Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” is a towering achievement. It’s a deeply felt, human story about coping with loss and love persevering despite being scarred by the unimaginable. It’s also a profound statement about the power of art to connect people and express what couldn’t be communicated otherwise. Its multiple levels are conveyed by intelligent, sensitive direction and indelible performances as it presents a new way to look at one of the best-known plays of all time, refracted through the lens of the life of its writer, William Shakespeare (a moving Paul Mescal), and, especially, his wife Agnes (an unforgettable Jessie Buckley).
An epigraph informs us that, in Shakespeare’s day, the names “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were interchangeable, establishing layers of theme. The notion of changing places with another – in actuality, in fervent wish, in artistic representation, in understanding – permeates Zhao’s film (adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel). But the narrative never loses touch with what’s most important – the family, their happiness, their catastrophe. Agnes and Will couldn’t be more relatable, despite each being extraordinary.
The foundation of the film is their love story, and it’s vibrantly brought to life. Two outsiders find and understand each other deeply — one an unconventional woman who says she came out of the woods and is at bliss in the wilderness, the other a dreamer with ink-stained fingers and little accomplishment in his trade, but gifted with words and ideas. Together, they build a life.
By now, you’ve likely been warned about the film’s emotional effects – if you can, wipe those admonitions from your mind. They build the wrong expectations. “Hamnet” isn’t about making audiences weep; its aspirations are more honest. It just happens that its lovers metaphorically find themselves in the most hopeless parts of the underworld, like Orpheus and Eurydice (referenced meaningfully in the story), and may or may not make it out, following an artist. It’s not surprising that journey is emotionally devastating, but one never feels the filmmaker’s hand manipulating your feelings. Zhao and her collaborators are too skillful to obscure the story with their fingerprints.
The supporting cast is also in tune, especially young Jacobi Jupe as the titular boy, Agnes and Will’s son. He shines as a child who deeply loves his family, idolizes his father and dazzles with dreams of sword fights and witches.
Mescal and Buckley each achieve career highs. Think how many films have tried to portray artists, how many biopics have rattled off their subjects’ greatest hits without real insight. Without claiming to be historically precise, “Hamnet” gets into the roiling mind, the guts of the greatest writer in the English language. That’s owed to O’Farrell’s clever ideas, Zhao’s masterful direction and Mescal’s deeply soulful portrayal.
When words we know will later appear in Shakespeare’s canon are pronounced trippingly off Will’s tongue, it feels natural. When we hear them in their familiar places in the plays, they gain revelatory new meaning. Mescal conveys the deepest of feeling with devastating truthfulness, with or without dialogue. It’s one of the best performances of the year.
Meanwhile, Buckley delivers the best performance of the year. Speaking of “natural,” the actress defines it with a tuning fork of a portrayal that seems only capable of ringing true, in the simplest of gestures, in the meaning of a crooked smile, in the thrilled promise in her eyes. Her Agnes (pronounced ANN-yəs) is the epitome of a woodland spirit made flesh. Among Zhao’s subtle touches: When other characters are in the forest near Stratford-upon-Avon, they’re visually dwarfed by the endless green world, the massive, ageless trees surrounding them. Not Agnes. She commands the frame, in harmony with nature, at home. And Buckley’s performance is so naturalistic, she doesn’t visibly work to convince us of whom Agnes is; she simply is that, and we see it. We feel it.
Without spoiling the film’s incredible final, extended sequence, what Buckley does in it is truly remarkable. After the terrible ordeal Agnes has experienced, which has brought her family to the brink, she witnesses something that opens a whole new window of understanding. The actress becomes so purely reactive, her instrument resonating with each tiny new revelation, that we can’t help but trace her flood of new thoughts, feel her overwhelming new feelings. The purity of her state of discovery casts an irresistible spell. What Buckley achieves is something rare. Attention must be paid.
That final sequence – surely the most powerful in any movie this year – also reminds us that each person receives and reacts to art in their own way. “Hamnet” slips inside perhaps the most famous play in the English language, and “Hamlet” blossoms with entirely new, deeply felt connotations for both Agnes and Will. And because of the specificity of the film’s context of the play’s performance, the meaning and emotion it carries for that Globe Theatre audience is extremely different than what most are likely to associate with it today. It turns out there are more possibilities in it than were dreamt of in our philosophy. And all this is accomplished without changing Shakespeare’s text, merely illuminating it from within, from corners we hadn’t explored before. It’s brilliant.
And beyond it all, as conveyed by the film’s heart-lifting final image, the experience points upward. After being plunged into the darkest, most gnarled part of the woods, “Hamnet” earns its emergence into the life-affirming light.
From the earthy groundedness of Fiona Crombie’s production design to cinematographer Łukasz Żal’s warm images that effortlessly move from metaphorical formalism to hand-held urgency; from Maximilian Behrens’ immersive soundscape in tandem with Max Richter’s gorgeous score to an entire cast resonating like strings speaking in sympathy – all virtuosically conducted by Zhao – “Hamnet” is a technical, artistic, intellectual, and emotional feast. Don’t miss it.
