“Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries”
(Quote by Steven Greenblatt, ‘The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet’. New York Review of Books (21 October 2004) )
Tissues at the ready, people.
Director Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet will yank you by the heartstrings and will not let up right until the end credits.
Based on the bestselling poetic novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell, this is a dramatic reimagining of William Shakespeare and Agnes (Anne) Hathaway’s love and loss set in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Jess Buckley plays Agnes, the supposed daughter of a forest witch who beguiles the Latin tutor (Paul Mescal) with her wit, beauty and pet hawk.
After the birth of their firstborn daughter, Will loses his sense of self, and Agnes senses that he needs “more”. Even though she has once again fallen pregnant, she pushes Will to follow his writing dreams in London before things get worse.
She births the twins, Hamnet and Judith, under non-ideal circumstances. Although it is Judith who supposedly has the weaker constitution, Hamnet passes due to pestilence in a heartbreakingly traumatic turn of events.
Farrell uses the Hamnet/Hamlet connection to suggest that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet out of grief from his 11 year-old son’s death. In a previous scene, we see Will teaching Hamnet a choreographed swordfight for stage, and him expressing his ambition to one day be an actor in his father’s play.
Things come to a head when Agnes learns of her husband’s latest production, the tragedy Hamlet.
As she succinctly notes while reading the program – ”What does this have to do with my son?” Watching her process her emotions as a young blonde actor with an uncanny resemblance to her son come onto the Globe’s stage with prop sword in hand, we realise that Chloe Zhao has cleverly taken Will and Agnes’ grief and wrapped it up in a soft, warm, cozy blanket.
Cue Max Richter’s haunting strains of On the Nature of Daylight.
Oscar contention for sure.