"Hosoda kicks things off with the exploitation version of the Dane: Claudius and Gertrude bragging about their intent to murder poor old King Amlet and snatch the throne. His offspring Scarlet is left, as in the play, to vacillate about payback but Claudius gets there first by feeding her a vial of poison."
"But Scarlet's netherworld feels provisional and arbitrary, from why the very-much-alive Claudius and minions are there, to the lightning-spewing leviathan that courses through the sky at narratively convenient times. Or why paramedic Hijiri is the only modern resident of this universe, other than as a mouthpiece for Hosoda's sententious tendencies."
"Playing foil to the vengeance-minded princess, Hijiri upholds his pacifism to an often quite ludicrous extent, like when being charged on horseback by bandits. Coupled with a line in vacuous philosophising, Scarlet doesn't exactly rise to the lyrical heights of Shakespearean humanism."
Scarlet is an anime reinterpretation of Hamlet directed by Mamoru Hosoda that follows Scarlet, the female protagonist, after being poisoned by Claudius and Gertrude. She awakens in a purgatorial wasteland populated by her enemies, where she must pursue vengeance or face oblivion. While visually impressive, the film disappoints through its incoherent fantasy world, unclear logic for why characters exist in this realm, and arbitrary narrative elements like a lightning-spewing leviathan. Paramedic Hijiri serves as a pacifist foil to Scarlet's vengeance quest, but his character primarily functions as a vehicle for Hosoda's heavy-handed philosophical musings. Despite the director's proven ability to create compelling alternative realities in previous works, Scarlet's netherworld feels provisional and poorly dramatized, failing to achieve the lyrical depth of Shakespearean humanism.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]