3 weeks ago
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The play may be the thing, but for anyone who admires the work of Riz Ahmed, the whatever Riz Ahmed is doing next is the real thing. Next up for the performer: a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s perpetually timely and eminently adaptable “Hamlet.”
The film, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last year, reteams Ahmed with his Oscar-winning filmmaker Aneil Karia (who directed Ahmed in the 2022 Best Live-Action Short winner “The Long Goodbye,” which the pair also wrote together). The film also stars Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Sheeba Chadva, Avijit Dutt, Art Malik, and Timothy Spall.
Per the film’s official logline: “Shakespeare’s most enduring tragedy is reimagined in a bold, modern adaptation set within London’s elite South Asian community. When Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) returns for his father’s funeral, he is stunned to discover his uncle Claudius is marrying his newly widowed mother. Visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns his brutal murder was at the hands of Claudius — and spirals into a quest for vengeance that exposes the rot at the heart of the family’s empire and threatens his own sanity.”
So, you know, “Hamlet.”
At Telluride, our Christian Zilko hailed Ahmed’s performance, writing in his review, “the ‘Sound of Metal’ star steps into the legendary Prince of Denmark’s shoes with all of the intensity you’d expect, bringing a blistering energy that almost seems more fitting for the stage than the screen.”
Zilko also noted that “the director does an excellent job of nailing the small details required to translate Shakespeare’s verse into the realism of film. Thinking of a modern concept that vaguely involves family and power struggles to impose onto ‘Hamlet’ is the easy part, but many a filmmaker is tripped up by the unglamorous work of finding the textual moments to motivate transitions and places to add the contemporary flourishes without damaging the text.”
The film is the most recent film adaptation of the classic play (a subgenre so rich, it has its very own Wikipedia page), and the latest feature in Ahmed’s steadily growing slate. In October, he will be seen in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger,“ and his Amazon Prime Video series, “Bait,” recently premiered at Sundance.
Vertical Entertainment will release the film in theaters on Friday, April 10. You can watch its first official trailer below.
English (US) ·