Animation is Film Review: Scarlet explodes and expands Hamlet in surprising, challenging ways

 "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and
count myself a king of infinite space, 
were it not that I have bad dreams."
-Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with that line from Hamlet. It really popped for me because it was highlighted in the movie Stay, a favorite of mine at the time. And it ended up becoming something I thought about a lot, mulled over, even used the act/scene/line numbers in my AIM screen name. 

So naturally it came to mind while watching Mamoru Hosoda's latest, Scarlet, which served as the opening night film at this year's edition of Animation is Film. Scarlet is a shaggy and defiant take on Hamlet that blitzes through much of the plot in its opening twenty minutes or so, before becoming something thornier and more pensive. This isn't The Lion King, following the beats of the play more-or-less beat by beat. Rather, Hosoda uses Hamlet as a jumping off point to ponder ideas of creating identity on levels large and small. How much are we the product of our time and place, and how much of that are we able to change? Expanding outward, and in conjunction with each other, if enough of us act together, can we change the world? 

It's a heady, and somewhat heavy epic, one that collapses time and space into a strange-looking Otherworld, a sort of purgatory where the living and dead coexist. Scarlet ends up there after being poisoned at a party thrown by her uncle Claudius, who has usurped the throne from Scarlet's father, the rightful king of Denmark. 

While the Danish scenes have a classic (and gorgeous) hand-drawn look to them, once Scarlet descends (or ascends?) to the Otherworld, the film takes on a somewhat jarring new aesthetic. In a Q&A held after the film, Hosoda talked about trying to find a future vector where 3-D computer animation and classic hand-drawn anime visuals intersect. He sees the look, which feels almost like ink drawings applied over 3-D models, as a match to the film's themes. And it certainly feels appropriate for this strange place, where past and future, living and dead, all places and times collapse into a single liminal desertscape.

It isn't necessarily always easy on the eyes, but maybe that's okay. We take for granted that animation should look "good," and maybe especially in the case of Japanese animation, which is pretty consistently the best-looking in the world, in my book. For me, even if I didn't always like, per se, what I was looking at, I was always finding it interesting, and often challenging. Having obviously-drawn characters inhabiting borderline photo-realistic worlds is a strange effect, and a memorable one. But I wouldn't blame anyone who considers it a weakness of the film.

The visual dazzle (or lack thereof, depending on the viewer) is, for me, just the window dressing on a film that's much meatier than I expected. Hamlet has been adapted to death. It must be one of the most-adapted works of literature ever. Hell, I think there are like four different movies based on or around it this year alone, that I know of. So I came into Scarlet wondering what it would bring to the table that's new, different, enlightening. Of course, Hosoda was up to the task.

Again, I return to that quote from the top of the review. In Scarlet, our pink-haired heroine, the recently-deceased princess, is both bounded in a nutshell and a queen of infinite space (and she's plagued with bad dreams). The nutshell, in this case, is her very being. She's an engine of vengeance, a force of violence cutting across the seemingly infinite stretch of the Otherworld. She's told that Claudius is somewhere here, too, making his way to an upper region that sounds like it's basically heaven. And she's determined to get to him before he departs, so she can enact her vengeance.

Scarlet is so focused, so single-minded, that she barely even registers as a character for a decent stretch of the film. Rather, she's an elemental force, rage personified, a sword swinging endlessly until it finally finds its final throat, when it can finally clatter to the ground and fall silent. It looks exhausting, and in the scenes of fighting, the animation really shines. The weight of Scarlet's movements, and also the occasional bursts of easy grace, makes these scenes pop, as do the brutal sound design and splatters of blood. She's all hard edges, steely glares, bared teeth. She's trapped in who she is, the product of her time and circumstances, a once-happy-go-lucky girl whose world collapsed around her, leaving her barely standing in a nightmarish afterlife. 

Enter Hijiri, a modern-day nurse who finds himself Scarlet's unlikely ally, or maybe her lost-puppy sidekick. He insists he didn't die and that he's in the Otherworld by mistake, but as Scarlet cuts her way through the world, he follows behind, trying to mend it. She stabs an enemy, Hijiri treats the wound. There's a strange, funny balance to this pair, a force of death and a force of life. Hijiri helps Scarlet to soften a bit, and Scarlet helps Hijiri to see things as they are. Hijiri gives Scarlet a vision of what the world could be, and also what it will be, if she's able to let go of her thirst for vengeance, and to put that energy toward peace. It's strange, perhaps, for an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies to find such hopeful notes (and to eventually end on one), but it's refreshing, especially after such a brutal journey.

Hosoda talked about how he always wants to bake these hopeful messages into his films, because he knows animation often finds younger viewers. He wants to encourage them, to cheer them on, as they take the fate of the world into their hands. We're a violent species. The entirety of human history has been marked by bloodshed, war, violence, murder, genocide, and on and on and on. It's impossible to imagine the world ever being any different. But Hosoda dares to imagine it.

It's funny, maybe fitting, but I realized as the credits rolled that a lot of Hosoda's previous titles could've worked for Scarlet. Mirai, since Scarlet finds herself thinking of the future. The Boy and the Beast, referring to Hijiri and Scarlet, respectively (no shade to my queen, it's a compliment). And, of course, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I love how Hosoda is able to find silver linings at any cloud he looks at, even when the silver lining might actually be lighting bolts raining down from the battle-worn dragon that looms over Scarlet's desert. It's so easy to feel hopeless, to feel powerless, in the face of this violent and chaotic world. But in Scarlet, Hosoda suggests that by looking inward, doing what you can, and turning from violence, the world might just follow suit.