Ογ½ΆΦ±²₯

In β€œBelle” (2022), a teenager who’s lived through tragedy finds a soaring catharsis in a virtual realm. I thought it was one of the best films of that year, and I still think it might be the best movie ever made about the internet. Either way, its song-and-soul-shattering climax is unforgettable.

Yet in Hosoda’s latest, β€œScarlet,” the director’s enviable reach exceeds his grasp. In it, his female protagonist is a medieval princess who, after seeing her king father killed by her uncle, and dying herself, awakes in an expansive purgatory. In this strange afterlife, peopled by the dead from all time periods, she seeks revenge for her father.

Anyone, I think, would grant that a Japanese anime that transplants β€œHamlet” to a surreal netherworld is a touch more ambitious than your average animated movie. Unlike the wide majority of cartoons, or even live-action movies, the problem with β€œScarlet” isn’t a lack of imagination. It’s too much.

Hosoda, a former Studio Ghibli animator whose other films include β€œWolf Children” and β€œSummer Wars,” has an extraordinary knack for crafting anime worlds of visual complexity while pursuing existential ideas with a childlike sincerity. But an excess of baroque design, of emotion, of scope, sinks Hosoda’s β€œScarlet.” It’s the kind of misfire you can forgive. If you’re going to fail by overreach, it might as well be with a wildly ambitious rendering of β€œHamlet.”

In the thrilling prologue, set in 16th century Denmark, Scarlet (Ashida Mana) watches as her uncle Claudius (KΓ΄ji Yakusho) frames her father as a traitor and has him executed. Enraged, Scarlet β€” without any visitation from her father’s ghost β€” goes to kill Claudius. Only he poisons her first, and Scarlet awakes in what she learns is called the Otherlands.

It’s a kind of infinite wasteland, full of wandering souls and marauding bandits. People are there for a time, and then they pass into nothingness. A stairway to heaven is rumored to exist somewhere. As she seeks Claudius, Scarlet is joined by a stranger she encounters named Hijiri (Okada Masaki). A paramedic from modern day, he spends most of his time in the Otherworld trying to heal the wounds of others, including Scarlet’s foes.

β€œScarlet” can be meandering and tedious. Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turn up. If the Otherworld is laid out like Scarlet’s troubled conscience, the ensuing battle between vengeance and forgiveness feels dully simplified. It's all a sea of troubles. Hosoda tries to build some interiority to the story (not a small aspect of β€œHamlet”) through Hijiri's backstory, telescoping Shakespeare’s quandaries to contemporary times.

Hosoda grafted β€œBeauty and the Beast” into β€œBelle,” to sometimes awkward, sometimes illuminating effect. But in β€œScarlet,” he struggles to bridge β€œHamlet” to today. It's a big swing, the kind filmmakers as talented as Hosoda should be taking, but it doesn’t pay off. Still, it’s often dazzling to look at it and it's never not impassioned. Hosoda remains a director capable of reaching trembling, operatic heights. In β€œScarlet,” for instance, Claudius gets a spectacular death scene, a remarkable accomplishment considering he's already dead.