mostly joyous scene where Hijiri dances with a group of travellers only to be met with mockery, but the coincidences are jarring — a mountaintop-set reunion indicates that Hosoda’s making his own rules as he goes here, which makes matters feel insignificant. Only when he marries the intensity of his style with the intensity of his characters’ emotions does Scarlet amass any real power, but when it does, said power is undeniable.
Published as part of IFFR 2026 — Dispatch 5.
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