Hamnett
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Jacoby Jupe, Noah Jupe, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn
Director: Chloé Zhao
Rating: ★★★★★
‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ One of the most famous lines not only in Shakespeare’s canon but in all of literature. Chloé Zhao’s new film, Hamnet, which has been nominated for multiple Oscars, asks for a new way of seeing along the same lines, reimagining the image of Shakespeare himself on the periphery. As played by Paul Mescal, he has just lost his only son and returns to the blank page with his bleeding heart. When that moment comes, the words are raw and unadorned in their power, as if they were being constructed verbatim for the first time. (Also read: The Secret Agent review: Wagner shines in Maura Kléber Mendonça Filho’s pulsating and unpredictable political thriller)
Base
Still, this film is not about the Bard. This is the story of the woman who held the land behind it, his wife Agnes (or as we know, Anne) Hathaway. It is a film about the death of his son Hamnet at the age of 11. He was away when Shakespeare was writing and staging his plays in London after his son’s death. Where was his wife? What was his family doing in the meantime? There is very little information about him. In the film he is shown alive and grieving. First, it was written about by author Maggie O’Farrell in her 2020 novel. Now, director Chloë Zhao has adapted the book to piece together the myth of Shakespeare’s wife and his only son, and how it informs the origins of some of his most famous tragedies.
In Jessie Buckley’s eyes, Agnes is a woman constantly on the lookout, searching for answers about her place in the world. We first meet her when she is sleeping like a baby in the shade of a huge tree. Her long stay in the forest has earned her quite the reputation as a witch, but she doesn’t panic. When she meets William, their attraction is overwhelming and gratifying, and soon, she is with child. Cinematographer Lucas Zal’s frames are utterly captivating, from the way they follow Agnes through the woods to the way they watch from the sky, like a bird, as she gives birth under the shade of a tree.
But the second time she gives birth, Agnes is forced to give birth indoors – and she feels that’s not right. This is a bad omen for what is to come. She gives birth to twins—Hamnet (Jacoby Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lines). But when tragedy strikes, it comes with the ferocity of the storm. It burns up the screen with Buckley’s terrifying, devastating scream; A sorrow so great and unknown that the earth shakes.
what works
It’s no miracle that only a woman could tell this story, not once but twice. If the novel gave Agnes room to breathe, Chloé Zhao takes it a step further and holds her hand as she navigates the full spectrum of life’s many unfair revelations. A woman sees a woman in her daily perseverance, in the actions that nourish her life. Zhao and Buckley bring Agnes to life in all her raw, maternal pain. It’s in the dirt on Agnes’s nails, in her tousled side hair, in her tired smile after a hard day’s work managing the house and feeding her children. Agnes is every woman: a mother, a wife and a mystery, the culmination of it all.
Hamnet is a film that isn’t afraid to take risks, really delving deep into the psyche of this one family and looking at whether art can be born out of personal turmoil. Hamnet’s latter half is nothing short of a miracle, with Zhao taking a bold turn and staging a nearly 20-minute play that culminates in the fusion of time, place and action. Production designer Fiona Crombie has created an extraordinary recreation of the iconic Globe Theatre, where the action takes place – a space where the audience is close to the actors on stage. Nina Gould has pulled off a real casting coup here, bringing Noah Jupe onto the stage as the actor playing Hamlet. The striking resemblance of the two real-life brothers has a profound impact on the overall emotional impact of the film, as Agnes approaches one final act of letting go. He has a son; There goes his Hamnet. Max Richter’s piercing score is the perfect resolution to Agnes’ enduring grief. He must know that his grief is no longer his alone. Shakespeare has opened it up for the world to see and absorb.
Jessie Buckley’s A Performance for the Ages
Yet it’s Jessie Buckley’s magnetic performance that brings this creative reimagining to life. Agnes is in a kind of stupor, a kind of sad exhaustion after her son has been taken away so brutally. Buckley is able to capture the raw abstractness of grief, which brings a lifetime of loss and pain to light in a single glance. Mescal is also quite effective as the Bard, although his later scenes become a little too sticky for effect. Jacoby Juppé almost steals the movie in some scenes. Zhao extracts a performance full of wisdom and wonder from the child actor, one of the best I’ve seen in some time.
Perhaps Hamnett may also come across as a single reader of a text who compresses his thoughts into a single unbroken idea. But this is not misinterpretation, or resort to ‘what if’ scenarios. This is a reimagining. With Hamnett, Zhao says that art can function as a form of liberation, as a way of recognizing our own inaccessibility to grief. It breaks your heart and then mends it. Zhao and Farrell want audiences and readers to encounter the idea of Shakespeare’s tragedy with fresh, new eyes. We arrive at the same old lines that have been read and interpreted over the years. They inspire us, and we may not fully understand why. Take a closer look, Zhao suggests. Keep your heart open. There is cathartic harmony in it, just as the same old world recounts life and loss again and again. Let sorrow come; We will be fine.