The last third of director Chloé Zhao’s film “Hamnet” takes place in London, specifically at the Globe Theatre, where Agnes (Jessie Buckley) has traveled from Stratford to see what her husband’s latest play could possibly be about. That play is, of course, “Hamlet,” and it’s not a spoiler to note that this husband is William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). He’s been living apart from their family for years, honing his craft (among other endeavors, curiously not mentioned here). “What shall I do?” asks Agnes, upon their arrival. “Keep your heart open,” counsels her steadfast brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn).
How do we love and how do we grieve? To be or not to be? These are all essentially the same question. There is, of course, no one right answer, which is at the core of the film, based on the 2020 Maggie O’Farrell book of the same name. Agnes and Will have suffered the devastating loss of a child, a son, to the plague. That his name was Hamnet (indistinguishable in text from Hamlet, we’re told, at the top of the movie) is likely all you need to know about where Will channels his grief.
But what of Agnes? What of a mother who was born to a woman known as the forest witch, who can read a person by holding their hand in a very specific manner. Who was told to trust her dreams and, upon the birth of Hamnet (a twin and her third child), could not reconcile an earlier vision that she would die with only two children. Who plucked every herb and applied every poultice and mixed every concoction to try and save her child. She is sad, withdrawn. She lashes out at her husband when he deigns to visit. She cannot comprehend this loss, and above all, she cannot comprehend her husband’s seeming recovery; his ability to, in more modern terms, compartmentalize. Hence, her trip to London.
“Hamlet” is a ghost story, among other things, and “Hamnet” the same. To say more about that final act would do a disservice to audiences, and, anyway, any attempt at description would be no match for the performances of both Buckley and Mescal, which should be seen. Has any actor in recent years been so well cast as someone for whom words both fail and overwhelm than Mescal? (See “Normal People” and “Aftersun,” but do not see “Gladiator II.”) He does this thing, which Zhao, an Oscar winner for “Nomadland,” very smartly elevates, where he sighs or huffs or grunts or however we want to classify a noise that one cannot help but emit. Can he not find the words? Or is he so besieged by them that sounds slip out beyond control?
In the end, though, this is Buckley’s movie. Fans of “The Lost Daughter” or “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” will already know of her talents. Here, she brings her ability to deliver several pages worth of direction with a single facial expression to the next level. It is, in fact, the kind of face that someone would write sonnets over. The kind of face that a grieving husband would be unable to bear, that might cause him to move days’ distance away from his family, and write arguably the most famous piece of theater.
The younger actors called into service do a commendable job, in particular brothers Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet and Noah Jupe as Hamlet (who navigates his way through his character’s most famous soliloquy better than I would have anticipated). As a work of adaptation, the movie struggles a bit. Foregrounding Hamnet’s perspective and desperation as he navigates his twin sister’s illness gives the book an urgency that the film struggles, at times, to match. And, in glossing over the abusiveness of Will’s father to Will, we lose layers of resolve that feel fundamental to how Will comports himself with his own family.
But, as ever, to thine own self be true: “Hamnet” made me cry in that way where you’re worried those seated near you might become concerned. Not to worry: just about everyone else in my chosen theater was having a similar experience. And while I can’t repeat in print what my closing words were as the credits wrapped up and the composer title card flashed by, I will add: Max Richter, I’ll see you in hell. (Cue “On The Nature of Daylight.”)
“Hamnet” is playing at The Little Theatre now, more info and tickets here.
To see or not to see: Swerving hard into alternative cinematic Bard retellings
“Ran” (1985, R)
It’s “King Lear,” but it’s also a samurai film. (Say less, I know.) Directed by Akira Kurosawa, one of cinema’s most masterful and legendary storytellers, the film carries all the hallmarks of Shakespeare’s text: loyalty, pride, and the quest for (and retention of) power played out as an epic among epics. Did Shakespeare invent daddy issues? Just kidding, that was Oedipus. But there’s a reason why the fraught family dynamics in “Lear” transcend time and language and genre.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (1990, PG)
The recently departed Tom Stoppard crafted this absurdist tale of two minor characters (the prince’s frenemies!) from “Hamlet.” Do they know they’re in a play? Can they change the ending? Are they talking as actual beings or reciting lines that have been in existence since the 1600s? It’s easy to write this off as goofy or slight, but in the hands (and out of the mouths) of Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, it’s an actual, under-seen delight.
“Shakespeare in Love” (1998, R)
Upon its release, I saw this movie five times in the theater (thrice at The Little!), and it has only grown in my estimation since then. It weaves the fictionalized writing of “Romeo and Juliet” throughout a love story that is…essentially “Romeo and Juliet,” give or take some death potions and warring families. It’s devastating and hilarious, as only the aforementioned Tom Stoppard could construct. It’s somehow a top-tier Ben Affleck performance, and he’s only onscreen for maybe 20 minutes. It’s the reason I will never fully disavow Goop. How is this possible? In the words of the film: I don’t know, it’s a mystery.
“10 Things I Hate About You” (1999, PG-13)
The 90s were an especially ripe time for Shakespeare; see more exhaustive and direct adaptations like Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet,” among others. If polled, I would bet that a healthy number of millennials list this “The Taming of the Shrew” re-working among their all-time favorite films. It’s hard to argue, given the effortless work that the late Heath Ledger is doing and the formidable opponent (slash love interest) he has in Julia Stiles. So smart to set this story within a high school, where to be charming is also to be infuriating in equal measure.
