MIFF 2024 | ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ review: A rip-roaringly funny love letter to the arts
A vibrant, fascinating, and heartfelt look at the human drive to form communities — virtual or otherwise — in times of strife.
Still from “Grand Theft Hamlet.” Photo courtesy of Melbourne International Film Festival.
In 2020, as COVID-19 swept the globe, the British government released what might be remembered as one of the most perplexing advertisements of the new decade. A pensive young ballerina laces up her satiny pink shoes, one poised foot already en pointe as she readies up for a day training at the barre. The caption? “Fatima’s new job could be in cyber. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
The poster, meant to kickstart the United Kingdom’s new Cyber First campaign promoting jobs and training in the British tech industry, was met with widespread derision. Nonsensical caption aside — what on earth is a job “in cyber?” — the advert was a symptom of the Johnson government’s extreme disregard for the country’s struggling arts sector, which was already, in some ways, in critical condition prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, the nation’s three lockdowns only worsened things. Small arts venues, already struggling to make ends meet under increased operating costs, shut down across the country. Theatres, previously contributing to such a vibrant part of British nightlife, fell silent. No firm dates of resumption were forthcoming for any productions, major or minor. Every actor across the country was now out of work, and beginning to feel like Fatima. Their next job could be in cyber… but they don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
Sam Crane, one of the progenitors of “Grand Theft Hamlet,” found himself in this exact predicament at the start of 2021. Just less than a year ago, he’d spent every night onstage as the titular character in the West End smash hit “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” But after the lockdowns left him jobless and demoralised, he spent most of his time in the strange and surreal world of “Grand Theft Auto Online,” sitting at slot machines and terrorising virtual citizens with his close friend, fellow out-of-work actor Mark Oosterveen. Faced with the nationwide closure of theatres and arts venues with no certain resumption of their livelihoods, all there was left to do was seek solace in a surreal and hyper-violent fictional online world that felt less empty and unpromising than the world beyond their computer screens.
In a strange twist of fate, Crane and Oosterveen’s time spent together in “Grand Theft Auto Online” technically did lead to them finding new jobs “in cyber” — albeit not quite in the way that the government poster might have wanted. After running from the in-game police led them to an empty bandshell just begging to be used, the two friends decided to bring Shakespeare to a new, never-before-explored digital frontier. Somehow, despite the game’s player base consisting mostly of bloodthirsty teenagers who wouldn’t hesitate to gun down the first defenceless player in sight, they were going to cast, plan, and stage a production of “Hamlet” entirely in “Grand Theft Auto Online.” And thus, “Grand Theft Hamlet” was born.
Rather than just a rebroadcast of the livestreamed performance, “Grand Theft Hamlet” is a deeper look into the inception, planning, and execution of the virtual theatrical sensation of the year. Crane’s partner, filmmaker Pinny Grylls, documents the painstaking process of putting together one of the world’s first instances of “video game theatre” with both tender care and deadpan hilarity. The concept of “putting on the best show this town’s ever seen,” so to speak, is as hackneyed and overused as the sky is blue, but Grylls’s directorial input and careful editing ensure that we understand this is no children’s-movie cakewalk.
No aspect of the production is spared her keen, analytical eye; from auditions where the only attendee is a lonely literary agent who has hijacked her nephew’s GTA account to be there, to more sombre moments such as a long, heartfelt monologue from Oosterveen about the recent passing of his last living blood relative, which serves as a particularly grounding moment amidst the ridiculous clothing and stray missile launcher shots that punctuate every other scene. Far be it from a “Rocky”-style training montage — the best art requires sacrifice, and Grylls and Crane do a great job of not sparing their viewers the uglier, more existentially-threatening side to this production.
As a documentary, “Grand Theft Hamlet” is also a fascinating, almost anthropological look at the way we strive to form communities, even and especially in times of strife. When this documentary was being filmed, people the world over were contending with record levels of isolation and loneliness during pandemic-related lockdowns. Tantamount to the participation of the final cast and crew of this virtual “Hamlet” are the non-actors who remain invested in the play’s progress, even while remaining in the periphery of the production itself, the most notable of these being ParTebMosMir, a half-Tunisian, half-Finnish individual represented in-game by a naked, gun-toting green alien who initially auditions for the show with a hilariously emoted impromptu reading of the Qur’an, and sticks around even after not landing a part. ParTeb has no visible interest in Hamlet or Shakespeare, and appears to turn up to rehearsals out of morbid curiosity rather than any real desire to participate in the play. But their affection for the group is palpable, even through the metatextual screen within a screen that we watch them from, and the comic relief that they unwittingly provide the documentary with is nothing short of show-stealing. One almost has to catch their breath when remembering that outside of the play itself, most of this documentary is unscripted — and yet the degree of hilarity that ParTeb’s very presence manages to achieve onscreen surpasses most instances of scripted comic relief written by entire writers’ rooms for big-budget films.
The surreal nature of “Grand Theft Hamlet” and its lovable little interlopers not only makes it compulsively watchable and laugh-out-loud hilarious, but also feels more authentic and true to life because it is unafraid to play ball with its own absurdity. While some might be inclined to question the seriousness of a documentary filmed entirely in an online multiplayer video game, it is its unashamed quirkiness that ultimately lends the film its legitimacy, and puts plenty of strength into its emotional punches. As Albert Camus once said, “The realisation that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.” The surreal digital landscape of Grand Theft Auto Online, with its lurid hyper-capitalist visual aesthetics, idiosyncratic party-crashers, and ludicrous NPC dialogue, is not just a beginning for Crane and Grylls’s production, but a springboard to greater emotional heights and deeper overarching questions about friendship, found family, and the viability of the embattled arts sector in a post-COVID world. Detractors may gripe about a lack of the requisite solemnity that every documentary purportedly needs, but one thing is for sure — there has never been another documentary that has tackled those very pertinent questions… quite like this.
Ensuring that viewers feel close to both the production as it unspools, and the anonymous, hyper-colourful avatars that represent those who care about it most, is another thing that “Grand Theft Hamlet” does very successfully, both with ParTeb and with the rest of its principal cast. The film’s runtime is barely shy of 90 minutes, and yet by the time it ends, we feel like we’ve endured an entire digital odyssey by the cast and crew’s side. By the time ParTeb gets promoted to the production’s security detail, gunning down several would-be griefers in a gigantic plane before they can interrupt the play, we are cheering along with Crane, Oosterveen, Grylls, and the rest of the cast. Their thanks are also our thanks; their joy and amusement ours to share.
It is moments like this that “Grand Theft Hamlet” has in such abundance that the film ends up feeling like something precious and breathtakingly impossible. On the surface, the film might be easy enough to dismiss as an 89-minute GTA Let’s Play, but its distinguishing factor is that all this really happened. Grand Theft Auto Online was meant to be a playground for petty crime and violent fantasies, rather than a black box for burgeoning thespian enterprises. And yet, Oosterveen and Crane’s hard work was supplemented by enough luck and serendipity that, even amidst all the gunfire and griefing, they managed to find community amidst it all. Not many other films this year have managed to so deftly capture the burning human desire to make meaning out of this messy existence — and Grand Theft Hamlet does it all solely based on its existence in a landscape not built to accommodate it.
That, in itself, is nothing short of magical. And yet here is proof that that magic exists; proof that you can make anything happen anywhere, even just on the strength of a desperate dream. Don’t let the film’s tongue-in-cheek title and relentless slapstick absurdity fool you. At its core, “Grand Theft Hamlet” is a rip-roaringly funny, fall-to-your-knees triumphant love letter to the uniting power of the arts in an increasingly isolated world, and easily a contender for one of the most inspiring documentaries on the festival circuit this year. Theatre never dies — especially when you have an anonymous friend dressed as an alien who will run security for you at the Grand Theft Auto Shakespeare play that you have hinged your self-worth on. Go figure.
