A young woman finds herself in a horrifying afterlife, where many things look like our familiar reality, but with a few macabre twists.
A brief flashback interlude informs us that the heroine is Scarlet, a medieval-era princess who tried to exact revenge on her treacherous uncle, who plotted against her father, had him killed, and usurped the throne.
Having failed her mission in life, Scarlet is still hell-bent on getting her vengeance after death. And since the souls from all times are gathered in this strange place before passing into a better world or disappearing forever, Scarlet gathers the remnants of her strength and her sword and sets out in search of her nemesis.
Scarlet is the latest film from Mamoru Hosoda, a modern classic of animated stories with fantastical settings and elements that always feature an obligatory morality about different aspects of humanity. Most prominently, people’s tendency to obsessively cling to certain emotional states.
As is obvious from the briefest description, the new film, which premiered earlier this year at the Venice Film Festival, borrows its bare bones from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, switching the moody prince for a sword-wielding princess and literally taking the play's familiar existential contemplations to another dimension.
Ever since Hosoda’s collaboration with the famous screenwriter Satoko Okudera (his latest work, Kokuho, was presented in one of the Cannes programs in May) has come to an end, the stories in his films, now written by the director himself, have become the most polarizing and discussed aspect. The general consensus seems to be that while their collaborative projects of the past, such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, come off as more nuanced, in his solo works (Mirai of the Future, Belle), Hosoda tends to oversimplify things, striving for idealistic instead of intricate.
To a certain extent, this is also true in regard to Scarlet. At the same time, though, it would be absolutely unfair to accuse Hosoda of not being ambitious enough. The mixing of different eras, settings, and lore surely makes up for a slight naivety of the resolution, which suggests an optimistic idea that practicing forgiveness and acceptance (with only an occasional well-placed stab) is a path to a brighter future for the world.
And it is not like Hosoda is the first to take a hard look at the classic text and frown at the insistent blood thirst. Over the years (especially recently), there have been multiple revisionist takes on Hamlet across different media platforms that question the validity of the prince’s quest and general behavior.
All the while, the aesthetics of Hosoda’s work carry the film through, switching between different animation techniques and offering some genuinely disturbing imagery of the afterlife. And even if the film’s core message might not resonate with all, this one surely will: death is a humbling experience, even when you are a badass proficient with a sword.
The film opens today, only in movie theaters, via Sony Pictures. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.