Hamnet

4 outta 5

Hamnet is sort of a version of Shakespeare in Love but with only a dash of love at the start and then a whole lot of anguish, obsession, mourning with intense closeups of sadness and a lot of actors wailing in emotional pain. This is certainly a heavy experience that does eventually have an uplifting feel by the end, but it takes awhile to get there. Directed and co-written by Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals) it has her sometimes methodical pacing and random shots of nature and people wandering around, which is very pretty but sometimes a drag. But like her previous films, this does hit rather powerfully when it tries. Here there’s a climatic speedrun through Hamlet that hits the main points; Ghost Dad, “To Be or Not to Be”, bloody cathartic finale, that unexpectedly makes for a dramatically satisfying experience.

One day, scholar and playwright Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) falls in love with a woman named Agnes (Jessie Buckley). They eventually marry, to the objections of Will’s mother, Mary (Emily Watson), and while he tries to have a steady job, he yearns to be a playwright. The duo have three kids, eldest daughter Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), and the twins, Eliza (Freya Hannan-Mills) and Hamet (Jacobi Jupe). There is a sickness going around the land, but Will goes to London to work on his plays. Eventually the sickness clams their only son, and this breaks the family, but even that doesn’t make Will stop working on his play. He is driven to perfection, driving his actors crazy with direction, and he feels the pain of losing his son. Agnes thinks that Will is working on a comedy, but it is actually a tragedy called Hamlet. This name is the same as their departed son, Hamnet, so Agnes goes to the first showing of the play, disconcerted that it is named after her child. But when she sees the play, she experiences emotional catharsis at the loss of her boy.

The plot winds towards the finale where everyone is enthralled with the first showing of Hamlet. The route that it goes there is a bit ambling. Mescal can be an interesting actor, and he has a few great moments here, like when Will is telling his actors how to deliver the “get thee to a nunnery” line. He is clearly dealing with the grief of losing his son but he’s taking it out on the actors and shows he could nail the performance if he wanted to. But some other moments, Mescal seems to be pushing it a bit too hard, like when he is freaking out about his inability to write and just squeals. Probably the best bit he does is in the finale when Will himself plays the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and he looks otherworldly just slathered in white paint. There is a deep sadness to him portraying a ghostly family member communicating across the depths of the underworld.

The film is very realistic in the style and setting but once in awhile it dips into fantastical imagery. When Hamnet is near death he pictures himself lost in the woods, which is a heartbreaking image. The woods motif reappears in the background for the stage play of Hamlet and, at the end, Agnes sees the apparition of her boy walking into the woods it is her way of saying goodbye to her son. Sometimes Zhao’s penchant for realism goes a bit too far, like when Agnes is out in the woods alone and gives birth there’s a lot of groaning and leaning. When she (unexpectedly) is giving birth to twins, she has a dramatic moment with one of the babies that makes it even more tragic when one is snatched away years later. 

Buckley is quite good at playing determined, and when she loses her child, she just seems positively broken. When she sees the first showing of Hamlet, she almost storms the stage, enraged and confused that this play, written by her husband, is using the name of their departed child. In one of the movie’s more touching moments is when Hamlet is dying at the end of the play and she reaches out to him, connecting with his hand, and Hamlet reaches out to the entire audience on his final “the rest is silence”. It is sort of a transcendent art moment that connects all together. Watson’s stern mother figure is kind of drag that never rises above the disapproving mother cliché. The kids are very empathetic to watch but especially Jupe as the youngest boy. He does a lot with just some confused looks, and there is a bit where he seems to will the sickness from his sister into himself in a bit of tragic self-sacrifice.

Hamnet sometimes may dip a bit deep into “well, that’s the origin of that” scenes like Will writing Romeo and Juliet dialogue, or when he is seemingly on the edge of ending it all and he says, “To be, or not to be?” And while the premise of “the very first showing of Hamlet” seems like an easy attempt at historical fiction, it is incredibly dramatic how Hamlet ties into the loss of their son. Hamnet provides some very powerful moments with some beautiful visuals, even if sometimes the actors start emoting incredibly loudly.