Hamnet review – Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley deceive and captivate in Shakespeare’s bold tragedy | film

‘T“The joys of parents are secret, as are their sorrows and fears…” This is Francis Bacon’s essay on Fathers and Children; They were probably more secretive in his day than in ours. This kind of secrecy and revelation is part of Chloe Zhao’s deeply romantic imagination about the origin of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. He locates the beginning of the play in the imagined suffering of Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (or Anne) Hathaway at the death of their son Hamnet at the age of 11 in 1596, a few years before the play’s premiere.

The proximity of names isn’t supposed to be a huge Freudian misstep; There is linguistic evidence that the two can be used interchangeably. The film is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name — Chow co-wrote the screenplay with O’Farrell — as well as the 2004 essay “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet” by literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt. This film succeeds, not because it solves the mystery, but because it deepens it further. It is contrived and speculative, but at the same time witty and passionate.

On one level, the narrative is a misreading, one that relies on treating Shakespeare as if you were dealing with a contemporary novelist with contemporary ideas about the possibility of talking about this kind of bereavement; It relies heavily on the coincidence of the name which could just be a coincidence. Moreover, the romanticization of tragic themes could easily be applied to any of the plays. (Shakespeare’s horror at Hamnet’s death could have lain dormant for many more years, then resurfaces in Macbeth when Macduff’s wife and young son are murdered.) You can remain unconvinced. And yet, there is such remarkable audacity in Chow and O’Farrell’s extension: a thrilling act of creative audacity, dating back through the centuries to the embrace of Shakespeare and Agnes as human beings.

Chow takes her film at a walking pace at first, following Agnes as she wanders endlessly through the forest, a habit that earned her a witch-like reputation like her late mother, recording the dreamy sky through the branches and the hawk that has swooped down on her hand. Agnes lives in a trance in the woods of folk horror outside Stratford-upon-Avon, a haunting of creative inspiration from the depths of despair. It’s an unconsciously beguiling performance from Jessie Buckley, who gives every look and smile piercing significance. Her beauty captivates young William Shakespeare, a would-be poet who chafes at having to follow his abusive father into the glove trade, played with intelligent force by Paul Mescal.

They marry, much to William’s mother Mary (Emily Watson), and the film imagines Agnes actually giving birth to her first child (Susanna) in the woods. But when she reaches the end of her second pregnancy, she is forced to give birth inside the house, which is a bad omen; These are the twins Judith and Hamnet. While William was away in London fulfilling his dream of becoming a star on the London stage, illness and disaster struck him.

Hamnet’s death can be compared to the death of Thomas Cromwell’s wife and daughters from illness early in Hilary Mantel’s Wolfe Hall; It’s a dramatic event, a terrible event that goes some way to explaining everything that happens next. Cromwell had to bottle up his inner anguish by engaging in his career, pursuing it ruthlessly and making it overwhelmingly important – but he did not dwell on those he had lost as Shakespeare is supposed to do here. Chow and O’Farrell suggest that Shakespeare channeled his grief and its displacement into every line of his play: the pain, the futility of continuing, the stunned inability to decide the essence of anything. In a way, he, Shakespeare, is the ghost, the undead specter doomed to wander miserably through the world while Hamnet is left alive. The boy’s soul was not killed as the father’s soul was killed.

All of this could be true – though it’s about the name, and the line in Romeo and Juliet is about what’s in the name. The cinematography by Łukasz Żal is beautiful and clear, and Max Richter’s music is all around the action. It’s a movie that moves because of the very interesting performances.

Decades ago, Tom Stoppard’s play Matt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern introduced a whole new way to play Hamlet. Perhaps Chow and O’Farrell will do the same with their tender and poignant new creation myth.