Hamnet | Review | The cinema blog

★★★★

To cry or not to cry? It’s not so much a question as an inevitability in Chloé Zhao’s deeply moving adaptation of Hamnet. Based on the equally touching novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who takes credit for the film’s screenplay with Zhao herself, Hamnet is inspired by the tragic death in 1596 of William Shakespeare and Anne’s only son – here called Agnes – Hathaway. In the 16th century, an opening epitaph indicates that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable. HamnetHamlet’s assumption makes him a tragedy born of truth. There is no doubt, at least, about the film’s emotional honesty in its exploration of loss.

Much of this was born, of course, from Zhao’s perfect casting. Paul Mescal is Shakespeare himself, all lust, ambition and sorrow, but serves as support for an extraordinary Jessie Buckley, whose Agnes Hathaway moves from earthly spirit to powerful principal throughout the film. Communicating the grief of her own maternal loss before we even know she’s there — let alone the roller coaster of motherhood that we know awaits her — Buckley delivers an Agnes of immediate, instinctual full realization. It’s no wonder the future bard is mesmerized at first sight. We all are.

Will is a tutor we meet – “teaching Latin to boys who will only be sheep herders” – at work in a terribly recreated period Stratford. It is while his pupils sadly recite and repeat old Roman prose that Shakespeare sees Agnes, dressed in earth red and in harmony with wild nature. She is locally said to be the daughter of a forest witch and there is no doubt that her almost pagan herbalism is ethereal. Agnes initially rejects Will’s advances, equating Prospero with her Ariel, but there is a thrill in the chase. What follows is a whirlwind romance in nature’s court; tender, naturalistic and resolutely carnal. The real Agnes was rather younger than Buckley, which sparked scandal.

From this wooden banter is born the immortal phrase: “the child in her womb, did you put it there?” Three children follow. The first, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) is born in the forest itself and follows the most remarkable of labor scenes. Zhao positions his camera high up, in a breathtaking view, and simply waits and watches. Buckley delivers in every sense of the word. It’s fascinating and entirely typical of Zhao’s approach, which literally leans in Hamnet toward that Shakespearean understanding that “all the world’s a stage.” The interior scenes seem framed exactly like this. On the outside, Zhao’s hand is freer but almost documentary.

After Susanna, come the twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), a spirited young man who dreams of following his father to London and the big theater. It should be no spoiler that these dreams do not come true. When it does happen, the sequence of Hamnet’s death is as upsetting as you might fear. Buckley’s raw, guttural scream haunts long into the credits, as does the second preceding scene in which Hamnet crawls into his sister’s plague-ridden bed, assuring her that he will trick death into taking him in her place. It’s a very disturbing tragedy – from the persistence of a dark hole in the forest to Agnes’s vision that only two of them will stand on her own deathbed – but it is no less surprising. The rest is silence.

In truth, Zhao is not always so successful in overcoming his argument. An example, on the banks of the Thames, of Shakespeare in self-siloquy in the face of a dark ebb stands out for its inauthenticity. And yet, a final act that threatens to boil over the pot never does because, for the most part, everyone inside benefits from a heightened emotional environment.

T.S.