Kaurismaki adapts Shakespeare for the dog-eat-dog world of industrialising Finland with this decent black-and-white revenge noir filled with moments of absurdist humour and conniving tactics. 

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Just four years after adapting Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ for his first feature, the then-emerging Aki Kaurismaki decided to tackle Shakespeare.  And so, we have Hamlet Goes Business, which like Crime and Punishment (1983), is translated into ‘80s Finland and features the director’s deadpan tragicomic style. 

Like his sophomore feature, Calamari Union (1985), Hamlet is shot in black-and-white, but while the former could be described as ‘cool’, the latter has dark shades of noir. 

Kaurismaki has said that the classical noir of old Hollywood inspired him greatly.  But no matter how serious—or deadly—things get (well, there are a hell lot of people trying to poison each other), Kaurismaki characteristically retains some level of absurdity for certain key scenes, including two laugh-out-loud moments involving a radio jukebox that must be seen to be believed. 

“Soft people won’t get anywhere these days.”

The character of Hamlet here is portrayed like a man-child, sometimes naïve but not always unaware of the conniving tactics used by others on him.  He’s equally adept in returning the favour. 

Revenge, ruthlessness and survival become the name of the game in industrialising Finland as it had been in Shakespeare’s original setting of medieval Denmark. 

Kaurismaki wanted to adapt ‘King Lear’ and ‘Macbeth’ as well, but his planned trilogy didn’t come to fruition.  So, Hamlet Goes Business is the closest we get to seeing a famous literary text refashioned for arthouse audiences who enjoy oddball movies. 

It is also a curious work with echoes of the past (and quite literally so, as Kaurismaki uses silent-era ‘special effects’ to show the apparition of Hamlet’s deceased father), while also portending to the future that is the post-Soviet dog-eat-dog capitalist world. 

Grade: B+

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