Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal
The choice was either the latest “Avatar” episode in the exploitative franchise, or a modest drama about Shakespeare. The former was too long to sit through, and I sensed repetitive material with a poor script, so I chose “Hamnet” for a review only to discover it’s too long by at least thirty minutes, a common fault in modern films.
As conceived by “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao, her latest film has the fictional story concentrate on the emotion existence of the bard, his wife and his children at a point in his life when London calls him from his rural England farm house to be a stage writer. The core of the plot, based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, has Jessie Buckley deliver an heroic performance as Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, mother of his children, a ‘witch of the woods’. Woods is the recurring theme throughout the film. Buckley throws her heart and body into the part, balling a few too many screams of despair remindful of Al Pacino’s over-the-top version to God in Heaven at the end of the disappointing Godfather III when his daughter is shot and killed.
In “Hamnet”, the scenes of childbirth are there to tell us that for some women with a small pelvis and other complications, it’s a hellish process. The storyline is superb in the ways it shows us the drudgery of a woman’s existence, (and down the ages) a women there to give birth, the insurmountable urge of procreation, prepare the food, and keep the house clean. The men are the hunters, thinkers and artists.
Zhao reaches for symbolism throughout the two-hour story, a tonne of it, some of it obvious, such as Agnes sleeping in the woods under a vagina-like tree root system, (the Tree of Life?) and rain water entering her modest house floor as she breaks her birth waters. There is more, when young Hamnet coories up to his sister when she is seriously sick and contracts her fatal illness.
The strongest scenes come with the death of Hamnet, and Agnes’s revelation of filial loyalty and grief on seeing her husband’s play of Hamlet, in the original round theatre, the Globe, in London. (More on that later.) Meanwhile, Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare, yes, yet another film version about England’s bard. He pours his grief into “the Danish play.” Both actor and character are to a great extent eclipsed by the feminist elements of the story, and photography that switches from wide panoramic shots to close ups of Buckley’s expressions and utterances.
By the way, the name of Hamnet is more than a coincidence; not just another spelling of Hamlet, allowing the novelist to play fast, loose and intellectually clever with imagining events through the eyes of Anne Hathaway. (1556–1623) the bard’s actual wife. William Shakespeare did have a son he named Hamnet who died at the young age of of 11, in 1596, a death scholars believe profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s later tragedies, particularly Hamlet, as noted in historical records and literary analysis. So, those aspects of the plot are true, the backbone of the many imaginings in the novel and the film’s interpretation of the novel.
Zhao follows her own thesis: masculine and feminine forces in our over-populated world are completely out of balance. She asserts, “It’s got nothing to do with gender. Civilization is masculine; nature is feminine. We as an industry are built on celebrating masculine qualities in storytelling and in life.” Fair enough. The American film industry has portrayed women either as flustered wives or raunchy sex workers. Zhao adds, “Hamnet” is my attempt to balance that, all at once, in a single film.”
Paul Mescal and baby son, Hamnet
On seeing Agnes, William falls immediately, madly in love with her. This is Romeo and Juliet territory. He asks her to be ‘hand-fasted’, referring to an ancient English ritual of marriage. (I am unsure why Anne was changed to Agnes for book and film, when William remains William.) Anyhow, William and Agnes recognise that their families won’t approve of their union, so they make love, indoors, on a table top surrounded by fresh juicy fruit. The coupling fertilises an egg and creates their first daughter, Susanna, played wonderfully by the young Irish actress, Bodhi Rae Breathnach. At first spurned, this rebellious act forces a kinder decision on them from William’s father and the village elders.
Shakespeare’s father is a glove maker. We see Shakespeare struggle with a trade he has no wish nor skill to follow. And we see the animosity he holds for his father’s control break loose in physical violence. That’s about the most we see of that father and son relationship, but we see a lot of Shakespeare’s love of his son, a more caring affection. Are writers more sensitive than tradesmen? I doubt it.
When it comes time for Agnes to bear her child, she returns to the forest, giving birth at the base of the tree. These scenes are the most difficult to watch, a woman – pre-maternity hospital – giving birth without help. It’s a difficult, painful process, observed from above in a wide shot. Agnes delivers Susanna near a hole made by an uprooted tree, the hole noted by Shakespeare, a motif repeated later during the climactic scene at the Globe Theatre in London, where Agnes goes to watch a performance of her husband’s latest play, “Hamlet.” The stage backdrop depicts a forest, at the centre of which is a dark opening, another of the movie’s many symbols.
Between these two scenes – Susanna’s birth and Hamlet’s death, and the birth of Shakespeare’s twin daughters, the story and its emotions unfold at a realistic live-time pace. This is what adds so much time to the film that it is not until we enter the Globe Theatre with Agnes that the power of the work hits us between the eyes.
Location work with director Chloé Zhao
Without giving too much away, Shakespeare channels his grief into his work, a common therapy for men whether worker or intellectual or composer.
Hamnet invites us to see a play the world knows well through fresh eyes – he assumes the role of Hamlet’s ghost himself – while Agnes expresses hers from the foot of the stage. (And Zhao makes a quiet appearance in the groundlings audience.) Zhao challenges us to confront the matter of death, which makes us uncomfortable, but it’s the film’s other feminine elements that are most enlightening to see centered onscreen. I sorely wish I had watched the film with a woman who had given birth to know what was too light or too dark.
It was an inspired choice for Zhao to cast Noah Jupe, the older brother of the child who plays Hamnet, as the actor who originated the role of Hamlet onstage, interpreting the character’s fade to silence as an echo of the younger boy’s death. The cinematography is as good as you would expect, (Spielberg is an executive producer) the costumes are perfectly authentic, the lyrical music kept well below the action, the editing logical for the too long two thirds.
“Hamnet” makes sense of that famous line in Hamlet, ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’, the contemplation of suicide, to rid oneself of an inhuman existence, and pain too much to bear, or to embrace life with all its slings and arrows. Ultimately, the filmmaker invites us to experience loss and in that process to liberate something fundamental in us all.
Shakespeare’s wife is presented as Mother Earth. Her existence allows her husband to have a family and go off to work as a playwright in a faraway place. This new income from his genius buys them a bigger, better house in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
I learned a lot from this depiction of women. It emphasised where my female-driven screenplay for the Clearances must concentrate on the daily struggles of women in the Scottish Highlands. Then again, Scotland does not have a thriving film industry, and our costume dramas are considered noncommercial, as this film would be if made in Scotland.
The crowds leaving the cinema as I entered were coming out from Avatar – Fire and Ash. The major chain screen in which I watched “Hamnet” was empty. I was the only person there. Had the film been shorter it would attract five stars, but loses one because it is so bleak for much of its length until it reached the Globe Theatre sequences. ‘Shakespeare in Love’ it ain’t. Don’t look for laughs. Some might see it as an emotional indulgence.
- Stars – Four Stars
- Director: Chloé Zhao
- Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe,
- Writer: Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell, based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell.
- Cinematographer: Łukasz Żal.
- Composer: Max Richter.
- Editor: Chloé Zhao, Affonso Gonçalves.
- Adult Rating: 12A
- Duration: 2 hours 5 minutes
- RATING CRITERIA
- 5: potential classic, innovative. 4: Outstandingly good. 3.5: Excellent but flawed. 3: Good if formulaic. 2: Straight to DVD. 1: Crap; why did they bother?
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Grouse Beater 
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