Hamnet
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn
Director: Chloé Zhao
Rating: ★★★★★
‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ is one of the most famous lines not only in Shakespeare’s canon but in all of literature. Chloé Zhao’s new film, Hamnet, nominated for a bunch of Oscars, interrogates a new pathway of looking into the same line, reimagining the figure of Shakespeare himself at 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 arrives, the words are raw and unadorned in their power, as if they are being constructed for the first time verbatim. (Also read: The Secret Agent review: Wagner Moura shines in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s pulsating and unpredictable political thriller)
The premise
Yet, this film is not about the bard. It is the story of the woman holding ground behind him, his wife Agnes (or as we know, Anne) Hathaway. This is a film about the loss of their son, Hamnet, at the age of 11. Shakespeare was away when his boy died, writing and staging his plays in London. Where was his wife? What was his family doing in the meantime? So little is known about her. The film imagines her alive, grieving. First, it was author Maggie O’Farrell in her titular 2020 novel. Now, director Chloé Zhao adapts the book to piece together the myth of Shakespeare’s wife and his only son, and how it informed the origins of some of his most celebrated tragedies.
In the eyes of Jessie Buckley, Agnes is a woman constantly watching, seeking answers about her place in the world. We first meet her as she sleeps like a baby in the shade of a giant tree. Her long hours in the forest have earned her quite a reputation as a witch, but she does not flinch. When she meets William, their attraction is immense and gratifying, and soon, she is with child. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal’s frames are utterly transfixing in the manner in which they follow Agnes in the woods, as they look upon from the sky like a bird, when she gives birth under the shade of the tree.
But the second time she bears child, Agnes is forced to give birth indoors- and she senses this is not right. It is a bad omen for what is to come. She gives birth to twins- Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes). But when tragedy does arrive, it arrives with the gutso of a thunderstorm. It burns the screen with the guttural, devastating scream from Buckley; a grief so huge and unaccustomed that it shakes the ground.
What works
It is no miracle that only a woman could tell this story, not once but twice. If the novel gave Agnes the space to breathe, Chloé Zhao takes a step further, holding her hand as she navigates an entire spectrum of life’s many unfair revelations. A woman sees a woman in all her daily perseverance, in her acts of nourishing life. Zhao and Buckley bring Agnes to life in all her raw, maternal anguish. It is in the dirt in Agnes’ nails, in her unkempt side-parted hair, in her exhausted smile after a day’s hard work maintaining the home and feeding her kids. Agnes is every woman: a mother, a wife and a mystery all of her culmination.
Hamnet is a film that is unafraid to take risks, to truly dig deep into the psyche of this one family and see if the art could have originated from the personal turmoil. The latter half of Hamnet is nothing short of a miracle, with Zhao taking a bold swing and staging almost 20 minutes of the play, culminating in the union of time, place and action. Production designer Fiona Crombie’s extraordinary recreation of the iconic Globe theatre is where the action takes place- a place where the viewer is in close proximity to the actors on stage. Nina Gold does a true casting coup here, bringing Noah Jupe as the actor playing Hamlet on stage. The striking resemblance of the two real-life brothers is deeply effective to the film’s overall emotional impact, as Agnes reaches out in one final act of letting go. There is her boy; there goes her Hamnet. Max Richter’s piercing score is the perfect foil to the everlasting grief of Agnes. She must know that now, her grief is not just her own. Shakespeare has opened it for the world to see and absorb.
A performance for the ages from Jessie Buckley
Yet it is Jessie Buckley‘s magnetic performance that brings this creative reimagination to life. Her Agnes is in some kind of daze, in a sort of grief-filled exhaustion after her son is so cruelly taken away. Buckley is able to navigate that raw intangibility of grief, conjuring up a lifetime’s worth of loss and agony in just a glance. Mescal is also quite effective as the bard, although his latter scenes become a little too gluey for impact. Jacobi Jupe, in a handful of scenes, almost steals the film. Zhao extracts a performance of teeming wisdom and wonder from the child actor, the best I have seen in quite some time.
Perhaps Hamnet might also come across as a singular reading of a text that constricts its ideas into a single monolithic idea. But this is not a misreading, or a recourse to a ‘what if’ scenario. It is a reimagination. With Hamnet, Zhao says that art can act as a form of salvation, as a way of recognising our own inaccessibility to grief. It breaks your heart and then heals it. Zhao and Farrell want viewers and readers to confront the idea of a Shakespearean tragedy with fresh, new eyes. We arrive at the same old lines that have been read and annotated for years and years. They move us, and we may not fully understand why. Look closer, Zhao suggests. Keep your heart open. There’s cathartic harmony in it, in the same manner in which the same old world replenishes life and loss, over and over again. Let grief come; we will be fine.
