“To be or not to be. That is the question.”
Hamnet is one of the 10 nominees for Best Picture, and it recently snagged the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture. It’s been in limited release since November and is now in a nationwide release.
This adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 is a fictionalization of how Shakespeare and his wife dealt with the death of their 11-year-old son and how they coped with their loss and the inspiration the tragedy gave him to write his masterpiece.
The movie stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes, a young woman whom William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) falls in love with. The two spend a lot of time together in a forest in a cave when Agnes forecasts that the two of them will have a long life.
Shakespeare is portrayed as frustrated with his writing while working for his father, but everything changes when Agnes gives birth to twins: Judith and Hamlet. When Hamnet is old enough, he tells his father that he wishes to join his father’s theatre company.
Then the Black Plague comes, and it causes Judith to be a victim, but mysteriously and supernaturally, Judith recovers while Hamnet dies. This leaves Agnes and William understandably devastated. Still, it does provide him with enough strength and influence to turn their tragedy into Hamlet while the rest of the family is deteriorating and slipping through his fingers.
Director Chloe Zhao, who made Past Lives and also co-wrote the script with O’Farrell, does a fine job of sorting through the slings and arrows of Shakespeare’s tragedy (both the play and his own misfortunes), and Mescal and Buckley give us convincing insights into the trials and tribulations of Shakespeare’s story.
Both actors know how to portray the idea of more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of their philosophy, so to speak, such as Agnes’ foreshadowing of their child’s untimely demise at such a young age, and they handle the darker scenes with as much pathos as we would find in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
Other scenes may be considered too slow, hollow, or self-indulgent, such as those that offer fairly complex details about how Shakespeare crafted Hamlet. Some audiences may find something is rotten in the state of Denmark with its structure if they’re not fully appreciative of how the Bard works.
The movie is gorgeously photographed by Lukasz Zal. Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe are convincingly built by Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton, to the point where it looks as exacting as it did during Shakespeare’s time. The cinematography and production design are exquisite, just as are the many other technical elements that make up this film.
I think it should be required viewing for high school students studying English literature.
So, to be or not to be? I say Hamnet is to be just high enough to recommend.
B+
(Rated PG-13 for thematic content, some strong sexuality, and partial nudity.)
Reviewer’s Note: I saw this movie at Pooler Cinemas in Pooler.
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