Grand Theft Hamlet (2025)
Directed by: Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls
Premise: A documentary in which Grand Theft Auto videogame players attempt to stage a production of Hamlet within the world of the game.
What Works: During the COVID-19 pandemic many people turned to online spaces for amusement and interaction especially immersive role-playing games such as Grand Theft Auto in which players adopt gangster avatars and navigate the streets while robbing and killing each other. Actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen took a break from the usual Grand Theft Auto mayhem to stage a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet within the videogame world. Grand Theft Hamlet documents their efforts. Almost the entire film consists of screen activity within the Grand Theft Auto game as Crane and Oosterveen try to find locations to stage the play, network with willing participants, and avoid other players who are killing and robbing everyone in sight. The documentary captures a microcosm of the struggle to create art. The videogame world is an exaggerated version of real-world challenges. The film also has some very incisive moments of pandemic-era reality. Crane and Oosterveen invest time and effort in the project at the expense of other, real world considerations in pursuit of a sense of productivity and purpose. It’s an effective visualization of what so many of us did during the pandemic, making Grand Theft Hamlet a relevant time capsule. The use of Hamlet is also fitting. The play’s themes of existential angst are shared by the experience of the players. The documentary also puts the violence of the Grand Theft Auto game into a different context. The pandemic era saw violent crime surge and online spaces became even more toxic than they already were; watching these people try to come together and create art in a digital environment that’s designed to appeal to our basest instincts is a neat encapsulation of the pandemic era.
What Doesn’t: The nature of the Grand Theft Auto videogame makes the documentary challenging to follow. Filmmaking in which the imagery and the sound are synchronous has a seamless quality that’s easy to consume but the narration and gameplay in Grand Theft Hamlet is sometimes dissonant. We hear the participants talking but the audio is sometimes removed from what’s happening on screen. It’s kind of like watching digital puppets but they’re not very expressive. This aspect of the documentary may be less disruptive for viewers who actually play online games but for those of us who don’t, Grand Theft Hamlet requires a little more effort on the part of the viewer.
Bottom Line: Grand Theft Hamlet may be received differently by viewers depending on their media diet and acclimation to videogame imagery. This is in many ways a fascinating document of the use of online spaces with some real moments and it’s a relevant time capsule of the pandemic era.
Episode: #1038 (March 9, 2025)