Hamnet
A Wonderful Best Picture Nominee
Grief is a very personal experience, one that can be difficult to capture on film. If you tell a sad story and show the characters in pain, an audience will react with shared human emotion. What director Chloé Zhao manages to do in the film Hamnet, however, is dive deeper into the lingering effects of death.
Based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet is a mostly fictional story about playwright William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and their children. Historically, we know little about Shakespeare’s wife, but here she is the main character.
As the townspeople refer to Agnes as the daughter of a forest witch, she spends her time alone in the forest, making natural medicine from herbs and passing time with her hawk. When William comes to town to give Latin lessons to some of the children, he is smitten with Agnes and her unusual personality.
Later, when the two marry and start a family, Agnes faces the challenge of raising the children alone while William spends most of his time in London, writing and producing his plays. Since the story focuses on Agnes, we do not witness William’s success as a playwright until the latter part of the film.
The movie rests on the audience liking the fictionalized interpretation of Shakespeare’s wife, and actress Jessie Buckley delivers. The emotional range of her facial expressions resonates with viewers, who share in her joy and agony, even when she is not speaking. Buckley has already won the Golden Globe for her performance and is in high contention for the Oscar.
Do not feel this is a highbrow movie because it is about Shakespeare. Everyone can connect with the universal story of love, loss, and the pain of moving on after a tragedy. The film just happens to be about William Shakespeare, but here he is portrayed like any other husband and father. The film also captures how an artist’s life experiences influence their work. What an artist creates may not resemble a true event in their life, but the emotional core must always be authentic for it to connect with an audience.
Plan to have multiple tissues on hand when watching this movie, but know that it is not a downer. While you will walk away with the confirmation regarding the fragility of life, you will also have a reaffirming elation of the power of love.
Rated PG-13
In Theaters