By Anne Brodie
Mamoru Hosoda’s Hamlet adjacent Scarlet (Mana Ashida), is a visual knockout, an animated story so powerfully expressed that it gave me serious shivers. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark in the 1600s, and then Purgatory, it closely mirrors Shakespeare’s Hamlet, albeit through a different lens. Scarlet, a young flame haired princess is on a mission, like Hamlet, to kill her uncle Claudius (Kôji Yakusho) who killed her father and avenge him. They face off in purgatory, aka Otherworld where life and death co-exist. Scarlet is alive, able to carry out her mission but there is a danger whether dead or alive – vanishing. She ferociously and bravely fights with all she’s got – wicked sword and knife skills. Scarlet heads to the Infinite Land but when she drinks from a poison pond, and extreme weather whips up the environment, she’s thrown off course. It’s her lesson to be more aware. A medic (Masaki Okadoa) comes to her aid as this wildly imaginative tale continues. Its as raw, primitive and brutal as the animators can make it. And amidst all the brutality of nature and man, the score. – surprisingly enough, jazz music. One stunning hyper imaginative background after another adds to the film’s brutal, violent brilliance. While the spirit is mystical, poetic, fierce and highly cinematic, the level of violence and intense scenes is extremely high – not recommended for young children. Feb. 6 across Canada in IMAX for one week only, then wide release,Feb. 13 in conventional theatres.