Interview | Grand Theft Hamlet directors Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane on staging Hamlet within the video game

There's simply no other film as original and astonishing as Grand Theft Hamlet in the last few years. Taking place entirely in the world of Grand Theft Auto, this documentary by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls takes Shakespeare into an entirely new dimension with the staging of Hamlet. But even in the virtual world, there are fascinating and heartbreaking realisations that await the two unemployed friends who hatch this strange idea. (Also read: Queer review: Daniel Craig gives career-best turn in Luca Guadagnino's thorny William S. Burroughs adaptation)

In this exclusive interview with HT, directors Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls sat down to talk about the many aspects of the game and the play that had to be planned before going into the process and how they made all of it come alive in a cinematic fashion.

An aspect of the film that fascinates is how there are chaotic elements spread throughout the narrative with so much happening at all times, but there is also so much quietness in certain parts of the film when we only hear the voiceover. While both of you were conceptualising the film, did you ever think about how these two elements would come together to create a balance?

Pinny: Right from the very beginning, when we received the funding from the British Film Institute, their feedback to us was, ‘How can we make this cinematic?’ ‘How can we make this into something that we can watch for 90 minutes?’ So it does not feel like a YouTube stream of gaming, which young people and people of all ages are really watching. People play games on YouTube and Twitch all the time. Obviously, we did not want to make a feature film that looked like that. So we kind of wanted to do that from the start, where we had a combination of, as you say, the stillness- that really held Shakespeare; the language, poetry… but also our emotional journeys well. So that it gave space around those moments. There's a lot of fun as well! I think this is a comedy, actually! (smiles) There were moments of energy combined with moments of stillness. That was very much an aim of ours from the very start.

Sam: I think that so as well. I think my experience of playing the game too, where the game can often be very chaotic with things happening all the time and lots of explosions. But also there is beautiful scenery in it and there are points where you find moments of peace. I think we wanted to make that come across so that maybe people don't recognise so much.

Grand Theft Hamlet occurs completely within the game. In the outside world time moves in a linear fashion, but when someone is playing a game the time is five times quicker almost. Was this aspect of time a limitation for both of you as filmmakers or did it free you in ways that both of you did not imagine?

Sam: That's such an interesting question and no one has asked that before. It is something that I thought a lot about because there are sort of strange experiences of time that we all have. I think we all had that in the pandemic, and sort of after, sort of this sense of time slowing down. As you say, when you are playing the game time progresses like in real life but howsoever it is… ten times or thirty times faster. A day takes 48 minutes in the game. That is a strange sensation of time. Also, as an actor, when you are performing on stage there is a strange experience of time where there is a state of flow… and that is very similar as well to when you are playing a game. Where time goes by and one does not realize that they have been playing for hours. On stage one can have this moment where they feel that time stops almost. So there's this experience of time where it is not the linear, normal way.

Penny: It meant that we did actually have some difficulty during filming, as you pointed out, like when we were filming a scene or a rehearsal where one can have 24 hours of light and dark occur over several hours, but then editing that together and making it look like it is one scene is quite tricky! (laughs)

Sam: Also, while staging the play, there were certain scenes that happen at night when we were thinking about the different location we were going to do. We knew that if this scene happened at night we had to make sure that we get to that point in the play when it is going to be night in the game. So yeah, there were these tricky things around time, but really interesting conceptually.

At several moments in the film, there are unintentional killing of a character by a stranger even before they can pitch the idea of the play. How did you deal with that?

Sam: It is the nature of the game. It is interesting that those are the norms of behaviour in that world, a part of the game.

Pinny: It was a sort of constant challenge. All video games are built in an interesting way, where one has to respond and have to challenge. That meant that when one is trying to rehearse something then there are people killing you over and over again. It is complicated and difficult. But we sort of went with it, and used it as part of the storytelling.

Sam: I think it also connects with a lot of themes in Hamlet, because there is so much killing in that play too! It seemed quite appropriate in staging that play.

Grand Theft Hamlet is available to watch in MUBI.