Until the next global pandemic arrives in this lifetime or the next one, the last global pandemic (COVID) and its related experiences (e.g., mask-wearing, upgraded hygiene protocols, social/physical isolation, etc.) will continue to recede, soon-to-be memory-holed by the general public. Not surprisingly, that leaves only a handful of narrative and non-narrative films, like Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls’s idiosyncratic documentary, Grand Theft Hamlet , as reminders not just of what life, however limited, may have been like back then, but more importantly, how creativity, inspiration, and imagination, essential to our humanity, kept us mostly sane until the lockdowns ended and a sense of normality returned.
Bored, isolated, and unemployed, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, longtime friends and actors, met regularly online to play Grand Theft Auto , an open-world, multiplayer, online video game. In addition to allowing players to pick their names, identities, and outfits, Grand Theft Auto allows them to freely roam the game. Players can enjoy the game’s cathartic blend of violence and criminality or like, Sam and Mark, use the game and its environments as both a virtual hang-out space and later, as the inspiration for what seemed at least initially like an absurd, ridiculous idea: Putting on William Shakespeare’s Elizabethan play, Hamlet , inside the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto .
To chronicle the months-long process, Crane enlisted the aid of his offline partner, Pinny Grylls, a documentary filmmaker. New to online gaming, Grylls, had to learn the ins and outs of gameplay, specifically the likelihood that interactions with strangers online would end abruptly, usually with a blast of gunfire sent in your general direction by another, less welcoming player. Grylls, however, adjusts fairly quickly to the online world’s rules, even participating in the occasional bout of ultra-violence in response to real-world frustrations.
Once the duo and later the trio discover an amphitheatre inside Grand Theft Auto , plans begin to coalesce around staging a virtual performance of Shakespeare’s oft-adapted play, albeit with revisions aimed at the usually prodigious running/performance time. From there, a familiar process begins to take shape, starting with online auditions, again featuring virtual avatars, a selection process (they find their Hamlet), not unexpected setbacks, including scheduling, changing life circumstances for the cast (a new job for one, a broken leg for another), and the end, if not of the pandemic itself, then the lockdowns that gave everyone so much “free,” unstructured time.
As Sam and Mark work around familiar and unfamiliar obstacles, other real-world concerns start to make an appearance. Sam’s relationship with Pinny (offline time, child-raising, etc.) threatens to dampen enthusiasm if not outright scuttle, the planned performance of Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online . Sam and Mark’s friendship shows signs of strain too, mostly due to the latter’s personal and professional lives offline and their differences. Mark isn’t employed, lives alone without a partner or roommates, and just lost his last blood relative, leaving him feeling unmoored and uncentered, especially as the focus begins to shift from the performance of Shakespeare’s Danish play to life, online and off, afterward.
Thematically, Grand Theft Hamlet explores online obsession, found communities/families, and offline-online balance, as well as offline/online identities (one character reveals herself as trans in a touching moment). The documentary’s “let’s put on a show” structure keeps those themes from being examined with any real depth, but whatever shortcomings Grand Theft Hamlet has in that department, it more than compensates through its unique virtual-only approach and its frequent moments of authentic, genuine human connection through a wholly unexpected, if no less welcome, iteration of cooperative gameplay.
