The Shakespeare quotation “All the world’s a stage” comes from his play As You Like It, but it describes the central conceit of the MIFF movie Grand Theft Hamlet pretty well.

There were actually no stages available at the time struggling actors Sam Crane and his friend Mark Oosterveen started playing too much Grand Theft Auto in early 2021, as Britain entered its third lockdown. When they one day found themselves in the game’s version of the Hollywood Bowl amphitheatre – known in game as Vinewood Bowl – they wondered if this could be their stage, and if others in the international gaming community might help them put on Hamlet in the only way currently possible. And since Sam’s partner, Pinny Grylls, was already a documentary filmmaker, a feature-length narrative of their experiences took shape, one that was as funny as it was heartbreaking.

Grand Theft Hamlet unfurls entirely within the sprawling landscapes of this gaming world, where the object is to shoot people rather than shoot movies, shout insults and commands rather than soliloquies. Because the moving mouths of characters are just one of the ways your avatar can be customised and controlled, this trio realised that some version of Shakespeare’s most famous play could be rehearsed and ultimately performed. It would alternately be funny, as there’d be no way to prevent rogue gamers from parachuting in and blowing them away, and profound, as something about this forlorn game space full of violence mirrored the mental state of the play’s title character, not to mention a world torn apart by pandemic and racial strife.

You can’t talk about the funny without talking about the thoughtful in Grand Theft Hamlet, as they intermingle seamlessly. One moment a character will be delivering heartfelt poetry, recited by the person controlling that character, and in the next moment the character will fall off a dirigible due to user error by that same person. As the online community grows, these moments are punctuated by laughter from around the world, releasing the tension.

We learn about Sam and Mark as the movie progresses. Mark in particular needs this project as he has no partner or kids, and in an event of pitiless symbolism, has just lost his last living blood relative with the passing of his aunt. When various promising cast members can’t continue with the project for one reason or another, it feels as though Mark’s only thread of connectivity to anything beyond his flat is fraying beyond repair. Meanwhile, a running activity feed in the lower left-hand corner, which reports when various avatars playing the game elsewhere have died, is like a real-world ticker of COVID death, lives passing by in a blink and then forgotten.

Perhaps because the subject is Shakespeare, poetry feels like the dominant form of response to Grand Theft Hamlet if you’re writing a review of it. But the film is uproariously funny as well. The game mechanics have their own wonky elements that either compliment or run contrary to the text, and certain felicitous moments couldn’t have been planned any better, as when one avatar simply disappears after completing his soliloquy. Then there are the side characters we meet as comic relief, some of whom keep showing up for rehearsals and the performance just to watch. One hilarious example is a Middle Eastern gamer who has chosen the avatar of a green-skinned alien with exposed buttocks, who can often be seen making humping motions beside the high drama unfolding in his vicinity. He doesn’t know why he’s there, he just wants to be a part of it.

It’s hard to know how much of the real-world story unfolding between Mark, Sam and Pinny is genuine, and how much has been written in order to make it a better story. It’s also hard to care. The worlds captured here – the in-game one we can see, the IRL one we can only imagine – have such a sense of truth, and such perceptiveness about that agonising time of isolation and despair, that we’d be just as glad if a screenwriter had written the whole thing.

There’s a moment early in Grand Theft Hamlet when you wonder if this experiment is actually going to unfold primarily on that Vinewood Bowl stage – which might still make for an interesting film, but would be inevitably limiting. In fact, Sam, Mark and Pinny leave no stone unturned in their game universe, finding backdrops for Hamlet’s most iconic moments that are simply jaw-dropping in how far beyond a joke this has gone – if it was ever that to begin with.

 

Grand Theft Hamlet has its second and final MIFF screening at the Astor Theatre on Wednesday at 6:15 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here.