Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls' Grand Theft Hamlet is a unique film that blends classic Shakespearean literature with the world of GTA Online. Essentially gaming footage, where its avatars double up as characters, the film follows two actors looking for work in the pandemic who seek to stage Hamlet in the gratuitously violent GTA world. Streaming on Mubi, the film offers a glimpse into the future of storytelling, blurring the lines between real and virtual reality, and offers thoughtful insights into the impact of art during periods of isolation.
Crane and Grylls made the film during the pandemic. Addressing the impact on their work after the pandemic, Crane says, “It made me think about how connected digital spaces can be to real spaces. Before, I thought of them as very distinct worlds. And now I start to see more and more connections between them and how their boundaries may be a bit more messy and ambiguous than ever before.”
Adding to Crane's point, Grylls states, “Given that so much of our lives occur in digital spaces, films should reflect those environments where we connect and build relationships. With Grand Theft Hamlet, I aimed to show the value of these spaces to people for creating things, for making friends, for hanging out and just having fun.”
Unlike similar experiments, such as the Machinima creations that have been around for years, Grand Theft Hamlet released theatrically and has been screened in festivals worldwide. What Crane and Grylls created from their home travelled to places they found unimaginable before. Given its experimental nature in terms of content and form, different opinions about the film are a given. Speaking about the audience's reactions to it, Crane reveals, “In Istanbul, the audience responded to the film differently to the UK’s viewers. For instance, they laughed out loud when Parteb, the green alien, recites a prayer from the Quran. Everybody else was very reverent at that bit.”
The film brings together a diverse set of in-game characters, including a retail employee and a trans person, with different perspectives about Hamlet. As per the makers, the film helps bust conventional myths about what type of people are into Shakespeare. Addressing this aspect and what it was like to open Shakespeare up to these diverse individuals, Crane explains, “Shakespeare is considered the high point of our culture in the UK. Some feel excluded from it, believing Shakespeare requires extensive education or cultural access.” He further adds, “I've studied Shakespeare and performed it a lot over the years, but I found freshness in the perspectives from the people who were taking part in it and from the game itself. Performing the play within that digital space offered new, eye-opening interpretations of the work.”
Crane then cites the perspective of a character named Nora as an example to substantiate his point. “Nora says, ‘Sometimes you don't know who the people around you are.’ And I think Hamlet is about family members, people in your community pretending to be something they're not. It's about people wearing masks and Hamlet's trying to work out who can he trust and not.”
The brilliance of Grand Theft Hamlet also lies in how seamlessly it blends two seemingly different entities: the highly intellectual Shakespearean literature with a popular game, which dominates even the social media reel space. Talking about how they managed to bring that balance between both worlds throughout the film, Crane says, “I think GTA is an incredibly sophisticated piece of art.” Interjecting Crane, Grylls adds, “It is highly satirical, as well as sophisticated in its representation of America from a particular lens. I mean Los Santos is a version of Los Angeles.”
Drawing a parallel between both worlds, she continues, “The game world is very sophisticated. And Shakespeare, likewise, is very satirical of his own time and human nature, in the way he writes about it. In some ways, putting Shakespeare into that space, it kind of makes you realise how brilliant Shakespeare is because it seems to be able to comment even on that world.”
Remarkably, Grylls insists they made the film independently, without any help from the gaming company. Speaking of which, other Shakespearean plays, with themes of revenge and existentialism, could also resonate within the GTA world. Talking about the other plays worth exploring, Crane states, “I think The Tempest is definitely one for its notions of reality and creation.” On the other hand, Grylls points out, “There are many potential game and theater matchups that we could do outside of Grand Theft Auto.”