Hamnet/Hamlet

The premise delivers. Perhaps that's enough.

I had listened to Maggie O’Farrell’s audiobook version of Hamnet during the pandemic. Being a theatre guy, I loved it. As the author is quoted as saying recently, “No artist, no writer, would casually name a play after their dead son. It had to mean something. That was where I started.” The real life loss that Shakespeare and his wife suffered with the death of their son Hamnet is the beginning. Within a few short years after the death of his son, he pens Hamlet, a story of ghosts and redemption for the ages.

The movie doesn’t try to withhold suspense over this issue. An epigram at the very start establishes that even the names Hamnet and Hamlet appeared to be interchangeable in public records.

The big draw of the film are the lead performances of Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. They make us believe in the chemical pull between them when they first meet, and in their interlocked destiny as husband and wife, and as parents, of both their living and dead issue.

The sweeping cinematography contributes to the film’s epic scope, pulling the viewer in as much as the dramatic relationship at its core. The sense of the historical time is also carefully wrought. I love the fact that people and their clothing look grubby and lived in. So many costume movies look too cleaned up. This one is beautifully, dirtily consistent.

To say it is the story of the parent’s grieving their son’s demise, and then how they recover some salvation through the ensuing play that Shakespeare creates pretty well sums up the experience. I’m not sure what else could be a part of the tale. There is some deepening of the theme with Emily Watson’s character of Shakespeare’s mother lamenting her own losses of children, but it feels like more of the same. Somehow, I wanted more.

I recall an SNL sketch about the movie La La Land. In it, a moviegoer is interrogated by police for not enthusing about the musical enough (“I liked it, I just didn’t love it.”)

I have a feeling due to its theatrical roots, Hamnet might dominate award season.

Definitely worth seeing. Maybe just adjust your expectations. Keep your heart open.