TO brilliant idea, brilliantly executed; Hilarious, surreal and, yes, in its own strange way, genuinely exciting. This could be a Marat/Sade for the 21st century. During lockdown, two unemployed actors named Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen were (remotely from each other) playing Grand Theft Auto (GTA) online, and this entire movie is shown as GTA action in the game. While their avatars avoided being shot, maimed or beaten as is common in GTA, running through the vast and intricately detailed cityscape of Los Santos, the quasi-LA in which the action takes place, they stumbled upon the desert. Vinewood Bowl Amphitheater. They wondered if it might be possible to stage an in-game production of Hamlet there, recruiting other players to play the roles, with their various outfits, handles, and strange characters, moving through the virtual reality space in that weightless, almost real way. , saying the lines into their microphones while the avatars’ lips move roughly in sync.
They audition all comers: a rowdy affair where random strangers show up with a penchant for destroying others using a flamethrower or rocket launcher for no reason while the production is explained to them. But they also find people who have fascinating or moving stories to tell. In the end we see the finished performance, although the atmospheric soundtrack was probably added later, for the film.
As it happens, they don’t limit themselves to the Vinewood Bowl stage, but boldly roam throughout the city; As one of the protagonists says, this is Shakespeare on a billion-dollar budget, or Shakespeare as Elon Musk could afford to produce it. Crane and Oosterveen, with Pinny Grylls (who directs with Crane), reflect absorbingly on the endless, grim violence of the game, how close it is to the violence of Shakespeare’s world, and how depressed they are due to the stagnation of lockdown; adds to a new dreamlike vision of Hamlet’s melancholy.
The result is wild, like Baz Luhrmann’s gangster Romeo + Juliet or Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in which the actors wander the earth performing their show but suspect that no one is watching. It’s really funny and cute when Crane, Oosterveen and Grylls start arguing with each other in a strange GTA setting. (For these “real” crises, they may have put it on a bit, but it doesn’t matter.)
To me, Oosterveen’s bewildered voice sounds a lot like Simon Jones’s as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I mean it as the highest possible compliment when I say that Douglas Adams would have loved this film. I certainly did.
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