{"id":316839,"date":"2025-11-30T17:48:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T17:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/316839\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T17:48:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T17:48:11","slug":"hamnet-tests-tear-ducts-and-patience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/316839\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hamnet” tests tear ducts and patience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cKeep your heart open.\u201d This is the request made of William Shakespeare\u2019s<\/a> wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley<\/a>) \u2014 or, as she\u2019s more commonly known, Anne Hathaway \u2014 in Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s<\/a> latest film, \u201cHamnet.\u201d But in the case of this maudlin, overwrought drama, \u201ckeep your eyes open\u201d would be a more fitting demand. Adapted from Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s 2020 novel of the same name, \u201cHamnet\u201d spends all 126 of its protracted minutes mistaking tranquility for tension, meandering through the forest and its narrative at such a languid pace that it starts to feel like the film\u2019s emotional resonance is playing hide-and-seek among the trees. Occasionally, a long-lost sense of gravity will emerge for a sweeping moment of gravitas. But this is merely a quick sucker punch to the gut, a cheap shot to draw as many tears from the viewer as possible in hopes that they\u2019ll mistake their physical reaction for a sentimental connection.<\/p>\n

This is an easy enough trick to perform. After all, this is the true yet semi-fictionalized story of a mother who loses her son to pestilence in the 16th century and how his death inspires Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHamlet,\u201d a prolific tragedy and one of the greatest works of art ever made. If you\u2019ve ever experienced loss or read \u201cHamlet\u201d \u2014 so if you\u2019re most people on Earth \u2014 you\u2019re an easy mark for Zhao\u2019s weepy, cinematic schmaltz.<\/p>\n

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(Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features) Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in \u201cHamnet\u201d<\/p>\n

From the title alone, we know something is going to happen to poor Hamnet, and we\u2019re forced to spend the interim closely watching every detail, ready to mourn a child\u2019s tragic death long before it arrives. If our hearts weren\u2019t already open, they\u2019ve just been forced ajar with a rusty, emotional crowbar.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely why walking away from \u201cHamnet\u201d feeling so disconnected and disaffected came as a shock. I am, by the average measure, certainly no callous stoic. I\u2019ve never needed to be told to keep my heart open while watching a film; that\u2019s its natural state. It\u2019s that instructive line of dialogue, which doubles as the film\u2019s poster tagline and thus asks the same of its audience, that reveals the movie\u2019s biggest intention. \u201cHamnet\u201d is not a movie that seeks to bore into the viewers\u2019 hearts, drawing out empathy from the depths of their souls; it\u2019s a film that wants the audience to do all of the work. Open your heart and let it stay unobstructed so \u201cHamnet\u201d can reach you more easily, so that you\u2019ll be moved to tears faster, so the shallow dialogue uttered by its thinly written characters doesn\u2019t have to work any harder to pierce your attention span than it needs to.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re having trouble with that assignment, Zhao\u2019s got some tricks up her sleeve to pique her audience\u2019s romanticism. Like a doctor with a plush toy or a Christmas card photographer making a funny face to get a baby to smile, Zhao\u2019s beautifully photographed images of the natural world go a long way in eliciting awe. In previous films \u201cNomadland<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Rider\u201d \u2014 and, honestly, some of Marvel\u2019s \u201cEternals<\/a>\u201d \u2014 Zhao used her eye to great effect. She sees the splendor in land, water and wilderness and understands how to capture it with all the grace of a song. Perhaps that\u2019s where her clear connection to O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel stems. In the book, Agnes is portrayed as a nymphish, perceptive young woman, one who is of the land and hails from a line of women united with the natural world around them. Buckley\u2019s Agnes is the same, a woman of the woods whose spritely mysticism captures William Shakespeare\u2019s (Paul Mescal<\/a>) heart.<\/p>\n

After the two wed and have their first child, Agnes becomes pregnant with fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Her new daughter, Judith, barely survives the delivery. Now consumed with the idea that what is given to her can be taken away at a moment\u2019s notice, Agnes vows to do whatever it takes to keep Judith healthy. For all of her good, natural sense, motherhood gives Agnes a glaring blind spot. Agnes cares for her second daughter so devoutly that her worry can\u2019t help but portend tragedy, and Zhao and O\u2019Farrell\u2019s foreshadowing is as subtle as a sword to the spleen. From the title alone, we know something is going to happen to poor Hamnet, and we\u2019re forced to spend the interim closely watching every detail, ready to mourn a child\u2019s tragic death long before it arrives. If our hearts weren\u2019t already open, they\u2019ve just been forced ajar with a rusty, emotional crowbar.<\/p>\n

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(Focus Features) Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in \u201cHamnet\u201d<\/p>\n

Twelve years later, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) is healthy and happy. His mother and father encourage him to see the beauty and balladry in everyday life, and with earnest, wide-eyed awe, Jupe quickly runs circles around costars twice his age. While Buckley and Mescal muddle through a dense script aiming for authenticity, Jupe lives it, delivering every line with a seasoned actor\u2019s veracity. But by the time Hamnet dies, our tear ducts have been well-trained. Zhao has been signaling this moment from the start of the film, and when Hamnet\u2019s bright, earnest voice is replaced by Buckley\u2019s full-bodied, guttural wail, it\u2019s nearly impossible to stay stone-faced. To her credit, Buckley\u2019s physical performance is sensational. When Anges\u2019 initial screams twist into silent, open-mouthed sobs, \u201cHamnet\u201d briefly becomes a conduit for grief\u2019s potency.<\/p>\n

The brilliance is short-lived. Immediately following the titular character\u2019s death, \u201cHamnet\u201d reverts to the stale, sluggish dynamic between Agnes and William. The loss of their son creates an inevitable break in their intimacy. But Zhao and O\u2019Farrell\u2019s screenplay consistently reverts to histrionics and outsized displays of emotion, never once burrowing into how either William or Agnes really feels. Feelings are conveyed with such airs that the poetry of a moment of silence disappears the instant someone speaks. Mescal and Buckley perform grief with unvaried, loud monotony or total silence, and thrusting the audience between these two poles at such breakneck pace never lets them truly understand the poignancy that lives in misery\u2019s shadowy middle.<\/p>\n

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While Mescal\u2019s no stranger to playing the put-upon father in his relatively brief yet prolific career, his brooding verges on laughable. Agnes, on the other hand, is reduced to a shell of herself. After spending so much of the film conveying what a refined, multifaceted person Agnes is, Buckley is robbed of her character\u2019s nuance in two seconds flat. Perhaps that\u2019s Zhao\u2019s point, that loss deprives us of the people we once were. But if that\u2019s the case, \u201cHamnet\u201d should spend far more time fleshing out its titular character than its tertiary ones, letting the viewer see so much more of little Hamnet\u2019s life than we\u2019re ultimately afforded. How can we be expected to feel the same bone-deep despair as Agnes if our time with Hamnet is cut so short, in favor of watching his mother suffer? It\u2019s both perplexing and extremely telling that \u201cHamnet\u201d doesn\u2019t let the viewer see the world through Hamnet\u2019s eyes until the boy is near death, cast into a world between ours and the next one. For a brief moment, we have Hamnet\u2019s perspective, but it is just that: brief, only enough time to watch Jupe\u2019s bright, cherubic expression replaced by fear and confusion. Zhao may as well be standing before her audience, holding up a neon sign that says \u201cCRY.\u201d It\u2019s effective, sure. It\u2019s also incredibly manipulative.<\/p>\n

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(Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features) Noah Jupe as Hamlet in \u201cHamnet\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHamnet\u201d isn\u2019t outright trauma porn; more of a trauma dump. Zhao heaps so much shock and distress onto the viewer that they have no choice but to seek the same catharsis as Agnes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHamnet\u201d isn\u2019t outright trauma porn; more of a trauma dump. Zhao heaps so much shock and distress onto the viewer that they have no choice but to seek the same catharsis as Agnes. In the film\u2019s climactic sequence \u2014 the first staged performance of \u201cHamlet\u201d \u2014 Zhao finally provides the tools the viewer needs to navigate this bleak tale. But by then, it\u2019s too late. The film rests in a dismal tone for so long that its gloominess becomes sappy, making the ending feel hackneyed and inevitable. It must be said that this change is not helped by a scene where Mescal gazes out a window at night, staring into grief\u2019s abyss while improvising the renowned \u201cto be or not to be\u201d soliloquy from Shakespeare\u2019s play. In what should be a pivotal scene, \u201cHamnet\u201d looks much more like a satire of lachrymose Oscar bait than a portrait of the real thing.<\/p>\n

By now, Zhao\u2019s at it again with the crowbar, jimmying our hearts open for one last tearjerk. The \u201cHamlet\u201d production is a fantastic set piece, with man-made sets and Shakespeare\u2019s theatre-in-the-round filmed as accurately and affectionately as the nature that consumes so much of the film\u2019s first two acts. Zhao and O\u2019Farrell analyze Shakespeare\u2019s play purely as self-reflexive tragedy, and the therapeutic tone works as well for the viewer as it does for Agnes, who understands the powerful connection between art and life in real time.<\/p>\n

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(Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features) Jessie Buckley as Agnes in \u201cHamnet\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all quite moving, and there is a faint glimmer of hope that \u201cHamnet\u201d will stick its landing. That is, until the familiar strings in Max Richter\u2019s \u201cOn the Nature of Daylight<\/a>\u201d begin to play, and the film once again feels like a parody of itself. For those unaware of Richter\u2019s composition, this needle drop will likely prove effective; it is, at the end of the day, a stunning piece of music. But those who have heard the song in significant moments from \u201cThe Last of Us<\/a>,\u201d \u201cArrival<\/a>,\u201d \u201cShutter Island<\/a>,\u201d or even an episode of \u201c9-1-1\u201d know this game. Richter\u2019s spare composition is meant to tug at the heartstrings, and it does its job just as well here, especially for unsuspecting viewers.<\/p>\n

But I have to wonder, would that be the case if our hearts weren\u2019t already open, if Zhao hadn\u2019t spent the last two hours commanding the viewer to be tender by dropping so many instances of leaden anguish that the door to their hearts was knocked off its hinges? \u201cHamnet\u201d works so tirelessly to affect its audience that it sacrifices a lethal amount of story and character depth, all in service of shuffling the viewer to its grand finale. Zhao\u2019s so laser-focused on marrying Shakespeare\u2019s true tragedy with his fictional one that there\u2019s barely any honesty left in the margins. \u201cHamnet\u201d is an exercise in performance closely tied to the one happening on stage, as if to remind us that all great art is born from trials and triumphs, while hoping the audience will conflate the power of Shakespeare\u2019s play with this film. It\u2019s a neat trick, but Zhao\u2019s film reduces \u201cHamlet\u201d to a single thing rather than examining it as the multifaceted work that it is. In \u201cHamlet,\u201d there is tragedy, yes, but there is also comedy, action, betrayal and a sense of the divine. The absence of those elements here makes \u201cHamnet\u201d simply derivative; a loose thread, grabbed swiftly and pulled hard in the hopes that the audience will be undone.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about other unconventional Shakespeare tales<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cKeep your heart open.\u201d This is the request made of William Shakespeare\u2019s wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) \u2014 or,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-316839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}