Kermode & Mayo’s Take - MELANIA: “A piece of handsomely mounted crypto‑fascist propaganda” + Riz Ahmed

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Some exciting news—The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo. Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member‑only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show—a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. It’s the take you’ve all been waiting for... Mark’s Melania review. Did he enjoy this, er, ‘documentary’ about the FLOTUS? Obviously not. Will you enjoy listening to him slate it? We think so. Buckle up. Our guest this week is Riz Ahmed—actor, musician, writer and all-round creative force—joining Simon to talk about his bold new film adaptation of Hamlet. Reimagining Shakespeare’s most introspective tragedy for the screen, Ahmed takes on the iconic role of the Prince of Denmark in a version that fuses classic text with contemporary urgency. He tells Simon what it means to wrestle with “to be or not to be” in the modern world. Mark also reviews Hamlet, plus three more of this week’s notable releases. There’s Send Help, Sam Raimi’s survival thriller that strands its characters in a fight against both nature and themselves; The Chronology of Water, a visceral adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, and Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut; and It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, a documentary portrait of the elusive, mythic musician whose influence still reverberates decades on. All this, plus the box office top 10, the lofty pleasures of the Laughter Lift, and the usual conversational twists, turns, and small-hill-pedantry you’ve come to expect. Timecodes with YT clip codes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free) Send Help review - 08:53 ( clip: 11:27 – 12:18 Box Office Top 10 - 00:15:56 Melania review - 00:18:46 (clip 00:19:10 - 00:19:58) Riz Ahmed interview - 00:38:50 (film clip Universal 00:39:16 - 00:40:02) Hamlet review - 00:55:07 Laughter Lift - 01:02:50 Chronology of Water review - 01:04:46 (clip 01:05:41 - 01:06:32) It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley 01:11:19 (clip 01:11:56 - 01:12:44) You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: https://www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here, Mark, what do the films die my love? I'm still here, and it was just an accident, all having common. This is a set up for another of those terrible laughter lift jokes, isn't it? Which I thought we'd done with for another week. No, this is no laughing matter. Okay, go on. Well, not only are they some of your favourite film recommendations from last year, but there are also all films you'll be able to stream anywhere in the world when you travel abroad, even in geo-locked territories. How's that, then?

Because with one click, NordVPN can change. your device's virtual location so you can access all the content that you need when you're abroad. And it only applies to those three films you name. That seems odd. Well, no, that would be a strange business model. Indeed, you can stream anything anywhere. With NordVPN, you can travel the world faster than a private jet, minus the carbon footprint. Unwrap a huge discount on NordVPN by heading to NordVPN.com slash take. Plus, with our link, you'll get an extra four months free on the two-year plan and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. the link in the description. This episode is brought to you by Mooby, the global film company that

champions great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging otters, there's always something new to discover. With Mooby, each and every film is hand-selected, so you can explore the best of cinema, streaming anytime, anywhere. When we say the best, we mean the best, because now streaming on Newby from January 23rd in the UK is the film that I said was my favourite film of last year, which is Die My Love, the new film by Lynn Ramsey. It has an extraordinary central performance by Jennifer Lawrence, but also I think Robert Pattinson is brilliant in it. I love all of Lynn Ramsey's films, but I think that Die My Love is just a further example of what a brilliant poet of cinema she is.

And that is available streaming on Mooby from January the 23rd in the UK. And it is wonderful. It's my favourite film of last year. To stream the best of cinema, you can try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash Kermode and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I-D-com for a whole month of great cinema for free. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter and get an extra episode every Thursday.

Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions. Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas. Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in questions, Schmestians. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit-related devices. There's never been a better time to become a Vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available, wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. Well, here we are. On the same table again, but in a different studio. I know. I'm slightly confused. What's going on? Well, I'm in London again. Yes, but why?

Yeah, okay, because, you know, last week it was the whole thing with the weather and I couldn't get back. And then this week, there was a whole bunch of things I was doing. I hosted the London Critics Circle Film Awards. It went very well. Thank you for asking. I didn't know you done it. But how did it go? It went very well.

Thank you for asking. How did you not know what I've done it? I've literally put pictures all over Instagram of me and Yamad El Taro. I don't do Instagram. You have family who have Instagram. Did nobody got in touch with you to say, Mark hosted the Critic Circle. No. Absolutely none at all.

We've seen lots of episodes of Bath Time in Copenhagen. You know, and we've seen walks in Copenhagen. Megan and things like that, but nothing about you. Nothing about me. Well, I've been very, very busy. And I was on stage just last night with, with, I was Simon, yes, with Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Alourdi doing the IMAX presentation of Frankenstein. And then before that, I was doing a thing with Jesse Bugger.

I did a whole load of stuff. Showbiz. Is that what you're, sorry, showbiz. So I woke up this morning in London. That's why we're in the same. I don't know why we're in this room, not the other room that we were in before. Did you have like a spankly suit on for, you know, because if you're going to be with. I had my suit.

My suit. I've only got one suit. I've got the suit that I had made for me. You know, Jacob Allardy, particularly, I would... He's really tall. You would think that you would, you know, put a bit of sparkle in there. I did. I'm not...

I wore the suit. I wore the suit that... I have had a suit made for me 10 years ago. Okay. And I still fit it. Has it got sparkle? No. Well, it's got style.

It has. Great film, though, Frankestan. Yeah, it's a great film, yeah. And I look fabulous. And it all went very well. Again, thank you for asking. I didn't know that you'd done it. If I'd known, I would have asked.

And I don't do Instagram. So just in case, you know, you want to communicate by, you know, always send me a note. Look, this is me, anti-Gony. But that would have seemed like terribly, you know, pushy. You didn't see the Fudge Gough of me with Paul Thomas Anderson. Didn't see the Fudgegolfo made with Sally Hulkins? You didn't see any of this. No, no.

Because you're, okay, fine. Just assume that I haven't seen it. I think you can watch the whole thing on YouTube. But why would I? Because I presented it and I did like a 10-minute opening that was like really had jokes and it had substance and it had stuff. What was the best joke? The best joke was, among the flops this year, we had Jared Leto in Tron Arse. And I'm sorry, I mispronounced that, Jared Lito in Tron Arse.

This is like... Ender's laughing. American chat shows. At least one person in the control booth is laughing. That's very good. And quite in keeping. Stephen Frye would have liked that, Joe. You would have liked it, yeah.

You could have written it for it. I did write some jokes for Stephen Fry. That's where you're going there. Okay, fine. What are we talking animatedly about this week? We've got an incredibly packed show. So we have Sen Help, which is the new San Ramey movie, The Chronology of Water, which is the feature directorial debut from Kristen Stewart.

It's Never Over Jeff Buckley, which is a documentary about Jeff Buckley, of whom I know you are a huge fan. I went to see a grubby advert come bribe, which we'll talk about during the top 10. Since Melania? A lot of people are waiting for that. A lot of people are we? So two documentaries to choose from.

No. What about Jeff Buckley? No, a documentary and a bribe. Oh, I see. A propaganda film. Yeah. And Hamlet. Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.

The mild cigar. Found under benches and hedges. Where did that come from? Found under benches and hedges. I think it was not the 9 o'clock news. That would seem appropriate. That's a good joke. Yes.

So Riz Ahmed is going to be our special guest talking about, It's like the H word, because if you say the full word, then he's going to play the music again. Starring in Hamlet. That's going to wear a thing quickly, isn't it? Riz Ahmed is in that film. And in Take 2, Mark, what are you up to? In Take 2, we have even more reviews because there's so much out this week. We have reviews of 100 Nights of Hero and My Father's Shadow.

Plus all the extra stuff, including our new feature. a five-question film club in which you pick a film that's airing on a free view or streaming service and Mark answers what we think are five key questions about it. Your homework is then to watch it over the next seven days after which we reconvene for a debrief and your reactions in the following week's show. Plus we'll have further discussion on the best Sam Ramey movies in one frame back plus questions, shmashions. In which we answer the question are truly provocative and avant-garde films even being made anymore? Yes. And that's the end of that. one, but obviously there'll be a bit more detail. Now, we've had quite a lot of correspondence

about the very sad death of Catherine O'Hara in the last few days. So I'll just zip through some of them. I think, again, it's because people were so, not only was she incredibly talented, because I think all the obituary said died after a short illness and no one really seems to know what happened and no one really knew that she was sick. No. So therefore it came out of a blue sky. Dan in Marple, one of the greatest comedy actors of her generation, Beetlejuice, Best in Show, crushing all before her in Schitts Creek, a very sad loss. Joe on Blue Sky, for many of us 80s kids,

especially those who loved Home Alone and Beetlejuice, she was a big part of our experience growing up watching films, a brilliant screen presence, and by all accounts, an even better person, a huge loss. The Global Shorelines Project occasionally get in touch. Yes, all of them. Obviously, lots to remember about Canada. Catherine O'Hara, but her casting as Moira Rose in Shitts Creek with Eugene and Dan Levy was absolute perfection.

Gossip is the devil's telephone, best to hang up, is a quote. Andy F says her pronunciation of the word binoculars in Shitts Creek completely changed the way I say it in public, much to the annoyance of all around me. Yes, because you could probably get away if you're Catherine are on the telly, but Andy F probably you can't. No disrespect. Graham Hall says her films with Christopher Guest show just how good a comedic talent she was, so quick-witted and a natural with improvisation. And Kari Tulinius, one of our correspondents, says a performance in Home Alone is the emotional heartbeat of the film.

Out of many wonderful moments, the scene with her old friend and collaborator John Candy, whose eulogy she gave is my favourite. The way Ahara moves from incandescent rage through confusion to joy in just two minutes is perfect. And I suspect it's one of those deaths which will provoke people to go, you know what, I should have watched more Catherine O'Hara, and now I'm going to go back and watch a whole bunch of her films. Funnily enough, just a couple of weeks ago, just looking with something to watch,

and the Good Lady Professor hadn't seen the studio. And I said, oh, well, I'll happily watch it again. And, of course, she's absolutely brilliant in that. That is a really, really terrific comic performance. But she's fabulous in so much. Obviously, the films in which she worked with people like Christopher Guess, that whole back catalogue is there to be explored. And she was also in the second series of Last of Us.

And she was going to be in the next series. And Craig Mason on his podcast, the Script Notes podcast, was saying, yes, they knew absolutely nothing about what's happened to her. But she had been written in for the third series and now obviously not so. But anyway, I'm sure this will be an ongoing correspondence thing because people will go back and watch more Catherine O'Hara films and TV shows as a result of that. Take Ultra is an extra show we just want to remind you about. We stream it live every other Wednesday, and I believe this is one of those Wednesdays. This is one of those Wednesdays. It's also available as a video episode on Patreon or as an audio podcast.

This week we're talking about the latest awards news following both the BAFTA and Oscar nominations, and it looks like there's an actual race for Best Picture. We'll discuss January's actual race. And of course it includes hot takes and cold comfort, everyone's least favorite feature, apart from the production team who get to dress up and wear hats. And then Mark says, we'll be announcing the latest possible entries

to our Hall of Fame. So head to patreon.com slash Kermenameau to sign up. Thank you for leaping in there because you know that I can't follow a script. The thing I was just doing was I was just, sorry, I was just looking at the whole Catherine and a horror back catalogue and realizing the thing that people need to watch

is a mighty wind. Because that is absolutely, yeah, that is absolutely, I think, you know, top of the tree. Correspondents at kerminammoe.com. what is out there that isn't Melania? Thank you. Send help. 15 for strong bloody violence, goreth, threaten language. Sam Ramey's back.

So this is the new film from Sam Ramey, who was the American director who first made a splash with Evil Dead, which of course you were remember during the video, nasty scare. Videos of the Evil Dead were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, although they famously won the case at Snaresbrook. He then went on to become this incredibly successful mainstream director with the Spider-Man movies.

He's also made thrillers. westerns, comedies, dramas, all of them sort of largely shot through with a strong sense of satire. His last horror, really horror film was Drag Me to Hell in 2009. Now you have this, which is horror-inflicted. It is a survival horror adventure satire from the writers of Damien Shannon and Mark Swift. So Rachel McCadden's is Linda Little, who is this socially awkward woman who lives alone with a little pet bird. And she longs to be on TV on the Survivor show. She loves the whole idea about that.

She sits there and what she's a survivor was with her. But basically, when she's at work, she's stomped upon, despite the fact that her strategising and her understanding of business is what's kept the business afloat. The company's new boss is coming in. The old boss understood that she was the heart of the business and promised her the role as VP. But when he goes, his hideous son, Bradley, played by Dylan O'Brien,

takes over and immediately passes over her for the promotion and gives it instead to some kind of American psycho, you know, braces wearing horror. Then, on a flight to Bangkok, which she is on because she's the only person who understands the business, the rest of them are all kind of, they're just bros on the thing. They're on a plane. The plane goes down. She finds herself stranded on a desert island and the only other survivor is Bradley, the horrible new boss. And due to her survivor obsession, Linda knows how to do things. She knows how to build a shelter. She knows how to gather water. She knows how to gather water. knows how to hunt. She knows how to get fish. She knows how to make a fire. Bradley, on the other hand,

is a useless, you know, corporate stooge. He's mean, he's ungrateful. All he does is whinge about how long will it take them to be rescued. And he doesn't want to help or do anything with, you know, making the fires and all the rest. He just wants to get off. But remember Triangle of sadness when there's a thing, but after the shipwreck, the whole social order is turned upside down. So after the plane crash, the whole social order is upside down because she starts to thrive because this is where she's very good. And we also discover that she's not quite as meek and timid as we thought. Here's a clip. Where have you been? Exploring. Found a new water source. Great. Oh, got a iced frat there. So much cleaner. So delicious. Give it a try.

Love the backpack. You make that today? Yeah. What do you think? Isn't that cute? Mm. Super cute. Okay, what's the matter? What do you think is the matter? We've been here, what, two weeks now? How have they not found us yet?

I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it'll be soon. Anyway, you know what the most important thing is for human survival? The number one thing, positive attitude. Oh, are you fucking kidding me? Well, I hope he gets chopped up and dies in great pain because that's clearly what he deserves. I don't know. I haven't seen it.

We're just working on the basis of that. Well, if you've seen the poster for this, the poster for this actually resembles like the old video covers for Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness. So we're back in that kind of territory. And I said, the BBFC thing said strong bloody violence, gore threat. And there are all those things. But as with all the Sam Ramey things, it's like. When he did Evil Dead, he said it's basically the three stooges with blood and guts standing in for custard pies. I mean, this isn't Evil Dead, but what it is is a sort of romping horror-inflicted adventure, which, as I said, the artwork definitely kind of nods back to the days of Army of Darkness.

Dylan O'Brien, who's playing that character, is actually really good because I've seen him in some other things and fine. But in the case of this, he is very good at playing that slimy, entitled brat who does, you know, he's got the smile and he's got the thing and he's got. and yet he's exactly what your reaction was. But of course, during the course of finding himself in the island, maybe he starts to change. He's also, incident he's in an indie pick, which is out this week, called TwinLess, which we'll probably end up reviewing next week, because we're not going to have time to get through everything this week.

I sat there watching Send Help, and it was the first thing on the Monday morning, and it was 10 o'clock on Monday morning, and the film starts, and it's fine, and then it goes on, and then it's really starts to find its fit, and I really enjoyed it. And by the end of it, I mean, people were laughing out loud. I mean, in a good way, you know, laughing, with it. People were kind of, they came out of the screening, beaming because it's just the right degree of nasty, it's just the right degree of surprise. Rachel McCadams really enjoys playing

this character who starts as one thing and then turns into another thing and then as you peel away the layers of her character turns into a bunch of other things as well. And it just, it just rumps along with this sense of really good-natured, very dark-hearted, satirical fun. And I think you'd enjoy it very much. I had an absolute ball. Does she have a machete? There is a knife. Okay.

Does she have any other weapons, or does she make them herself? A spear? Her greatest weapon is her mind. Right, okay. But yes, she does have a spear, because at one point she goes off hunting a wild boar. And that's a particularly romping animal attack scene. Okay. So send help.

Send help. It's an interesting title because it doesn't suggest what you've described. Because they're on the island. And the whole thing is he says, you know, they need to. And the help's not coming. Yes. Okay, that's very good. Correspondents atcomcom.

We're going to be back in just a moment with... With the box office top ten, including... Also, the chronology of water. It's never over Jeff Buckley and Hamlet. It's going to happen every time. Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, the mild cigar. Yes, it's Riz Ahmed, who is... That has got nothing.

Obviously, that music is not from the film. That's the music from the 70s TV ad. Thank you for clarifying that, just in case anyone thought that Riz Ahmed had done a version of Shakespeare that included hocking cigars. And we'll also have the box office, as Mark mentioned, and the laughter lift, which he did. I like the fact you're now reading all my bits on the script

because you've realized that I've just given up. I've just given up because I would just do the whole thing. Anyway, both chuckled hysterically at the exciting prospect ahead. Here, Mark, now I've been thinking about the early days of our show, just a little bit recently. Okay, go on. When we first started out, we didn't have our truly wonderful top production team, did we? No, we didn't. How on earth did we manage? Well, when you're starting out, finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything, can be such a game changer.

For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. With helpful AI tools and hundreds of ready-to-use templates, it helps you build an online store to match your brand style, as well as easily creating email and social media campaigns. From managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond. Turn your big business idea into...

With Shopify, on your side. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at Shire. Shopify.co.com.uk. Go to Shopify.com.uk. Kermode. Clicks. Buy your car today on

Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Okay, here we go with the box office top ten. At Dizneuf Sankan Wheat, Dan Eyre on YouTube, says, Nouvelle Vag. It's a very enjoyable film that goes some way to capturing the spirit of the time and the feeling that you could just go out and shoot a movie. Also, how frustrating it must have been to work with Jay.

Jay, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jean-Luc. Number thrumblety-6 is kangaroo. Bronwyn says, Fangard Easter, MTFTE, Melbourne, listening to Take 2 this week and your review of Kangaroo, which is set in Broome, Western Australia.

I thought it might be interested to know that Broome, which is more than 2,000 kilometres north of Western America's... Western Australia's capital, Perth, so 2,000 kilometres north, is home to the world's oldest outdoor picture garden, the Sun Picture Theatre.

built in 1903 in Brooms Chinatown area. The town has a very multicultural history due to the pearl farming for which it is famous in Australia. The cinema is still running and is a great place to visit. Its history is fascinating. It is possibly the only cinema in the world where patrons had to deal with tidal flooding from the adjacent mudflats

by lifting their feet off the ground when the tide came in. Fortunately a levy was built in the 1970s to solve this problem. Until 1967, you get this. So that's 1967, the cinema, shamefully, was racially segregated. No. I didn't know this happened in...

In Australia. With non-whites, Australian First Nations people, Japanese, Malays, were also supposed to do the most dangerous work of diving for pearls. We're required to use a separate entrance and sit in a separate area. When you visit the cinema, there is a great little museum with a lot of film, memorabilia and photos. Bronwyn, thank you very much. I mean, I didn't need... I didn't even know that that happened at all ever in Australia.

My favourite part, she says, is that the cinema is very close to Broom's airport, and patrons are warned that planes may suddenly appear overhead throughout the film as they're departing or arriving at the airport. The last time I was there in 2023, I saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, perfect as it made no difference that no less than three flights blocked out sections of the dialogue for a few minutes. I guess that's, if you're going to go and see a film outdoors, that's what's going to happen. Tinkety-Tonkin up with Johnny Greenwood scores sublime. Yeah.

Bronman, thank you very much. Number 29 in the charts. And number three, inexplicably in America. Dear, can't think of a suitable joke, says Steve Howe. I hereby pledge 50 pounds to a charity of Mark's choosing if he will see Melania and give us an honest in-depth review. Teng di Teng, Teng, Teng, Teng, Teng, Teng, etc. Steve just played the bagpipes at my ninth burns night of the year for more to go. Oh, well done.

for whatever you've gone through Steve is pledging 50 pounds to charity so because you went to see the film and paid money to see it did which I feel very dirty about having done okay but someone is going to benefit

so okay so you know Melania then okay do you want to hear a clip from the trailer not really I think you're going to anyway it's in the script all right you can come in go one of it

a Paris legacy will be there peace maker peace maker and in the fire beautiful Together with like-minded leaders, we have a voice. Is it safe? Here it's safe. Everyone wants to know.

So here it is. Hi, Mr. President. Congratulations. Did you watch it? I did not, yeah. I will see it on the news. Well, I mean, here in the UK, everyone doesn't want to know. I mean, I said I paid to sit in Islington.

There was two other people in the screening, one of whom might have been a journalist, I'm not sure. So, here's just firstly, it's not a film, it is a bribe, it's a grubby piece of propaganda for which Amazon paid $40 million, which a record amount from which Melania personally pocketed $28 million. They also committed $35 million to marketing, not including promotion on socials from Melania's husband, the president of the United States, are one of the most famous people in the world. So it took costs to $75 million in the US. I think it took $7 million in its opening weekend.

It will lose money, but that's how bribes work. you pay money and then you get things in return. So that is what it is. It's directed by Brett Ratner, who's been a pariah since multiple accusations of sexual misconduct book in 2017. He also, of course, features in the most recent dump of the Epstein files, photographs of him

have been everywhere since they happen. Films got lots of rubbish super eight to end the illusion of depth, but obviously it never gets beyond lip gloss. Two-thirds of the New York production crew have asked for their names to be redacted from the credits, understandably so. I think the remaining third will

sorely regret having left them on. The film, just before the film started, there was a trailer for Michael. Apparently, Malani's favourite artist. So the film opens with the MGM logo, Our Scratchier artists, arts for art sake. There is no art here at all. This is just all about money.

We hear her robotic voice talking about family, business, philanthropy and becoming the first lady in the United States again. So it's basically the 20 days leading up to the inauguration of a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assault to the presidency. She says, with my film, I want to show American people my journey from private citizen to public, nurturing my family. Then we go into Trump Tao, which is this, looks like somebody just sicked up a bunch of gold.

It looks like the Paul Raymond Review Bar office, actually weirdly, in Soho. Malani keeps talking about working. When she says working, she means trying on frocks. My creative vision is always clear, and it is my responsibility to communicate this with the people I work with. That is her work. She also says this is all leading to four days of celebration. I remember it as being a week of morning, but there we are. We meet David, who she worked with on every single detail of the dresses and the balls.

She says, I honor the tradition of the White House, which obviously her husband and her then said about destroying the minute they got in. They are literally destroying it as we speak. She talks about how hard it is to get the transition between the first families, which obviously a lot harder because when it happened with her, her family didn't cooperate. with it at all. They didn't graciously meet anybody. They just stormed around being snot-nosed, over-privileged, rich people. She coos over a dress that she says is very chic and elegant, but you've probably seen it. It looks like she's been run over by a bike. She whines about needing to be a mother, a wife, a daughter and a friend, and carps endlessly about my best initiative and her vision to save the children. I should point out that since her husband

came to power, children have been separated from their families, have been in car, and You have masked ice agents running around the streets, killing people, killing American citizens on the streets and kids being imprisoned and sent to detention centers. Apparently, it says at the end, one of the things she's done is she's raised 25 million for this kid's charity that she's set up. She earned 28 million from the documentary. If she's just given them her fee, it would have been more good. There's Jimmy Carter's funeral, which is basically made to just be all about how sad Melania feels about her own personal family losses. She watches the fires in L.A. on television, and the music tells us that she's sad. Meanwhile, we don't see anything of her husband's response to those fires and this disgraceful way in which he behaved.

I mean, it is literally, you kind of think, it's like somebody making a documentary in which Eva Braun feels sad about war whilst Hitler invades Poland. I mean, it's just like all this stuff is going on, and all we're hearing is this person saying, oh, yes, I care about the children. and just everything is for my family. And she says, I will always use my influence and power to fight for those in need. It makes Derek Zoolander seem like smart and, you know, self-deprecating.

Five days away from the inauguration, she's still going on about a creative vision, and it's all about the hat. She talks about Mara Lago as a refuge and a place like an exhale. And if you've ever seen anything from Mara Lago, that's it. And then in its final,

act, it basically turns into triumph of the will. I mean, it's a piece of handsomely mounted crypto-fascist propaganda in which Melania basically talks about the American spirit is filled with hope and optimism. And she's saying this as the Trump family prepared to move into the White House to actually destroy democracy. And then you realize it's a heist movie. It's a heist movie about a crime family breaking into the seat of power and stealing the cutlery whilst destroying democracy. There's a visit to Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's all theatre because we know what Trump thinks about soldiers. He called them suckers and losers. Melania says this is a powerful reminder that freedom is not free. She says, as her family are

preparing to enrich themselves, engorge themselves by getting into the White House and basically corruption on a level never before seen. And then it gets really ugly. A preacher, thanks God, for making Trump leader again. Melania drones on about her. elegance and sophistication. There is inauguration day, which is like reliving a nightmare. She says, it's all about hope and optimism. There's some stuff about, actually, I don't even want to go where that is. That's just, anyway, then there's a thing about she says that as an immigrant, she thinks that everyone must do what they can to protect their own individual rights. Meanwhile, as I said, under ice, masked agents are literally dragging people off the streets and

shooting them whilst being videoed. There is a shot of Joe Biden and Carmel Harris looking uncomfortable. J.D. Vance looks like a drag addict addict. Don Jr. looks like he's completely off his head. Trump says the Golden Age of America begins right now. He claims to be a peacemaker and a unifier and the ghost of Lenny Riefenstahl fills the room. Melania claims no one has endured what my husband has endured, except for all those people who have been imprisoned and killed under his regime. And then the whole of the last section of it is just a MAGA promotional reel. That's why it's taken money in those states because this was the very best moment of the presidency. This was the only moment of which he stands up and says the golden age of America begins now. And then of course

since then everything has gone completely to pieces. And then it ends with her saying, I will move forward with purpose and of course style. The only thing it's interesting about it is this. The music choices. The film opens with a shot of Mara Lago and the Rolling Stones Gimmie Shelter. And Brett Ratner has clearly not listened to Gimmy Shelter because they are in the car with Malani. and the family, and what the Rolling Stones are singing is rape, murder is just a shot away. And clearly they're not listening to the lyrics. Then they steal Aretha Franklin doing Amazing Grace, which of course is a song about slavery, all references to which Trump is in the process of removing from all historical buildings.

Then they have the candlelight dinner, which they play accompanied by the theme from Midnight Express. I know. a hellhole, it's like, I'm literally watching. And then there's a bit when there's, as Trump returns to power, there's thieving magpie, which is most famously used in Clockwork Orange in a scene of ultraviolence in which Alex and his droogs are beating the living daylights out of this other gang. And then there's a, there's a scene of Trump and Melania holding hands, and they start playing Ravel's Bolero, which if you remember is most famously used in 10, which is about an older,

a creepy guy. You remember the thing about 10. Anyway, either Brett Ratner doesn't know any of this, or it's an act of subversion, but I think it's actually that he doesn't know any of this. It's horrible. It is the most depressing experience I have ever had in the cinema. I mean, I've seen a Serbian film.

I've seen Cannibal Holocaust. I have never felt this depressed in my life in the cinema. I thought it was absolutely repugnant. And just to underline, Or everything that you said, her stuff about saving lives and all that. Nicholas Christoph, who's a journalist at New York Times, very story, very kind of acclaimed, has gone around the world documenting full New York Times what the destruction of USAID has done. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And how, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people have died and kids have died because of what he's done to USA. Yeah. So let's have no more. No, let's have no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

What do you think? Do you think this is just going to... I mean, it's 29 here. That's it. It's gone now. It is gone. It's good. Next week, it's gone. And in America, next week it'll be gone. Because all the MAGA, you know, lunatics went out to stay. Is it taking more than you thought it would?

Yeah. Okay. I won't be... It'll end up on Amazon, weren't it? It'll be... because Jeff Bezos paid all that money for it. Yeah, so, you know, I almost feel that we should boycott Amazon. Well, there's another whole... avenue to wander down. So anyway, that film is, which we should just refer to as that film,

is it number 29. Anyway, now we get into the box office top 10. Good. Is this thing on? Is it number 10? Number 29 in America. J.C. says, long-term list, a second time email, I wanted to share my thoughts on, is this thing on? Like Simon, I have a child who's tried stand-up. So I took him to see it thinking he'd enjoy a look at that world. He'd seen the trailer and hope for insights into the comedy scene since he's not yet old enough to go to those clubs. So there's obviously quite a difference between your kid, JC and mine. After the film, I asked what he thought,

and his response surprised me. He said the trailer didn't reflect the movie at all. He expected a story about the struggle to make it as a comic, but instead it was more about self-help, the end of a long-term relationship, and the impact on a family. He also wished there'd be more material about Will Arnett's stand-up writing, especially after hearing your interview.

It reminded me a bit of American fiction, where the trailer emphasised the absurd satire, but the film itself focused much more on family dynamics. I personally enjoyed the film, though I disagree with Mark about the direction being unobtrusive. I found the camera getting so close to Will Annette distracting, and Bradley Cooper's appearance felt unnecessary. Presumably that's a reference to the fact he wore a hat indoors at the end.

I also can't understand why this film was set in America, considering it's meant to be about John Bishop's life and think if it had been set in the UK, it would have been funnier. That said, I did like the nod to Liverpool Football Club. keep up the good work and so on. And I didn't see the trailer, and it may well be that it gave a wrong impression, but it was always going to be a family getting back together, of which stand-up was the glue that sort of put them back together.

Yeah, I mean, I liked it very much, and it's inspired by the John Bishop's story, but it's very much its own story. Number nine here, number ten. Number nine. Number ten in America is 28 years later, the Bone Temple, which he talked a lot about, and in Take Two, there's a lot of stuff about Bone Temple. Yeah. Number eight here, number 14 in Canada, primate.

The King of Old School on YouTube says it was a rubbish usual studio. I think you mean dumping ground. You wrote Dumbing Ground, dumping ground, Janney released. But I did enjoy it in a leave my brain at the door kind of way. My friend, who is deaf, was impressed with the representation of the deaf character on screen, though. So credit to the film's British writer and director. That's primate at number eight. Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed it.

I mean, I think leave your brain at the door. leave your brain on the floor. I mean, there is a lot of head-smashing fun in it. And it does exactly what it says on the tin. Stephen Clancy in Kobe, Japan. Earlier this year, I was contacted by Paramount about using a song we made being used in the upcoming movie, Primate. It's a happy little song about a crab

walking to the left and then walking to the right that is used in the kindergartens, used in kindergartens during English class. Unfortunately, we can't see the movie yet because the release date for Japan isn't until late February. I'm hoping your review can help us decide whether we go on a class trip to watch it together. I hear a man gets his face ripped off. Stephen Clancy.

So it's very 18. It's very 18. Very 18. Do you remember a song about a crab walking to the left and walking to the right? I don't immediately off the top of my head. I do remember the man's face being ripped off. Maybe it's in, Stephen. Maybe it's not.

Get back in touch once you've seen the film. Marty Suprem is at 7? I liked it very much. And I mentioned, but I hosted the London Critics Circle film. film awards on Saturday. Timothy Shallame won Best Actor. Number six here, number six there, Avatar, Fire and Ash. And he laughed at my joke.

Number five, here, number four, over there, Zutropolis, too. He laughed at many of my jokes, in fact. Number four here, number two in America is Iron Lung. Yeah, no, I haven't seen Iron Lung. Josh in Doncaster. This email is sent preemptively, as I assume Iron Lung will break into the top 10 this week. On the idea that a film is shaped by what you bring to it.

If Mark hasn't seen Iron Lung, I haven't. It's based on the 2022 indie game of the same name and made almost entirely by YouTuber Marquis. Markiplier, marketplier, market supplier, which is one word, who wrote, directed, financed, edited and stars in it. In the story, an event called The Quiet Rapture, Wipes out all planets, stars and life, leaving only around a thousand survivors.

Convicts are then sent in cramped iron-lung submarines to explore. Or oceans of blood on distant moons. I mean, obviously you need a submarine for that and quickly discover they're not alone. Many have called the film slow for its first hour, but I suffer from thalasophobia, fear of deep bodies of water. So the moment we descended into that blood ocean,

I was sweating. I can imagine. The next two hours were pure anxiety, claustrophobic shots of the sub, long stretches of isolation, oxygen depletion and guilt, all building a constant sense of dread. Even though most of the film is just the protagonist,

and it's navigating and taking photos, it absolutely worked on me. For a self-funded directorial debut, it's impressively made with strong direction, great sound design, and genuinely tense moments. I'd love Mark to watch it if he hasn't already. Thank you for the hours of Wittentatainment.

So didn't come up as a national press show. It's number two in America, number four here. So it is distributed by Iron Lung Inc. So can we get in touch with Iron Lung Inc and see whether we can get a great. All right, in that case, I'll watch it. You might have to pay, go back to that cinema in Islington. Yeah, I would feel perfectly fine about paying for an actual movie.

That's incredible for a film to be top four here. Number two in America. Remarkable. Entirely made by a YouTuber. Remarkable. Number three here, five over there, Shelter. Tim says, as a long-time fan of the show, I just wanted to tell you about a film that I worked on last year.

I was the production designer on Shelter. Very good. I know you're very aware of the hard work that the art department puts into making I am. For Shelter, we built a full-sized lighthouse on a cliff on a cliff in the middle of the cliff in the middle of winter, which was a challenge. We also built the exterior and interior living quarters amongst others. I've supervised a lot of films, but this was my first feature film I designed, and I'm really proud of it. I'm sending you this email for no other reason that I hope you see the film and that you like the design. I was the supervising art director on Hamnet, just before I started

on Shelter. Wow. And had the same fantastic art department. and team with me. We even, here's the connection, we even reused a lot of the same oak beams from Hamlet's house and the globe for our builds on shelter. Very good. We have been nominated for Hamlet at the BFDG Awards, which I'm presenting. So if you are doing the ceremony in February this year, hopefully I'll be shaking your hand again. I will definitely be using that bit of I mean, the whole thing about recycling stuff when making sets is a really, really big thing now because they are trying very, very hard to make movie sets, you know, uh, uh, green and that is one of the ways of doing it is that you recycle the stuff.

So that's the connection between Hamnet and Statham. Yes. Statham. So Tim, thank you very much indeed. And did you admire the design? I did. Yeah, and I did enjoy shelter. Number two here, number eight over there is the housemaid.

I mean, it's done much better than I expected. It's rompingly ripe stuff, but it has done very, very well. And number one here, 11 over there is Hamnet. Yeah. And I will talk about this more when we talk about awards. later on, there is a lot of best film momentum now behind Hamlet. Sarah says, greetings from the Falklands, Congregation 2. Okay, so I imagine that's the Iwitter app.

Okay. Shows two listeners on the Falkland Islands. Yeah. Where we tend to see films a little bit later than the UK, and especially recently as the cinema's projector was broken over Christmas, and we had to wait for a part to make its way 8,000 miles south from the UK before it could be repaired. However, all was well just in time to see Hamlet.

I was a bit worried going in, as I'd forgotten to take any tissues, and generally like Mark will cry at anything vaguely emotional. So given its reputation, I was expecting to be a bit of a weepy mess. I was surprised to find it didn't make me cry at all, and I wasn't sure why. Later, I listened to Mark's review, where he said that the film was trying so hard to be emotional that it left him cold. And I definitely agree, although the acting is strong and there are things to like about the film, the emotional tone of it is very high at the start, and it doesn't vary much.

disappointingly for me, the film was much less successful than the book. Oh, I see. I think that means in telling a story because it is very, very successful. However, I'm glad I saw it. Sarah, and because the internet is so slow in the Falklands, we still get our film on actual reels, not digital

downloads. Thanks to Fazan, who looks after projection, ticket sales and all things film in Stanley. Wow. All right, so hello to all our listeners. Two of them. Both of them, and they use the phrase you're looking for. Okay, we're going to going to be back in a moment with the chronology of water. It's never over. Can I do it? Jeff Buckley. And Hamlet.

Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet. The mild cigar. When did they stop saying from Benson and Hedges? Because that's... It always used to be the marcegagel from Benson and Hedges. Which is why, hence the line found under Benzger and Benzs and Hedges. Anyway, yes. And we're doing that because Riz Ahmed is our special guest. With AmX Platinum, you have access to... to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come.

That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada.

Reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. Now, our special guest today is the British actor and rapper Riz Ahmed. Been on the show many times, of course. 2017, he was named by Time as one of the most influential people in the world. Wow.

Which is incredible. Wow. Academy Award Best Live Action Short for the Long Goodbye. We spoke to him about that. Loads of other big shows and movies. He plays the titular role in Hamlet, on which he is also a producer. What do you read, my lord?

Words. Word, words. You should walk out of the air, my lord. Or into my grave. How pregnant, sometimes your replies are. Happiness, though, often madness, It's upon. My lord, should I take my leave of you?

You cannot take from me anything that I'm not more willingly apart from now. Except my life. I accept my life. And that is a clip from Hamlet, Riz Ahmed. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to see you again.

Yeah, you too. How you doing? I'm doing well, thanks, yeah. It's a couple of years, I think, since you've been on. You've become a dad. which is kind of relevant to this show. So life is good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And as you said, it's something kind of that I didn't expect to play such a big part of our process when we were making the film. But being a brand new sleep deprived dad actually massively fed into playing Hamlet and finding myself in a raw place that was unraveling, you know. Next week we've got Emerald. Finnell coming on the show, talking about Wuthering Heights, and something that she's wanted to do since she was a teenager. So she read it at school and she thought, I need to tell this story. And although there are very few comparisons to be made between her film and your film, this has a sort of similar beginning, doesn't it? From back to when you were a teenager and an impact that it had on you when you were at school, just take us back to the beginning of this story. Yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah, I was a teenager at school and I felt very out of place at the school. and in my own skin. And I felt like an outsider to everything that Shakespeare represented, you know, felt very kind of stuffy and establishment and elitist. But I had an amazing English teacher who took me under his wing. Chris Roseblade. That's exactly right. And he gave me this play.

And in it, I found how I was feeling. I was like, oh, hang on a minute. The principal character in the heart of a kind of cultural crown jewels, Prince Hamlet, he feels like this as well. He feels like the world is an unfair place and he's trying to hold on to his values and his authenticity. Just like I felt as a teenager at that school and just like I think how many of us are feeling today.

So I was really struck by how actually radical and confronting and modern this story and this character were. And of course at the time I was big into rap music and it felt like a massive overlap between Shakespeare and what my favourite rappers were doing. Explain how that would be. Well, it was just very clear to me that this was, these were words

that are not supposed to be read on a page. They're supposed to be performed. It's supposed to be heard out loud. And when you do perform them out loud, they have a flow and a force and a rhythm that gives them a power. And I think for a lot of people, Shakespeare becomes an academic analytical exercise

for GCSE as you're reading it. But if you read your favorite pop songs on the page, a lot of them would feel pretty nonsensical. You know what I mean? And so it was the performance element and reading it out loud in class, having Chris Roseblade teach it to me alongside Public Enemy in Ginsburg and Beat Poetry,

it really opened it up to me and really excited me. And I thought, okay, this is about how I'm feeling. This is about right now. And this is as urgent and contemporary as my favorite rap music. I want to tell this story. And it was 17 years old.

I want to tell this story in a way that opens it up, democratizes it, and allows everyone to feel like, They also have ownership over these crown jewels. Do your roots in rap affect the way that you deliver the lines? I certainly feel as though you enjoyed the lines very much. Yes, interesting. You know, I think the big thing for me,

I don't know if it was to do with my background in music, is I didn't want to deliver a poetry recital. I didn't want to give a kind of intellectual performance, particularly when, you know, Hamlet is a character is often accused of being overly intellectual and the whole endeavour of Shakespeare can be overly intellectualized. We wanted to do something that was very visceral

and very, very much in the body. And so I guess rhythm and flow and the percussion of the language and the sounds and the words themselves, I allowed that to move me before I tried to really excavate or analyze the words, you know? It has a musicality to it. And I think that's also came from working with a Neil Carrier.

Why is it a Hindu family that we find ourselves engaged with here? Well, it's interesting because when Chris Roseblade first gave me Hamlet, one of the things I was really struck by is, hang on, this story's like growing up in Wembley. You know, Hamlet can't marry Ophelia. She's from the wrong family. Okay, check. Everyone's squabbling over the family business, right? Check.

The ghost of your dead dad has come back to haunt you and he's disappointed in you, right? Check. There's even a cultural tradition both in the Jewish tradition and in Hindu and many actually kind of traditions of marrying your sister-in-law if your brother dies. If you yourself are unmarried and you've got these orphans, you know your nieces and nephews, you marry your sister-in-law. It was a way of protecting those orphans and protecting the widow. So I've grown up with people who've had to do that.

And so reading this quintessentially British play, I was like, actually, if you want to do a contemporary version of this and make it feel. real and believable rather than far-fetched, you kind of have to set it in one of these communities, in a community like mine. And that was one of the things that excited me so much. So it wasn't a kind of like, you know, a DEI imposition on the text where we said, we're going to flip it.

It was actually the DNA of this story lends itself most readily to be placed in one of those immigrant communities. And when you do that, it just feels more real and tangible. People know about Elsinore. I have Danish family now and we went to Elsinore just last year. So we've been to the actual place. But Elsinor in your film is different. Just explain what you've done with that.

Yeah, what we've done with it is it's a kind of construction company property development empire. That's what Elsinor is. It's Elsinore construction, you know. And what's interesting about the original play is it's about dispossessing Fortimbrass and dispossessing people and stealing their land and, you know, we felt like there was a very kind of neat and authentic kind of

comparison with like property development, you know, like the homelessness crisis and things like this that feel very true to modern London and just like the original, it's a topic that separates the haves and the have-nots

and the resentments that bubble up and the revolutions and the revolutionary spirit that can kind of spark up around that issue. So Art Malik plays my uncle, Claudius, who's incredible. Sheba Chada, my mother Gertrude, also phenomenal. And Tim Spall is their right-hand man and political fixer, Polonius.

He's amazing. He's amazing. And we wanted to just flip the script with how so much of this was done. Like, as I said, the overall approach is make it visceral, not intellectual. Great. That's done with Anil, this camera work, the way we all kind of almost did a rehearsal camp where we try to get under the skin of it and make it our own. But also, if you look at these characters,

you know, Gertrude is often played as basically a bit thick and a bit hapless. Sheba Chada is not going to give you that. Sheba Chada is going to give you the most deep, mesmeric, kind of conflicted, profound kind of presence on screen always. And so suddenly that relationship between Hamlet and his mother becomes much more meaningful. Ophelia is often short-changed, as we know.

Essays have been written about that in the original play by Shakespeare. we've gotten rid of Horatio which is Hamlet's best friend and given that whole part to Ophelia so their relationship is more meaningful and Polonius is always kind of a bit of a bumbling idiot look don't get me wrong I love a lot of that kind of

comic relief that Shakespeare's written but we want to do this lean mean action thriller version of it your right hand man and political fixer it's got to be a bit scary and it's got to be a man of fewer words and Tim Spall can give you a soliloquy with the look of you know

by throwing a look with the right intensity. So we've kind of, I hope, really reimagine who these characters can be for a new generation in a way that makes it just feel more urgent and modern.

I'll ask you about a couple of scenes in particular. The to be or not to be seen must, you know, in some productions it feels like a millstone around the production's neck. You know, everyone knows it's coming. How are you going to do it? I have never seen anything as bold and exciting as the game of chicken

that you are undertaking in the BMW at 100 miles an hour. Just explain what that is and how you came to that process. Because you've stood the scene on its head. Simon, that means so much to me. It really does. This is the most famous speech ever written, probably in any language.

And people who feel like they don't even have a relationship to Shakespeare. And I say, to be or not to be, they go, okay, that is a question. Actually went around the streets reasoning. We just made a short doc about Hamlet and what it means for us today. Asking people in barbershops, on brick lane, and the street corners and school teachers and lollipop ladies, they all know.

To be not to be that. question. So we all know these words, but I feel like we've lost their meaning. You know, you say something enough, you just don't really know disconnected from his meaning. The tradition around this speech, as you say, is it's a pause in the middle of the play. Everything stops, comes out, Hamlet philosophizes about life and death and suicide. He's holding a dagger, he's pointing in himself maybe. My belief is that a true interpretation of the language itself is that if he's holding a dagger, it should be pointing outwards. This is not a speech about suicide.

This is a speech about armed resistance, which is a taboo thing to talk about even now. This is a very confronting radical plane, very confronting radical speech at the heart of it. He's saying, the world is unfair. Do I fight back even if fighting back means it's the end of me? That's a very different question to, shall I kill myself or not. And so we wanted to stage it with that confronting adrenal radical energy and really, I hope, kind of bring out that the truth and the DNA of this speech has been buried under kind of centuries of tradition

that have turned the speech into something else. And so look, if Hamlet, it's as simple as this, I've got to tell you, if Hamlet's playing a game of chicken, daring himself to fight back, let's shoot it as a game of chicken. Let's have him driving 100 miles an hour towards the truck. You take your hands off the wheel. Well, exactly, because he's trying to dare him. to face the undiscovered country and dare himself to kind of, you know, go to the very

edge of that cliff and say, do I have the bravery to lose everything, lose even my life if it means fighting for what's right? That's what Hamlet is about. That's what to be or not to be it's about. And I'm really proud of that moment. And, you know, I mean, I hope it's, I'm not speaking at school saying, but Ethan Hawke emailed me after watching it and said that he's never seen it done like that and it's was really groundbreaking and and that's anil that's anil caria that's what he does he takes as I said the poetry and makes it visceral uh so that that was one scene I wanted to mention but also the um the the the dance routine um can you explain it's going to people are going to have to see it because it's it's very precise it's very beautiful it's very meaningful

it's it's scary um as well just um say what you and the filmmakers here are trying to do with this dance sequence. You know, in the original play, Hamlet, there's this famous thing, the play within a play. In Kenneth Branner's version, it's Charlton Heston, who kind of gets up and starts

kind of giving this incredible speech. You know, Hamlet is a fan of actors, a fan of theatre, and there's this performance that happens in the middle of the play, right? That was just yet another example of how, when we said,

all right, what would our Hamlet be, me and Anil? What if we said it in a house? our community. What if we just make it as real for ourselves as possible? Suddenly what was revealed to us is like, well, actually, we do have performances at our weddings. There's always a dance performance at Indian weddings. Have you ever been to any yourself? There's very often a dance performance literally slap bang in the middle of the wedding, right? It's choreographed by the boy's side or the girl's side. And increasingly, you know, wealthy families, they pay professional

dancers to come and do it rather than letting the cousins kind of like do something shambolic and cute. And so this wealthy family comes and brings in these professional dancers and Hamlet subverts here. And that is our performance in the middle of the play. That is our play within the play. And I think it speaks to the kind of approach we've taken, which is trying to preserve the DNA of the original, but making it feel more real, partly because of its setting and partly because of just the way it's shot.

It's such a gorgeous sequence. And we were lucky to have Akram Khan, the kind of world-renowned choreographer create that whole sequence for us. What's next few years? What do we see you in after this? The next thing that I've got coming out

is another thing that I've produced and created that's something that I'm finding really exciting and nourishing at the moment is a TV series called Bait and it's on Amazon Prime at the end of March. It's a comedy. But in some way also kind of subversing subverting kind of archetypal

figures in our canon this time James Bond so the storyline is I play an out-of-work actor who somehow gets through to the last round of auditions to be the next James Bond and when word gets out that he might be playing the next James Bond

this character people have a lot of very strong opinions about it and before long his life starts to emulate the spy thriller that he's been auditioning for So it's very meta It's a lot of fun Shiba Chada is in it again Who plays Gertrude in this

Because I just want to do everything With Shiba Chada Gus Khan is in it It's a really fun Out and out kind of comedy With a strong musical element to it Oh so And when do we see that?

That will be the end of March On Amazon Prime And the Tom Cruise film Digger Yeah that's I think it's Later this year Autumn this year

October Yeah Never more than a few weeks Away from another Resarmid project That's the way I'm taking. Riz Ahmed, thank you so much.

Very nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Riz Ahmed, talking about his new movie Hamlet. Now, we should say, because Mark's about to review it. Yes. Because of the way the promotion for this film worked out, Riz was only available tomorrow as we speak on Wednesday. This is from Douglas Adams, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. So Mark hasn't heard the interview, but it was great. You haven't done it yet. Wasn't it good? I'm sure it was brilliant. Yes. Yeah. I love the fact that he named check me so much.

Okay. But anyway, so that doesn't matter, which means that Mark's comments are now entirely separate from everything that you've just heard. Yeah, so everything you just said, I haven't heard it yet. I'm sure it was great. So if I repeat or contradict to him. He's always enormously entertaining. He is. Okay. So, Hamlet, 15 for strong bloody violence and implied a strong language. The official tagline for the movie is a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a wealthy British South Asian family. story as you know hamlet returns home for his father's funeral and learns that his uncle claudius is now going to marry his widowed mother and then his ghost the god's father's ghost hamlet's father's ghost appears to him and says that he was murdered by claudius and then hamlet becomes consumed by revenge but also filled with doubt about whether or not the ghost is real whether or not you know so how to so it's it's everyone knows the story of hamlet so this is written by michael lesley adapting Shakespeare's text, apparently started work on it 13 years ago.

Wow. Film was first announced about 10 years ago, so this has been a long gestating project, and I'm sure that Rez Ahmed will have talked to you about this in the interview that you will have done by tomorrow. By tomorrow, yeah. Directed by Neil Carrier, who of course worked with Rez Ahmed on The Long Goodbye, which then went on to win the Oscar for Best Live Action Short and was such a terrific piece of work, and which incidentally now looks like news footage of an ice raid.

I mean, when we saw it, it was like, you know, a dystopian horror. It now literally looks like some UK ice raid footage. That director also made that brilliant Ben Whishaw film, Surge, which I'm sure that Rez Ahmed will have brought up because that is so urgent, so kind of breathless, so in your face. So the key thing about this version of Hamlet is that Riz Ahmed reads the play very much as a story about basically the way in which, this is a quote from him, it's about grieving your illusions of a fair world

whilst being gaslit about injustice and confronting the cost of unmoored masculinity. And then Anilcaria, the director, called it a deeply personal psychological thriller about somebody trying to hold onto their sanity in a world that makes that boardline impossible. So basically, it is very much about this troubled young man trying to keep a grip on a world which is gaslighting him whilst also thinking that his,

you know, his sanity is falling back, which of course is absolutely the core of the play, but there are different ways of focusing Hamlet. In this particular version, it's absolutely the world through his eyes. So one of the things that they've done is that they've taken out scenes that Hamlet isn't in. And one of the things that the camera work in the film has done is it's very much seeing it from, from him, I think at one point it's described as being on the show. shoulder of Hamlet so that you see it through his eyes. And of course, I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of that film, The Ninth Configuration, which has a very similar take on the whole way in

which madness works in Hamlet. The other thing that Riz Ahmed says he really wanted to do was to, because he thought this story would absolutely resonate with teenagers because when he first read Hamlet, he was a teenager. It was recommended to him by a teacher. And he really identified with its themes of alienation and that feeling of being gaslit by the world and the feeling of injustice. So what he wanted to make was to make a propulsive drama which was focusing on emotion and physicality rather than anything that was kind of intellectual or cerebral or that would take you out of it. And I do think that the film does that. It is, and this is very much to do with the director who's got that very good way of kind of really making something move forward in a very physical way. And it does it nowhere more so than in the scene which is always going to be the hardest thing to ever do in Hamlet.

Because to be or not to be seen is kind of everyone knows it's coming. here we go and in fact I think there was one version on stage recently which they put it at the beginning of the play in order to kind of get it out of the way I think the way in which they do

to be or not to be in this film is really smart am I allowed to say do you think what happened? I think it's fine I think it has been talked to it

I have read about it so I think it's perfectly fine so basically he does that scene behind the wheel of a car which he is driving very fast the point being that what that does is it makes the to be

not to be questioned very immediate because there is every chance that he is going to not to be. Correct. And I think that's a really smart way of doing it. It's like a game of chicken that he's playing behind the wheel of his own car. Precisely. Precisely. And again, that brings you to the whole

James Dean troubled teenager. You know, Jim Stock is a good kid from a bad. All that's a bad kid from a good home. All that sort of stuff. I think that is really smart. The other scene which really stands out in terms of the filmmaking is, you know, the play is the thing by which I'll catch the conscience of the King. The play, which, you know, if you've read Hamlet or seen Hamlet, there's this weird thing about,

I think that he did this, I'm going to put on a play and then I'm going to watch him to see whether he flinches when the play. You got, really? And then in this, they do the play. And the play is really like a kind of horror show, like a kind of fantasia. And you can think, yeah, no, actually that makes sense. That play actually would prick the conscience of the king and the look of horror on the father. So I know it's not the king, but it's, you know, but the, but on the father's face, on Claudius's face, which is played by Art Malick, is... He's on good form. He's very good. He's very, very good.

You've also got Morvith Clark as Ophelia. Tim Spallor's Polonius. Great. Wow. He is fantastic. He's just, I mean, that man walks on water, but it is, he is so... The casting of him is a stroke of genius, but his performance is really, really good. There was a quote from Riz Ahmed who said this thing about,

we wanted to make it feel like you're watching it in real time, and he described it as almost like a first person shooter Hamlet, which is literally looking over it, a lot of that is to do with the cinematography, which is by Stuart Bentley. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and I thought that since what they set out to do was to make a version that spoke to that, you know,

that teenager that Riz Ahmed was when he first came across it, and to say it's about that internal struggle when you're overwhelmed by injustice, but you're also being gasless, and you're also wondering whether you are losing your marbles, and it is through your POV, and make the whole thing go like that. I thought it was terrific.

It's interesting because Emerald Fennell and Wuthering Heights, more of which next week, and she's our guest, it's all about the impact that it had on her as a teenager. That's the film that she's made. Okay, okay. So it sounds, though, this is the same, that this is the Hamlet that he imagined when, when he was a teenager.

Which is what you, if you can catch that, it's really smart. And actually, we should say that, for example, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet was a hit because it did exactly that, because it told that story to a teenage audience who went, yeah, no, absolutely that. So I think it's a really smart film. And nice of Riz to say all those nice things about the show. I was putting the show rather than you. Yes, and also about you, Mark.

Yeah, thank you. And how much he's appreciated. I thought it was terrific. And that to be or not to be seen, that is a really... It's definitely a standout moment in the entire film because it's genuinely scary. Whatever he's saying, it's genuinely scary because you think, don't take your hands off the wheel.

You're going at 100 miles an hour along with incoming traffic. And I don't know how they did it. But anyway, it looks genuinely scary and an inspired section, I think. It did remind me of one very funny joke from The Last Action Hero. You remember the last action hero, which is like it's all meta in the world of film.

And there's a bit with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's a trailer for a film. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger's face. And there's a castle in the background. And he goes, to be or not to be? Not to be. And the castle blows up. That's very good.

Excuse me. I'm choking with emotion because it's nothing to do with Hamlet is to do with the laughter lift. And I'm anticipating the hilarity, which is about. to descend upon the nation and in our studio. So let's skip joyfully. Simon Paul is literally in my eye line for this and I'm finding it very disturbing. Go on. Well, Mark, some good news. Some good news. I got my COVID test back. It was 63. I also got my IQ test back. It was positive. And I've been thinking about... That's quite good. Isn't they right? Yeah. I've been thinking about my dad a lot this week. He was very big on self-sufficiency

and self-reliance. He was a... If you've got to... up there on your own, you can get down on your own sort of man. Fantastic father. Awful air traffic controller. I was sure I was going to mess. That was good. I wondered where it was going. I saw on TikTok this week, as you know, it's my main source of news. I do. That by law, you have to turn on your headlights when it's raining in Sweden, which is absurd. How the heck am I supposed to know when it's raining in Sweden? Correct. I have no idea. Anyway, comedy and chucking. all round. Throw to Mark,

no, I won't do that. Coming up, it's never over, Jeff Buckley and the... No, it's never over. Jeff Buckley. There's three films. It's never over.

Also, Jeff Buckley, and the chronology and of water. It also could be Jeff Buckley and the chronology of water. They could be his band from back in the day. Very good. Couldn't it?

So we'll be reviewing It's Never Over and Jeff Buckley and the chronology of water. That's right. All coming back after this. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds.

That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Charlotte Cardin's captivating eyes. Panorama mascara by L'Oreal Paris. The multi-level bristle brush catches every lash from inner to outer corner. For panoramic volume with lashes that are so fanned out,

eyes appear 1.4 times bigger. See life in panorama because you're worth it. Shop L'Oreal Paris Panorama Mascara on Amazon now. Okay, well, having thoroughly confused all the film titles, and let's deal with the chronology of water. Feature directorial debut from Kristen Stewart, who we like very much, adapted by her from the memoir book of the same name by Lydia Yuknovich, which I had not read and not heard of before. So in the book, she describes growing up in the 80s, in Florida, being sexually abused by her father, who also abused her sister. Her mother was an alcoholic who did nothing to prevent the abuse.

Her only escape was swimming. And that was a sport in which she excelled. sports scholarship to Austin, Texas, battled addiction, which put paid to a sports career, relocated to Oregon, ended up collaborating with a group of students on the Ken Kesey Collective Project Caverns. So the story is a story of trauma, addiction, escape, entrapment, and ultimately emancipation through creativity. Here is a clip from the trailer.

Sometimes I think it arrived on paper. Hey, honey. I want to write. I want you all to be winners. This who appear into your imagination. Nobody's in the room but you and that panic. I love you. And whatever you want to do, I'll support it.

That's it. When there are no words for the pain, let your imagination change what you know. No one is big enough to hold what happens to us. Now, I think you can hear from that. is a very full-on experiential movie. And it is one of those, there's a lot of Shawshank. Before you get to the reduction, okay.

So filmed on, I think it's largely 16mm, split into chapters, which I imagine the book must have been. And at the center of it is Imogen Poots. And remember Imaging Poots came on the show to talk about Viverium? With Jesse Eisenberg. Yeah, right.

She gives the performance of a lifetime in the central role. Like Hamnet, this is a performance that requires its female protagonist to go through a gamut of emotions from, you know, at one point the loss of a child, the unraveling of life, the sense of being an outsider kind of screaming horror to joy and ecstasy. And now, Jesse Buckley is rightly, I think at the moment, being tipped for the best actress top honors at the Oscars. I think this performance by Imogen Poots is every bit as impressive. That is not in any way to diminish Jesse Buckley's Jim, but Image and Poots in this movie is astonishing. And she needs to be because the film is very, very filmy in as much as there's a lot of filmmaking going on in it.

So it's very montage. It's kind of put together in a very experimental way. It's very artistically adventurous and intense. And it's kind of a patchwork of image. ridges that sort of seem to kind of crash on and off the screen like waves on a beach. And there is this water metaphor going all the way through it. Water representing the fluid nature of memory, representing the bodily fluids of tears and sweat and excretions.

And in some way actually, the film uses water to discuss the female body as a shape of water to refer back to that Guillermo del Toro film. The sound design on it, I mean, you heard a little bit of in the trailer there. It is kind of abrasive and disorientating and very, very intense. And it's a tough watch, and it should be. And it's not an easy viewing experience at all. But as a kind of, as a look, look how adventurous I can be as a filmmaker. I'm going to do this in the way that I want to do it, not in a way.

It's not a film that tries to make friends with the audience. You know, it's not one of those films that goes, you love me, like me, this is nice. The ensemble cast is terrific. I mean, Imogen Pute carries its shoulder height. Thorough Birch is great as Lydia's sister. Earl Cave is great again as the dorkly supportive Philip. And then James Jim Belushi as Ken Kesey is dynamite. I've never seen him be that good before.

I mean, not in the deep hasn't been good before. I've never seen him be that good before. So it is a very, very impressive film with a dynamite central performance. It is not an easy watch. It is a tough watch. But, you know, listen, hats. off to Kristen Stewart for just going for it. You remember that quote, which we've discussed and related, which was made about Robert Pattinson,

that every movie choice he's made since Twilight has been designed to make him less famous. Yes. But Christian Stewart is kind of doing a similar thing. She's not that interested in the fame and the glamour. Not at all. And if you've been in such a huge blockbuster franchise, then maybe that ticks that book enormously. So you can concentrate on doing other things. But also, she clearly loves film.

and she's a filmmaker. I mean, this is a film made by a filmmaker. This is made by somebody who loves the nature of film. Right, let's have a quick what's on. We're going to hear from Junco. Here we go. Hi, Simon Mark. This is Junco from Japan Foundation touring film program.

We have a fantastic lineup including the final piece, A Murder Mystery, starring Ken Watanabe, and the latest from Takashimi Ike, the renowned director of audition and 13th Assassins. Screenings run across the country from 6 February to 31st March. The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, 26, then takes place in cinemas across the UK, 6th of February to the 31st of March. All the information, thanks to Junco for sending that in.

JPF-5film.org.org.com. If you've got something happening, which is cinematic or cinematic adjacent, which doesn't mean if you've got a cafe next to a cinema. Which, do you remember the old adverts for the 70s? Just 50 yards walk from this cinema. Well, maybe it does. A taste of the east. Just send us a well-recorded voice note to correspondents at codemey.com.

Okay, the Jeff Buckley film. It's never over Jeff Buckley. This is a documentary by Amy Berg about the career of Jeff Buckley. She had previously made Little Girl Blue, Janice, Little Girl Blue, the documentary about Janice Joplin. So the film draws on interviews with Jeff Pockley's mother, Mary, as well as friends, ex-partners and musicians. So the interviews include Rebecca Moore, Joan Wasser, Ben Harper, Susan Silver, Michelle Anthony, Amy Mann, Chris Cornell. And also there is a tranche of recorded voice messages and previously unseen film from the personal archive. Have a listen to this.

How would you like your fans to think of you? Just as, really, as a guy that's just like a really good storyteller, just somebody who does a job that they enjoy. Of course, it was incredible that so many people reacted to his music. But the fame that went along with that was not the fun part. Even when he acted confident, it was kind of an act. It was him channeling that bravely as a character, but I see that. still think that really insecure person was always there.

Well, everybody's sensitive, but sometimes men don't want to recognize it. I don't even want people to really think of me as a face or a name or a body or anything, just the music. So, look, firstly, I know that you're a huge... Well, yeah, I don't want to big myself up too much about that. I mean, I was a fan of the Grace album. And obviously from which the Hallelujah, his version of Hallelujah came. and I know how he ended his life.

Well, he didn't end his, you know, the accident that did for him. But I haven't really followed him devotional, I have to say. Okay. There are people who have, obviously, and in fact, the world tends to divine to people who don't know anything about him at all and people who follow him devotional. I'm kind of in the, I know it a little bit. So I interviewed the director on stage at the BFI.

This is exec produced by Brad Pitt, who originally wanted to do a dramatic film about, Buckley in which he would play the central role. Wow. Then Amy Berg suggested a drama, but then that mutated back into a documentary. And apparently it was Brad Pitt, who, it quotes, restored the whole archive. Although when I said to Amy Berg, and what was he like, said, I've never met him. I've never met him.

He exec produced the thing, but it was also at a distance. So she said when I interviewed her that what she wanted to do was to tell the story through the women that Buckley, So it opens with his mother and two partners. She says that he was very much a feminist, which is not something that she knew originally, but during the research, she discovered this. And she says that it's very important that he was in the 90s, which was a very misogynistic period of music history. But you've got this tranche of voicemails that make it feel really, really intimate voicemail messages. So in some ways it's about his relationship with his mother.

and the voicemails kind of really leads you into that. Because there isn't that much archive of him outside of this archive, which has kind of been, you know, got together by Brad Pitt, which he managed to get, you know, access to. She also uses animation. Now, the animator is Sarah Goodenstottier, who she'd worked with before. And they use illustrations to kind of bring the story to life,

to illustrate doodles to kind of get inside the, you know, the head of the subject. And it's an interesting thing because I had never really thought about Jeff Buckley's voice in this way before. But people talk about the way Jeff Buckley's song. And they compare it to Nina Simone, Nusrati Ali Khan, which is a really interesting comparison. There's also a touch of the kind of, you know, the fragility of Daniel Johnson in there. But the key thing is that Alanis Morissette said that there was no gender in his voice. And that is an interest.

I hadn't really thought about that. But it is interesting that his voice is very. Okay. ungendered. Amy Mann, who I'm a big fan of, played bass with the once very, very briefly, says that he was the best singer she ever heard. The other thing I didn't know, did you know he was a massive Led Zeppelin fan? No, I did not.

Loved, absolutely loved Led Zeppelin and hugely inspired by Led Zeppelin. So as somebody who was kind of outside of the circle of trust of the people who were like really, really into Jeff Buckley, I thought the documentary was really well done. It told the story in a way that, you know, led me through. stuff that I didn't know anything about. I'm sure that all Jeff Buckley fans know about the Led Zeppelin thing, but I didn't know that. But also it is, the voicemails lend a real intimacy to it. And the archive stuff is great because you kind of feel like you are getting a first-hand experience. But it's well put together because it's telling

the story. What it's not doing is just telling the story of a tragedy. It's not just doing that, you know, and then died tragically young. It's doing, achieved all this stuff and struggled with all this stuff during this period. I think anybody who sees it will want to go out and immediately listen to the records, which is what I did. Is there a lot of stuff that you've never seen before? Oh, it's stuff that I've never seen before, certainly, and there is also stuff in there that fans will not have seen before. Okay, it's never over. Jeff Buckley, is widely available, would you say? It's, yes, I mean, it's a, it's a, yes, because Universal are putting out, so it's a wide-release documentary, yeah. Okay. That's the end of take one. This has been a Sony

Music Entertainment Production, this week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh, Heather and Dom. The redactor Simon Paul, and if you're not following the pod already, please do so wherever you get your podcast. Come over on Patreon, because it's so much more fun there. And Mark is actually much more fun there, and so am I. Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff there. What is your movie of the week? Well, here's the thing, because I've had such fun this week. My movie of the week is, send help the chronology of water.

It's never over Jeff Buckley, Hamlet. Nice. Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet. The mild cigar. Still funny. Still funny. We'll be back next week. But also, take two has landed.

Also, Patreon, all the good stuff. A quick high to new ultras. Bev Draper. Adam Novice. That's a good name. Stephen Omatuna, I'm having a go at. I hope that's close enough, Stephen. Ghost World and Sophie Goldrick,

who was last week's correspondent of the week. I'll give the year's ultra membership. to Tim, no surname, but we've got his email, who was the production designer on Shelter and also did the art for, but don't mention it because they might have to play that. Oh, Hamnut? Oh, yes, that's right, but still, he might get confused.

It doesn't work if you do that. If you say Hamnut, nothing happens. No, hamnut, that doesn't work. But that's a problem. That's a problem you see miles ago. Anyway, so the year's membership goes to Tim, our favourite production designer. Thank you very much indeed.

You can get in touch, correspondence atcommonimo.com.