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Hosoda’s Underworld Hamlet Fanfic Makes a Plea for Peace

What if, instead of dying at the end of Hamlet, the titular Prince of Denmark had instead continued his mission of vengeance on his uncle into the afterlife? And what if instead of being an indecisive prince, Hamlet was a headstrong determined warrior princess? This perhaps was what Mamoru Hosoda was thinking whenever he encountered the play in his youth, and has now made his AU fanfic into a grand and ambitious feature film. It is ultimately a good film but it doesn’t shake that sensibility.
Mamoru Hosoda has lately taken to putting his stamp on classical stories -his previous movie Belle was a cyberspace retelling of Beauty and the Beast to mixed effects. And he takes a similar approach on Scarlet, his latest film, by casting approximations of figures from Shakespeare’s great tragedy into an action-oriented underworld where the pursuit of revenge can be carried out dramatically even post-death.
Of course, revenge was never Hamlet’s prime character flaw -something that Hosoda is aware of even if he doesn’t communicate it in the film. But irresolution doesn’t make for so thrilling a central drive -the vengeance theme occurred to Hosoda before the Hamlet aspect, and to his credit he does a good job exploring that compulsion, in that elaborate, zealous, and occasionally melodramatic way of many an anime, but with strong conviction and creativity.
His Hamlet figure is the titular Scarlet, Danish Princess who doted on her father until he was usurped in a coup and publicly executed in front of her by her Uncle Claudius. Rather than play through the subsequent events of the play, Hosoda skips straight to Scarlet’s death via drinking poison Claudius tricked her with. But for her it is only the beginning of her story, as she awakens in a purgatory-like underworld that is a dimension out of step with time. Having failed to kill Claudius while they were both alive, she embarks on a mission to find and defeat him in this world -death here would mean the permanent disintegration of the soul entirely. Along the way she has to fight off his minions while eventually joined by a modern-era nurse Hijiri -with a strong moral code about killing and who himself doesn’t believe he is actually dead.
This world takes the form of a vast and dry expanse of almost exclusive rock and desert terrain until the mountain that Scarlet is informed is her destination. At all times the land is watched over by a behemoth dragon floating in the sky, capable of causing destruction or violently smiting people. And though stretches of the journey for Scarlet and Hijiri are empty, they do cross paths with others from time to time, originating from a myriad of eras or occasionally appearing to be supernatural forms themselves. In one notable instance, they come upon a diverse desert commune made up clearly of people who in life had been displaced and appear to somewhat be so still -it is rather depressing to think that even the underworld has a refugee crisis. In Scarlet’s hero’s journey it is a classic reprieve to remind her of values of love, art, and community. Few others they encounter manifest these notions -why it is vital that Hijiri is with her.
Hijiri’s role as a counterpart to Scarlet is quite significant, easing her high emotional barometer and embodying the kind of empathy she clearly is in need of understanding. He is a very endearing character for this, and it is why when he breaks from these ethics for not much of a convincing reason, it is a major disappointment, and a sign of Hosoda lapsing in his own commitment to his themes. Themes that are otherwise very passionately and artistically held.
The movie is ultimately very thoroughly about overpowering one's hate and the desire for vengeance, and in lieu of these believing unequivocally in a hopeful future. It is a sentiment Hosoda is unabashedly passionate about in some ways that are patently overzealous, others though that ring with an infectious purity, like a half-corny half-endearing sequence where Scarlet is temporarily transported to Hijiri's world -or perhaps an idealized approximation of it- and a massive dance party driven on pure bliss. Hijiri is vital in prompting Scarlet to reconsider her priorities and see a bigger picture, as well as the morally complex insinuation her father meant for her to forgive her uncle. The film weighs these things honestly, never excusing Claudius or his actions, but genuinely contemplating the choices and sacrifices needed to end cycles of violence -something Hosoda makes clear applies too on a macro level to the world more broadly. This pacifist lean of the film does come into conflict at times with some fairly violent aesthetics, but that compulsion to end hate and make the world a better place -to the point Scarlet is inspired if granted life again to do as much as she can in her time to ensure the future Hijiri left is better- is quite noble and heartwarming, outrageously utopian though its vision might be.
Hosoda has leaned more and more into CG animation in his most recent films, and blending it with traditional modes of anime design was something of an aesthetic hindrance in Belle. On Scarlet though he has found a much better happy medium, where the CG elements still stand out but are a little more organic in texture with the hand-drawn components, reminiscent of the way CG was utilized in a lot of Disney animated movies and their cousins in the 1990s. In fact on a few counts (of story beats as well as animation), The Prince of Egypt appears to be a significant reference point. Hosoda's designs are also much stronger, with intricate detail and depth to both the characters and their world, and he knows how to showcase it in an evocative and beautiful way. There are some really striking visuals, and they don't get in the way of the action sequences either, which are perhaps too exuberant for the movie's themes, but proficiently articulated and once in a while genuinely fun as well.
When it comes to the end of Scarlet's arc of revenge, the movie makes two choices -one of which is rather tepid, an aversion to what might have been a very bold and interesting take on the revenge narrative; while the other is very inspired and a pretty sweet note to end on. The latter is ultimately what sticks with you and I think that result is indicative of Scarlet's effect on the whole. It is undeniably flawed in maintaining the conviction of its themes and to an extent of its characters, but what resonates in the end is the passion of its virtues and optimism, a passion that annihilates audience cynicism. It amounts to a schmaltzy rewriting of the end of Hamlet, but Hosoda makes the convincing case it is warranted, that we could all do with one less tragedy.

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