Movie Review: In ‘Scarlet,’ transplanting ‘Hamlet’ to an anime dreamworld

The Japanese writer-director Mamoru Hosoda has made some amazing films that take profound leaps into dreamlike worlds.

Hosoda’s “Mirai” (2018) is about a 4-year-old boy who’s resentful of his newborn sister. But in his backyard garden, he meets his sister as a teenager. This is just the first of many domestic time travels, as the boy meets other relatives from other points in their lives. A new understanding begins to dawn.

In “Belle” (2022), a teenager who’s lived through tragedy finds a soaring catharsis in a virtual realm. I thought it was one of the best films of that year, and I still think it might be the best movie ever made about the internet. Either way, its song-and-soul-shattering climax is unforgettable.

Yet in Hosoda’s latest, “Scarlet,” the director’s enviable reach exceeds his grasp. In it, his female protagonist is a medieval princess who, after seeing her king father killed by her uncle, and dying herself, awakes in an expansive purgatory. In this strange afterlife, peopled by the dead from all time periods, she seeks revenge for her father.

Anyone, I think, would grant that a Japanese anime that transplants “Hamlet” to a surreal netherworld is a touch more ambitious than your average animated movie. Unlike the wide majority of cartoons, or even live-action movies, the problem with “Scarlet” isn’t a lack of imagination. It’s too much.

Hosoda, a former Studio Ghibli animator whose other films include “Wolf Children” and “Summer Wars,” has an extraordinary knack for crafting anime worlds of visual complexity while pursuing existential ideas with a childlike sincerity. But an excess of baroque design, of emotion, of scope, sinks Hosoda’s “Scarlet.” It’s the kind of misfire you can forgive. If you’re going to fail by overreach, it might as well be with a wildly ambitious rendering of “Hamlet.”

In the thrilling prologue, set in 16th century Denmark, Scarlet (Ashida Mana) watches as her uncle Claudius (Kôji Yakusho) frames her father as a traitor and has him executed. Enraged, Scarlet — without any visitation from her father’s ghost — goes to kill Claudius. Only he poisons her first, and Scarlet awakes in what she learns is called the Otherlands.

It’s a kind of infinite wasteland, full of wandering souls and marauding bandits. People are there for a time, and then they pass into nothingness. A stairway to heaven is rumored to exist somewhere. As she seeks Claudius, Scarlet is joined by a stranger she encounters named Hijiri (Okada Masaki). A paramedic from modern day, he spends most of his time in the Otherworld trying to heal the wounds of others, including Scarlet’s foes.

“Scarlet” can be meandering and tedious. Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turn up. If the Otherworld is laid out like Scarlet’s troubled conscience, the ensuing battle between vengeance and forgiveness feels dully simplified. It’s all a sea of troubles. Hosoda tries to build some interiority to the story (not a small aspect of “Hamlet”) through Hijiri’s backstory, telescoping Shakespeare’s quandaries to contemporary times.

Hosoda grafted “Beauty and the Beast” into “Belle,” to sometimes awkward, sometimes illuminating effect. But in “Scarlet,” he struggles to bridge “Hamlet” to today. It’s a big swing, the kind filmmakers as talented as Hosoda should be taking, but it doesn’t pay off. Still, it’s often dazzling to look at it and it’s never not impassioned. Hosoda remains a director capable of reaching trembling, operatic heights. In “Scarlet,” for instance, Claudius gets a spectacular death scene, a remarkable accomplishment considering he’s already dead.

“Scarlet,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, opens in limited release Friday and in wider theatrical release Feb. 6. Rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for violence/bloody image. Playing in both Japanese with subtitles and English dubbed versions. Running time: 112 minutes. Two stars out of four.