Riz Ahmed stars in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
In theaters on April 10 is ‘Hamlet’, a fresh update of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, which features Riz Ahmed (‘Sound of Metal’), who plays a version of the troubled Dane, here the heir to an elite South Asian empire in modern-day London.
(L to R) Morfydd Clark and Riz Ahmed in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
If you’re going to tackle a Shakespeare play on film –– particularly the complex web of family tragedy that is ‘Hamlet’ — be prepared for challenges. But with this present-day version, director Aneil Karia and writer Michael Lesslie bring a fierce energy to their effort.
Script and Direction
(L to R) Riz Ahmed and Timothy Spall in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
Shakespeare is not easy to adapt, and Lesslie here sticks to the traditional language for the most part (while still needing to cut plenty to avoid an overlong running time). But the changes and substitutions (London for Denmark and the use of Indian culture) truly work well.
Karia, meanwhile brings real panache and style, making the world feel relevant and also, in places, timely.
Cast and Performances
(Far Left) Riz Ahmed stars in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
It’s really Ahmed’s show, and he chews on one of the trickiest parts in drama. Sequences such as the “To be or not to be” soliloquy give him something to truly work with.
Which isn’t to dismiss an impressive supporting cast, especially Art Malik as scheming uncle Claudius and Morfydd Clark, who brings humanity to the relatively smaller role of Ophelia.
Final Thoughts
(L to R) Art Malik and Joe Alwyn in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
Even if you’ve dismissed Shakespeare as impenetrable, the new ‘Hamlet’ shows what can happen in sure hands, the emotion on full display. Purists may balk at the changes, but this is a worthwhile adaptation.
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Riz Ahmed stars in ‘Hamlet’.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Riz Ahmed about his work on ‘Hamlet’, taking on the iconic role, shooting the “To be or not to be” speech, and why Shakespeare’s work is so timeless and universal.
You can watch the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.
Riz Ahmed stars in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about the challenges of playing the iconic role of Hamlet, and is it a role that you’ve always wanted to play?
Riz Ahmed: I’ve wanted to play this since I was 17 and I was in English class feeling like this is some stuffy, boring museum artifact, and that Shakespeare is not for me. I had an amazing English teacher who put it in front of me and made me realize, “Wow, this is pretty close to how I’m feeling.” The central feeling, I would say for Hamlet is, “Is the world going crazy or have I lost my mind?” I think that’s how we’re all feeling. That’s how I was feeling then, and it’s how I’m feeling now, and dare I say, it’s how most of the world feels now. So, I wanted to play it because it was very relatable. I think that’s the challenge and the gift of taking on something like ‘Hamlet’, a role like this, is it’s been done so many times. I think the challenge is, what is specific and personal about your interpretation? That’s also a gift. It’s been done so many times, there’s no illusion that someone’s going to perform a definitive Hamlet. You’re liberated in a way to just do something as uniquely specific and personal to you and your experience as possible. So, it’s a strange combination of feeling like, “We’re going to step into these big old shoes that don’t belong to us.” While at the same time going, “Well, actually we get to run around in these shoes however we want.”
(L to R) Morfydd Clark and Riz Ahmed in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
MF: Shakespeare’s work is universal and can be adapted to any time-period or culture. What is it about his work that you think has made it stand the test of time?
RA: I think it’s a couple of things. Firstly, a lot of the stories are drawn from myths that are not British, that are ancient. The first words you hear in our Hamlet are words from the Bhagavad Gita, which is the foundational Hindu myth. That’s because that story is very similar to the story of ‘Hamlet’. It predates ‘Hamlet’ by thousands of years. This idea of choosing family loyalty or doing the right thing, that’s a timeless theme. So, I think that’s one reason why it can cross barriers of culture. It belongs to myth that belongs to all of us. The second reason is because it’s like music. The logical understanding of every word was not something that even audiences were doing in Shakespeare’s time when it comes to these plays. Shakespeare made up like 4,000 new words. They didn’t understand half of what he was saying, but it’s music. It’s rhythm, its flow, its percussion, its energy, and it’s intention. If you hear it like music, it moves you like music and music crosses all boundaries.
(Far Left) Riz Ahmed stars in ‘Hamlet’. Photo: Focus Features.
MF: Finally, I’ve never seen the ‘To be or not to be” speech depicted the way you did it, with the character in a car speeding towards oncoming traffic. Can you talk about shooting that scene and how that added urgency to the speech?
RA: Absolutely. Our interpretation of “To be or not to be” is that it’s not about, “Should I kill myself or not?” Which is how it’s usually performed, right? It’s a much more urgent, confronting question. The question is, “Should we fight back against injustice, even if it means we might die?” That’s a contemporary, radical question. Then if you look at the language itself rather than looking at the traditional way it’s performed, that’s what it’s saying. So, we had to stage it in a way and have that confrontation and that urgency. If the speech is a game of chicken, we’re going to stage it like a game of chicken. So, he is literally doing that. He’s driving down a freeway, heading towards a lorry a hundred miles an hour, asking himself, does he have the guts to take on something bigger than himself? So, we staged it that way in a way. We’re just trying to honor the DNA of this speech rather than honoring the traditional way it’s done. We really tried to make something that’s for people who feel like Shakespeare isn’t normally for them and hopefully it gives them a visceral experience.
‘Hamlet’ opens in theaters on April 10th.
What is the plot of ‘Hamlet’?
Haunted by his father’s ghost (Avijit Dutt), Prince Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) descends from elite London society into the city’s underground, moving between Hindu temples and homeless camps. In seeking to avenge his father’s murder, he begins to question his own role in his family’s corruption.
(L to R) Roddy Piper and Keith David in ‘They Live’. Photo: Universal Pictures.
A lone drifter (Roddy Piper) stumbles upon a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal aliens are systematically gaining control of the Earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission.
After 6 years together, Mike’s (Jon Favreau) girlfriend leaves him, so he travels to LA to be a star. Six months on, he’s still not doing very well— so a few of his friends try to reconnect him to the social scene and hopefully help him forget his failed relationship.
Blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) has a pleasant life with a nice apartment and a job stamping invoices at an electronics store. But at age 40, there’s one thing Andy hasn’t done, and it’s really bothering his sex-obsessed male co-workers: Andy is still a virgin. Determined to help Andy, the guys make it their mission to de-virginize him. But it all seems hopeless until Andy meets small business owner Trish (Catherine Keener), a single mom.
(L to R) Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in ‘La La Land’. Photo: Lionsgate.
Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Carl Allen (Jim Carrey), a guy whose life is going nowhere, signs up for a self-help program based on one simple covenant: say yes to everything…and anything.
Cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) picks up a man (Tom Cruise) who offers him $600 to drive him around. But the promise of easy money sours when Max realizes his fare is an assassin.
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a “wacky weatherman” (Steve Martin) tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter (Victoria Tennant), who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.
(L to R) Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo in ‘They Live’. Photo: Open Road Films.
When Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina (Rene Russo), a TV-news veteran.
On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop (Ethan Hawke) works with a rogue detective (Denzel Washington) who isn’t what he appears.
In the middle of the Los Angeles ghetto, drugs, robberies and shootings dominate everyday life. During these times, Furious tries to raise his son Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to be a decent person. Tre’s friends, on the other hand, have little regard for the law and drag the entire neighborhood into a street war…
When investigative reporter Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher (Chevy Chase) goes undercover to write a piece on the drug trade at a local beach, he’s approached by wealthy businessman Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson), who offers him $50,000 to murder him. With sarcastic wit and a knack for disguises, Fletch sets out to uncover Stanwyk’s story.
(L to R) Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. in ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.’ Photo: Warner Bros.
A petty thief posing as an actor (Robert Downey Jr.) is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl (Michelle Monaghan) and a detective (Val Kilmer) who’s been training him for his upcoming role.
Three detectives (Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey) in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.
Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker who only wants to bowl and drink White Russians, is mistaken for another Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wheelchair-bound millionaire, and finds himself dragged into a strange series of events involving nihilists, adult film producers, ferrets, errant toes, and large sums of money.
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha).
Fast-talking, quick-thinking Detroit street cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) has bent more than a few rules and regs in his time, but when his best friend (James Russo) is murdered, he heads to sunny Beverly Hills to work the case like only he can.
(L to R) Maurice Compte and Gerard Butler in ‘Den of Thieves’. Photo: STXfilms.
A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. and the state’s most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.
NYPD cop John McClane’s (Bruce Willis) plan to reconcile with his estranged wife is thrown for a serious loop when, minutes after he arrives at her offices Christmas Party, the entire building is overtaken by a group of terrorists. With little help from the LAPD, wisecracking McClane sets out to single-handedly rescue the hostages and bring the bad guys down.
Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a skilled Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals. Though he projects an icy exterior, lately he’s been warming up to a pretty neighbor named Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos). When Irene’s husband (Oscar Isaac) gets out of jail, he enlists Driver’s help in a million-dollar heist. The job goes horribly wrong, and Driver must risk his life to protect Irene and Benicio from the vengeful masterminds behind the robbery.
Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband’s (Darrell Zwerling) extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
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1. ‘Heat’ (1995)
(L to R) Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer in 1995’s ‘Heat.’
Obsessive master thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) leads a top-notch crew on various daring heists throughout Los Angeles while determined detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) pursues him without rest. Each man recognizes and respects the ability and the dedication of the other even though they are aware their cat-and-mouse game may end in violence.
