Grand Theft Hamlet is a film that, when I bought a ticket, I felt like I had been cheated. The minute I clicked purchase, I thought to myself that I have spent countless hours watching recorded gameplay of games after games online for free for years and now I’ll be spending five pounds for a cinema ticket, a bus ticket for £4.70, and some change on a drink and some snacks. I felt that sort of feeling you get when you realize the pres is much better than the club night and you should have all stayed in someone’s kitchen, having a good time there. Luckily, this feeling didn’t stay.
The movie is not a simple adaption of the Shakespearian play into Grand Theft Auto but a virtual documentary about the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and the effects it had on people’s mental health. When you couldn’t speak to even a few people, people had a moment of deterioration and this film captures it perfectly. My memories of lockdown are so vague but this film brought back the oddly helpless feeling of having nothing to do that I thought something may never capture.
Taking on the first-person perspective of the online character of one of the partners of the actors, you are shown through the initial thoughts, planning stage, auditions, and the actual production of the play. You are following two out-of-work actors as they both struggle with the actual concept of a pandemic lockdown, the lack of funding that exists in the arts during a global catastrophe, and the social struggles of lockdown as they existed in 2020. Both men seem like outsiders in the beginning to the world of Grand Theft Auto which helps the film set in this feeling of both being an outsider as an actor and the feeling of struggling against the world, both online and offline. It only takes them a few seconds of trying to talk to someone in a black Sedan before they are gunned down. This is the world in which they decide to set their stage and produce their play. The actual production of the play happens at the end and it’s brief. As an audience member, you have already sat through a film that explains Hamlet in great detail, so you wouldn’t need to see the whole production put on to get the effect; brevity is the soul of wit. The movie works in these moments where it is simply that portrayal of the lockdowns as told through these online avatars.
There are sections that feel scripted as a dispute occurs in GTA despite both people being in the same house. The movie, at times, shows too much, but it is a part of its tapestry, so I feel that it can be forgiven. I can only imagine, for the filmmakers, how hard it is to try and capture the feeling of what was going on and a few less-than-true bits hardly take away from the experience.
The film stands as a testament to arts and how resilient they can be despite the lack of funding they get from the government. It stands as a testament to how resilient people can be despite the horrors of disease. It is a film that, despite the countless of videos of people playing Grand Theft Auto Online, exists throughout the internet, I can glad I went all the way to Chapter Arts to see it.