Hamnet - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

“OUR children’s hearts beat, they smile, play. But never forget, what is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any time, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children's hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown." - An excerpt from Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet

THEREIN lies the beating heart of Hamnet, both as book and film.

An imagined take on the lives of William Shakespeare’s family and the impact that the death of their son, Hamnet, may have had on them, and whether it did provide the inspiration for The Bard’s Hamlet, Chloe Zhao’s Oscar-winning film is a profoundly moving affair.

Its strength lies in the bonds that tie parents to their children and the devastation that must accompany any loss. And as such, it’s an often difficult watch… yet an oddly life-affirming one, particularly if you remember the above quote from O’Farrell, beautifully and hauntingly delivered by Emily Watson in the film.

Hamnet is a rallying call to parents to hold their children dear; to cherish every moment and to take nothing for granted. It’s a call that every parent should heed, especially in a modern world that increasingly seems to be seeking to keep families apart for too long.

It’s also a film that - like its source novel - attempts to offer fresh insight into the lives of Shakespeare and his family, especially his wife, Agnes (or Anne) Hathaway.

For as author and screenwriter O’Farrell notes, so little is actually known about Hamnet and his parents. Yet over the course of the meticulous research that she conducted ahead of the publication of the novel in 2020, she revealed to the BBC that she got “slightly sidetracked by how badly history and scholarship has treated” Agnes.

“We've only ever really been given one narrative about her, and most biographers have just run with it, which is that she was an illiterate peasant who trapped him into marriage, that he hated her, that he ran away to London to get away from her,” she continued.

Even her name is uncertain. Her father, a successful farmer, left her a dowry in his will, calling her Agnes - a rare fact and insight that empowered O'Farrell to choose to give her character that name rather than the more traditional Anne (by which she is more commonly known).

The author also went through Shakespeare’s plays to gain further potential insight into his family, believing that clues to how the playwright viewed his family would be located within them. “There's an awful lot of second sight in the plays. Think of Julius Caesar's oracle, for example," O'Farrell says in the same interview with the BBC.

Likewise, the film’s take on Agnes as a woman with a strong knowledge of herbs and potions - something that has its origins in Shakespeare’s plays too, notably in Ophelia's monologue in Hamlet, when she seems to be going mad.

The subsequent portrayal of Agnes as a spirited, fiercely independent and sometimes ethereal woman and mother is another of the movie’s great strengths. It provides Jessie Buckley - who won both the Oscar and the BAFTA for her portrayal - with plenty to work with and her performance is suitably mesmerising. She inhabits Agnes.

Zhao, for her part as director, keeps the film’s focus largely on her, especially early on, juxtaposing scenes of the pain of childbirth with the haunting scream that accompanies the death of Hamnet. It’s powerful and extremely moving, lending the film a genuine emotional potency.

Paul Mescal, as Shakespeare, only really begins to come into his own more once the tragedy has occurred. Early on, he succeeds in establishing himself as a loving father and a besotted husband (particularly during their courting days). And there’s brief insight into a tortured artist at odds with his own creativity.

But his absence is felt whenever he is away in London and this feels by design, affording more of an insight into the strain it may have placed on their marriage and the additional burden it placed on Agnes as a mother of three. There's also the sense of loss felt by Hamnet himself at an absentee father he dotes on.

It also establishes both the loneliness and powerlessness that Agnes potentially felt at having to deal with Hamnet’s death alone, as well as the depth of the regret that William felt in not being there to say goodbye. And this is where Mescal’s performance really comes into its own.

For while the film’s depiction of the staging of Hamlet is fictional, along with the notion that Hamlet was cast to look like their son, it speculates that the play was a way for William to channel his grief. Likewise, the decision to see William take on the role of the ghost of Hamlet's father, as a means to say goodbye to his son on stage, having been robbed of it in real life.

There’s a real poignancy to these moments in the film, both in Mescal’s torment and despair, as well as the idea that it could also have paved the way towards some kind of healing and emotional reconciliation between himself and Agnes. These scenes - like Buckley’s individual moments - are truly heart-breaking.

Zhao, for her part, leaves plenty for the audience to chew on and even research, affording fascinating new insights into the world of Shakespeare that also allow plenty of room for new thinking from an academic perspective.

Her film isn’t without some flaws. Early scenes may have benefited from a little more time to establish the depth of romantic feeling between Agnes and William (the film jumps through the key moments), while some of Zhao’s camera work (such as a camera drift away from the main action in at least two scenes) feels distracting and self-consciously arty.

The shift in focus between Agnes and William also feels stark during the latter third of the film, while some insights into the creative process of how William came to realise key moments from Hamlet feel a little over theatrical and contrived.

But crucially, that last criticism doesn’t extend to the overall emotional arc. The tears shed by audience members feel earned rather than manipulated.

Extra mention deserves also to go to the young cast members who, to a child, are faultless. First and foremost, Jacobi Jupe plays the boy Hamnet to perfection, especially during the challenging death scenes, while his real-life brother, Noah Jupe, is the actor playing Hamlet on stage and expertly embraces the often dense theatricality of the Bard’s language to provide the finale with its emotional sweep.

Of note, too, are Hamnet’s twin, Judith (played by Olivia Lynes), and their older sister, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Both demonstrate incredible range and emotional maturity throughout their difficult scenes.

Hence, while the events depicted in Hamnet are very much imagined, the film’s ability to resonate on a very real and raw emotional level cannot be disputed. Zhao’s film is a sensitive, compassionate and thought-provoking experience that leaves an indelible mark.

Certificate: 12A

Running time: 2hrs 6mins