Culture
Now Playing: ‘Hamnet’ the play is the thing
By: Gordon Briggs
Posted on:
This was a beautiful film.
We have seen several adaptations of Shakespeare plays, including films like Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love (1998) and All is True (2018), which each examined the famous writer’s love life.
Hamnet goes in a different direction, rather than focusing exclusively on the writer’s words and early life, it focuses on the woman who would capture his heart.
It doesn’t do you any good to say I cried, because what moves me may not move you. However, I was really taken with Hamnet for a few reasons. Here, we follow the story of Agnes (an excellent performance from Jessie Buckley), a local ‘forest witch’ who falls in love with an up-and-coming writer named William (Paul Mescal). You could enjoy the film for its nuanced love story or its reproduction of Elizabethan England.
Personally, I think it’s a movie about magic.
First, I like the central relationship between Agnes and William. Even while their opposing natures define them, I enjoy how they seduce one another. Before a single word is written, when they meet, she is enchanted by his ability as a storyteller, while Will is bewitched by her knowledge of the Earth. As the story progresses, their opposing natures will come together to create a child. When they lose that child to tragedy, a rift will form between the two that ultimately inspires Will to write a play called Hamnet (aka Hamlet).
Furthermore, I love the film’s setting. You know you’re watching a strong film when you can look at it and tell what the temperature is. Naturally, I admire how earthy the movie is. We feel Agnes’ connection to the woods and sky. Director Chloé Zhao effectively contrasts the suffocating, claustrophobic interior of William’s family home with the expansive, lush nature that surrounds it.
Finally, there’s that climax set during the premiere of William’s play ‘Hamnet’. It’s a powerful and welcoming illustration of art’s power. It’s here, following a personal tragedy, that we see a different kind of magic that transforms personal pain into artistic creation.
Through effective close-ups of Agnes’ face, the movie draws a parallel between her natural, earthy magic and the creative, transformative power of art (the play Hamlet) that her husband uses to process their shared grief.
Much like Hamlet’s play within the play, Hamnet is a production within a production, or to put it another way, this is art that explores the function of art. ★★★★