I watched this on the 14th of January, 2025, at the independent cinema.
I absolutely adored it. It’s about two actors who are out of work during lockdown in the UK, who decide to stage a production of Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto Online. It’s a documentary about their efforts to advertise, audition, rehearse, and put on the play, while dealing with randos, the police, people shooting at them, game mechanics, and real-life schedules.
It’s fundamentally a movie of contrasts, careening wildly between gorgeous literature and the obscene banalities of the rest of the game: soliloquys interspersed with gunfire, death and tragedy surrounded and watched by sordid NPCs, the despair of lockdown combined with wild mirth and hilarity. There are a few standout scenes: one where a player with very broken English clad in a weird alien skinsuit recites the Qur’an with depth and sensitivity, before a thumbs-up emote, a scene set on a blimp high in the atmosphere, surrounded by vivid purples and oranges, the curve of the Earth stretching away below it, and Hamlet’s famous speech overlaid with scenes from the game.
GTA Online itself is fundamental to the nature of the film. Its low-res graphics and limited control fidelity allow a depth of emotion and subtext that would not be possible in another medium. Animation is too fluid, graphic novels stationary, live-action film realistic, literature non-visual. The characters’ faces and movements seem particularly suited to this play about despair and fate, and the chaos an interesting counterpoint lending weight to the dialogue.
Now I just gotta go actually watch Hamlet.