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  • 6 weeks ago
'Endlessly Surprising.' What Happened When 'Hamlet's' Director Gave It A South Asian Story
Transcript
00:00Yeah, well, in a way, the South Asian, the cultural specificity thing is interesting because, of course, in many ways,
00:06it just is what it is, Riz is South Asian, right?
00:08So therefore, his family, Hamlet's South Asian, therefore, his family's South Asian and stuff.
00:13And so that almost just kind of wrote itself.
00:15It wasn't like, it wasn't a decision in a strange way.
00:20But of course, it affected many, many things about the story.
00:26We didn't want it to be at the forefront of everything, like, look, this is the Asian Hamlet kind of
00:32thing.
00:34But it was kind of endlessly surprising and kind of interesting what that cultural specificity brought to it.
00:44You know, there's a lot of elements about the play that through a modern lens can feel quite archaic and
00:51kind of whimsical.
00:52You know, when you think about spirits appearing, family honour, someone not being allowed to marry, you know, this family
01:02or that family, things which feel antiquated.
01:05But actually, in a South Asian context, actually, you know, are still kind of contemporary parts of the conversation or,
01:13you know, parts of the culture.
01:15So that was really, really interesting.
01:19And yeah, it did bring this kind of interesting, transcendental kind of beauty to it.
01:27You know, if you think about the opening of the film with the rituals, with the body preparation before that
01:31cremation, for instance, you know, these were just natural elements that we weren't kind of forcing into the thing, you
01:39know, forcing into the story.
01:41That did bring their own kind of spiritual kind of vibrancy and depth, which just kind of seemed to be
01:54nicely in conversation with this quite transcendent story, I suppose.
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