It’s impossible to know if any part of the play Hamlet, first staged around 1599, was in any way inspired by the death of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet at the age of eleven in 1596. The creative process would not have been considered important enough to be on record for someone of Shakespeare’s relatively low stature. Likewise we don’t know a lot of the details of his marriage to Anne Hathaway or who she was in her life apart from Shakespeare. This historical ambiguity must be understood when attempting to characterize the lives of these people with little impression left behind but a name and an association with the most influential writer and dramatist in the English language. Licence must be taken, and not merely to fill in the gaps, but to relate an expression of these people as perceived by their artist. Chloe Zhao says as much about herself as she does Shakespeare, Anne, Hamnet, and how they are all intertwined by art.
Zhao’s interpretation, in concert with Maggie O’Farrell -with whom she collaborated in adapting O’Farrell’s own novel, is more earnest an image than is perhaps popular. In the lore of Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway has been often rendered anywhere between inconsequential and a nuisance. The wife of the great poet, rarely deserving of the great romance his work encapsulates. The fact that she was a full eight years older than him perhaps contributes to that and an impression of an aging wife sequestered away in Stratford from Shakespeare’s work (the actors here have an equivalent age gap in demonstration of how ludicrous that picture is). Zhao however radically envisions Anne as a full compelling being, an equal partner in disposition and with as strong a connection to the tangible things, from her children to the earth, as Shakespeare has to metaphors and stories.
She is the central figure of this film, though renamed Agnes (possibly her given name), played with unchecked magnificence by Jessie Buckley. Her taboo connection to the natural world, her belief in herbal medicines and fortune telling, her frequent jaunts to the forest and a mysterious grove of trees surrounding a little cave, and her interest in falconry are drawn in tandem with her early romance with Will Shakespeare (a sensitive Paul Mescal) a local tutor and glover’s son. As they marry and start a family, and Shakespeare eventually ventures out to London, the focus shifts to also include their son Hamnet and his relationship to his tender mother and often-absent father in the time preceding tragedy, of a couple different kinds.
The setting for this film is entirely different from anything Zhao has done before, but her passion for natural beauty is as clear as ever. The woodland grove that Agnes routinely goes to, where she in fact self-sufficiently gives birth to her first child, is a spiritually sacred place. It is the space outside the mundane world where the spark of romance between Agnes and Will is first lit, as he vividly relates to her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice -in response to her request for a story that moves him- and long into her normal life and motherhood it continues to beckon her back, to the Christian suspicion of her mother-in-law Mary (Emily Watson). The place is unbelievably pretty, as Zhao hones in on the branches and leaves, the healthy earth and dew-drops, the sounds of nature -not least of all Agnes’s falcon. It sets that mystical tone, perhaps one that evokes the ancient power of nature and supernatural elements that come up occasionally in Shakespeare’s works -the witches of Macbeth are directly alluded to. Appropriate, or not, given Agnes is believed to be a “forest witch” by some of the local folk.
Agnes lives on the perceived validity of her superstitions. She reads palms and sees visions that in some respect guide her decisions. When she gives birth to her twins, Hamnet and Judith, she is terrified of doing so indoors, and even more afraid by having two babies given her image of just two children at her deathbed (she of course already has Susanna). Judith initially appearing to be stillborn precedes a life of fearful concern for her, which appears to come true upon her catching the Plague. And Zhao does a great job illustrating the horror of high infant mortality and the lack of useful treatments of such ailments to people of Agnes’s station. These sequences, twins themselves, are revelatory for both Agnes and her depth of belief -borne out of childhood trauma and the loss of her mother- and Buckley herself, who has never been more emotionally fraught or intense in a performance.
She carries the movie very handily, despite that pretense of focus on the inspiration for Hamlet. Buckley plays strongly the largely understated toll of the marriage, of being separated from Will for so long, yet preferring her existence in the country in the embrace of nature rather than the stifling atmosphere of London. It’s no wonder then that while there, the closest that Will can feel to his family is at the docks on the Thames. Mescal is great as well, playing down Shakespeare’s stature of dramatic genius while emphasizing more simply a bursting artist struggling to find direction for his passions during his life at home, and able to communicate most effectively through the expression of those passions -Agnes notes his poor way with words spontaneously, and there is a beautiful romantic hint that she brings out much of the poetry in him. The script suits both actors tremendously, its depths and nuances a thrill to listen to.
This is no less true of the children, and Hamnet in particular, played by Jacobi Jupe -a child with so much promise and passion of his own who deeply idolizes his father and his work. There is some cutesiness to his portrayal, as when his father is teaching him stage fighting and in their elongated goodbyes as Will leaves for London, but such sensibilities have a sharp, tragic counterpart in the circumstances that bring about his early demise. Zhao makes no concessions on the sombre tenderness here: an image of sacrifice that is pure, innocent, and selfless.
The film’s opening text notes that in Shakespeare’s day, Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable names -to support the thesis that Hamlet was indeed inspired by the death of Hamnet Shakespeare. We also see in an aggravated rehearsal and later in the performance itself, scenes and dialogue emphasized that would bolster that interpretation -of particular note the encounter between Hamlet and the Ghost of his father -played by Will himself. But the film does not really lend the young Hamnet many of the qualities that would define the character -his indecisiveness, impulsiveness, bouts of insanity, and self-loathing. The best argument you can make is that the character embodied perhaps several of the qualities Hamnet yearned to play in his dream of being an actor in his father’s company. Ultimately though, this doesn’t much matter by the emotional honesty with which Zhao treats this pretense. When we do see Hamlet staged, and Agnes herself watching it we can buy the effect it has on her, the connection she makes with the character, and the sense that it is the punctuating note on her son’s spirit (the Orphic allusions may be a bit on the nose, but perfectly effective nonetheless). It is Buckley’s finest moment, bringing something palpable and profound to a scene that might be otherwise heavy-handed or overly sentimental.
The beautifully sombre orchestral score by Max Richter adds to this, as do the lovely compositions through this sequence in particular. Zhao once again makes ample use of natural lighting, giving her interiors in Stratford a painterly quality that lend to the film’s period legitimacy, a perfectly appropriate choice for this subject matter. It is subject matter very new to Zhao, and she proves that (the fumble of Eternals aside), she has substantial range as a filmmaker. Hamnet is a gorgeous, emotional, low-key spiritual movie, every bit as poetic, as emotionally true as either Shakespeare might have envisioned.
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