Hamnet–“The rest is silence.”
Hamnet, is multiple Academy-Award nominated eponymous film from bestselling Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell. Directed by Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), Hamnet is Zhao’s additional interpretation over and above O’Farrell’s speculative invention..
A young William Shakespeare’s love for Agnes (=Anne Hathaway) and her fierce attraction for him evolve into an exceptionally close and idiosyncratic family. Agnes also understands that her husband’s frenzy to create art will, at times, compete with his love for family.
Will (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley of “Wild Rose”) have three children: a daughter Susanna, followed by twins, Hamnet (=Hamlet) and his sister, Judith. Susanna was born in the forest under the spiritual rhythms and rituals Agnes’s mother had trained her. Now Agnes is a practitioner in the magic arts. However, the twins are not allowed the same transcendent birth, due to Will’s forceful stepmother (Emma Watson). What results is a tragedy commensurate with the play “Hamlet”.
This should not be a spoiler alert for those who have read “Hamlet”. However, for those not familiar with Hamlet, the director likely assumes the viewer will understand the themes of grief, death and the acceptance of one’s mortality. Speculation about the afterlife in its widest scope may require understanding Greek mythology, particularly the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Hamnet invites the viewer to reflect on the nature of grief and its potential evisceration of one’s soul and that of the family. Sometimes descending into rage and madness, a parent’s shattering loss of a child can be a hemorrhagic fever between love and grief. In Shakespeare’s case, art is the only medium he has to express his abject despair.
While he is incapacitated and wordless in sharing his grief with Agnes, he successfully and symbolically recreates an eternal world where their son may live, die, and be forever remembered each time a performance of the play occurs.
In a brilliant parallel, the exchange of life for death with one’s soulmate is foreshadowed by Judith and Hamnet earlier in the film. However, for this viewer at least, the time-jumps are jarring– Agnes as a young lover of Will’s and her memory of their joy with their son and then the subsequent stage of loss and grief. It is overdone, causing at least this viewer to have whiplash. .
As in Shakespeare’s original creation, the unknown landscape of death is a universal search for the discovery of what lies ahead for all of us. Hamnet is a cinematic, but structurally flawed, powerhouse of raw emotional grief and spousal rage, due mainly to Jessie Buckley’s unforgettable performance. “The rest is silence.”
Availability: Peacock