From William and Agnes’ joy of the birth of their son Hamnet, alongside his twin sister Judith, tragedy strikes, inspiring William to write one of his most famous tragic plays, ‘Hamlet’.
Based on a very recent book by Maggie O’Farrell in 2020, Hamnet is partially a fictional take, a reimagining based upon the very real life and tragic death of William and Anne’s real life son. Having read many biographies of the literary genius; O’Farrell was saddened at the lack of knowledge regarding Hamnet’s death. Almost losing her own child to meningitis at the age of 4 and herself contracting encephalitis at the age of 8, she decided to write this to finally give Shakespeare’s only son a voice. Set around the years of 1585 and1596 where Elizabeth I was near the end of her own life, and alongside the decline of the second terrible wave of the Plague, this film takes us on a journey of the complications of home birth and the devastations of infant death through pandemic illness.
Starring Paul Mescal as William, Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Emily Watson as Mary Shakespeare, we are at the mercy of director Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) as we are immersed into an emotional cinematic experience of the yin and yang, joy and heartbreak of such a devastating experience. With Jessie B already rightfully receiving her Golden Globe award for best actress alongside Zhao for director, it is however the young adults who make this their own, especially Jacobi Jupe who plays the titular character.
Launching us into their world we open with Agnes at peace with her forest surroundings, as her Harris hawk flies overhead. Deemed a witch at the time, she meets William and quickly acquires their three beautiful children with the twins arriving a few years after elder daughter Eliza, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach – of the current Shelter film – only for the twins to be struck down with the plague at a comparatively young age. William in the between years becomes emotionally stuck in Stratford-upon-Avon and downtrodden by his overzealous father; seeking more to life and wanting the best for his immediate family he departs for London to write and stage his famous plays, becoming extremely successful even in his own lifetime.
Over the years; and many hundred film viewings later, the common theme for me seems to be that the younger American actors far outshine the British counterparts, making their own former onscreen presence seem more natural and real. It is however as their relative ages progress that this switches over with the adult British actors taking the limelight. Hamnet however throws this out of the single glazed, leaded light window. It is the marvelous interaction of young Jacobi and Jessie who really steal the show here. Jessie immerses herself within the character bringing to the fore a truly cinematic take with the highs of her life outside in the calming woods to the lows of her loss inside. This is all the more magnified as Emily Watson’s acting and character seems oddly somewhat staged and divisive for overly dramatic effect. Jacobi – whose actual brother stars as the elder Hamlet on stage at the Globe theatre – it is the younger of the real life siblings who truly brings an acting power as he seeks to take the pain away from his twin in her most desperate time providing a brutally emotional scene that plays out superbly well.
Hamnet as a film is not meant to be a chronicle of the time with Anne’s name changed to Agnes, nor was this meant to be completely historically accurate; I refer to the incorrect species of bird and the swim stroke in the lake which has been pointed out by many. What this film does is give us however is a chance to once again partially revel in the mastery of writing Shakespeare gave us over 400 hundred years ago as he worked through his pain taking us into his dark ages of books to follow such as ‘Julius Caesar’ and ‘Henry IV’.
In the final dramatic scenes in the playhouse, Zhao sought not only to reenact the pain a parent would feel after the loss of their child, but the loneliness of being distant and unable to ever lovingly make contact ever again in mortal life. Whilst Shakespeare famously spelt his name 12 different ways during his life, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable during this period with literacy amongst the masses remaining quite low and so distinguishing this film from the alternate, more common spellings.
Hamnet should be viewed through the eyes of the superb young Jacobi as Hamnet as he lives his short yet full life on stage. A film that is very much equally and brilliantly acted from both the younger as well as the elder point of view as Mescal seemingly takes a back step to let his family shine in the limelight. With Shakespeare’s line “To sleep, perchance to dream,” he longed for the chance of being with little Hamnet once more, but with also the possibility of his own nightmarish dreams even in the afterlife. Hamnet will hit you in the same way as we also feel the tragic loss through the well acted finale.
Author: Piers, Maidstone Store
