Review: Striking mourning drama “Hamnet” captivates

This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.

Is Shakespeare a flesh and blood human being? Or a name that we associate with 38 plays and 154 sonnets? Since we know so little about the playwright’s life, it is not easy to approach him as a biographical figure. But – one can undeniably think exactly the opposite.

In Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed 2020 novel Hamnet, the lack of available source material on Shakespeare leaves room for speculation about William as a person.

The author simply fills the gap between all the missing pieces of the puzzle and presents a family portrait that shows how everyday life in Stratford-upon-Avon is overshadowed by a career in the theater in London.

In the Oscar stream In the film adaptation, director Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) paints a lot of heart and pain in muted colors. From the first encounter between Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in the lead roles, as Agnes and William, it is clear that “Hamnet” is going to be a tight and dizzying film.

He sees her from a distance through the window, magnetically drawn to her, and then her eyes immediately meet his. Well, “Hamnet” has something to offer both romance readers and theater geeks. It begins with gasping eroticism in a rural setting and ends with a cathartic premiere of the playwright’s most classic tragedy at the Globe Theater.

“Hamnet” is primarily about Shakespeare’s loss of his son of the same name in 1596. The boy’s death is no coincidence – and there is little doubt, if any, about that in the film How it is linked to “Hamlet” from 1601. In modern times the names were practically interchangeable. And the idea of ​​replaceability, of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes or taking on a different life, is a theme of the film.

Of course there is A downside, but the kind of arranged life stories that leave nothing to the imagination. Because the film has answers to everything about “Hamlet,” it occupies the interpretive space that normally belongs to the reader or audience.

For example, who is the apparition in the 1601 play? For the young prince it is none other than his dead father, King Claudius, but the apparition can be interpreted as a phantom

For example, who is the apparition in the 1601 play? For the young prince it is none other than his dead father, King Claudius, but the apparition can be interpreted as a phantom. But “Hamnet” also has a biographical explanation for this.

It feels very typical of a time that wants to understand all than inspired by real events. The wonder and mystery of Shakespeare reduced to a psychologizing trauma culture?

Well, on the one hand. “Hamnet,” on the other hand, begins its interpretation with conviction, in an enchanted story about art, grief and reconciliation. Now it’s William Shakespeare’s turn to humanize himself, and it’s time for Anne Hathaway, here called Agnes, to step out of the shadows.

The film asks how one can live with a great artist, over short or long distances. Or even an ordinary man who, like William, says he has trouble finding the right words (but at the same time has an entire universe within him).

Barely halfway through the film, Paul Mescal’s aspiring bard sits there despairing of his writing. It’s a kind of primal scene for the cultured man’s childhood years: he sits lit up in the foreground, with several discarded drafts and an empty cup in front of him, while she and her newborn daughter try to sleep in the darkness of the background.

Then it will still be Jessie Buckley’s charged character portrait that forms the focal point of the film. Her Agnes is a natural mystic who still has one foot in the forest and had early experiences with self-healing in the grief of her so-called witch mother.

In “Hamnet” similarr men come from culture while women come from nature, but they are united in magical thinking. It’s a film about every parent’s worst nightmare and grappling with the question of how they can watch over their children in the afterlife.

You could have changed the main character’s name to Christopher Marlowe, for example, and the film would definitely have been just as touching. But it is clear that Shakespeare is a grateful brand, an exciting projection surface and a fascinating figure who creates drama at the same time.

In any case, I will never be able to look at the ghost in Hamlet the same way again.

See more. Three other films about Shakespeare: “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), “Anonymous” (2011), “All is true (2018).

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