“Hamnet” is a movie whose success has already been preordained.
Already, writer and director Chloe Zhao is back in frontrunner conversations after taking Oscars home for “Nomadland” in 2020. Already, Jessie Buckley’s performance as Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, is being tucked away as one of the surest acting wins in years. Already, I knew from online reactions that the film was bound to make me cry.
And already, as Twin Cities Film Fest Executive Director Jatin Setia said himself as he introduced the film Thursday for the fest’s opening night, its spot on the Best Picture lineup in March is just that: preordained.
But taking the film in an Oscar-less vacuum, it’s the case of an otherwise brilliant, extreme portrait of love and grief being cheapened by an inherently flawed narrative that makes it preordained to fall just shy of greatness.
Still, nothing in the film actualizes those central emotions more completely than the dual performances by Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William. “Hamnet” is a story communicated by its humanity, and the film is effective mainly because it acts as nothing less than a canvas for the two performers to express their humanity — perhaps something even greater, in the case of Buckley’s consistently heartrending display.
In an early scene taking place at the couple’s wedding, her face alone brought me to tears as she willed Mescal to turn and see her in her bridal dress. Her performance succeeds in pulling out waterworks no less than a dozen more times, right up until the final cut to black; at this point, the only thing I’m more confident of than her Oscar chances is how acutely she’s earned them.
The couple’s story chronicles their romance as it grows and endures through the hardships of William’s inner turmoil before ultimately being rocked to the point of no return by the death of their son, Hamnet. Jacobi Jupe brings fascinating honesty in his limited role as the title character, and the hole he leaves in the story is appropriately heartbreaking and epic.
At its most interesting, “Hamnet” explores the follies of love and the ways that we compromise ourselves to achieve it. Both William and Agnes are split by their different, inescapable allegiances: him to his tortured writing and hers to her mystical connection with nature and the woods near their home. Still, as the death of Hamnet forces them to reconcile, it is love that ultimately finds a way to make these two diverging paths reconnect.
That final, juiciest moment of reconnection, though, is the one preordained from the jump, and it’s also the one that fumbles an already-faltering third act completely. This is because — fun fact — in the novel the film is based on, Hamnet is what inspires the play “Hamlet,” and Zhao’s adaptation faithfully incorporates that crucial narrative hook into its third act.
Here’s another, less-fun fact: after watching “Hamnet” for nearly two hours uninterrupted — nearly two hours of quiet tears and intense, emotional storytelling — there are few things less appealing than the idea of “Hamnet” taking a coffee break so that “Hamlet” can step on screen to spout out the film’s thesis for it.
There is, of course, some added insight and moving imagery in the way it builds on the classic tragedy, but in practice, every scene, line and costume lifted from the play feels like one extended “I told you so” from Zhao and original writer Maggie O’Farrell — like their film was built to house a “Hamlet” connection because it could, not because it should.
As affecting as the rest of the experience is, “Hamnet”’s big trip at the finish is emblematic of the handicap it’s been stuck limping with all along: an approach to Shakespeare often limited to cherry-picking lines and moments out of context for a mindless aesthetic that it only turns on like a faucet when it wants to siphon some of the historical grandeur that comes with the name.
The project isn’t shy about being historical fiction, and it’s not the accuracy of the piece that’s on trial. It’s simply clear that it was inevitable to the writers that the story of “Hamnet” finish with the story of “Hamlet,” and, to paraphrase the bard himself, therein lies the rub.
The depth and, frankly, beauty, of this story is real, and it is manifested wonderfully by the cast as well as the matter-of-fact cinematography by Lukasz Żal and understated score by Max Richter. But its content is derived cheaply — from mashed-up bits of cultural iconography and rhetorical ideas that can’t stand by themselves — and it cheapens the genuinely powerful story as a result.
Its connection to Shakespearean history can be likened to that of fan-fiction that has reached a high enough quality threshold such that its ties to the original story feel questionable at best. And, if “Star Wars” and “Twilight” fanfics can get turned into their own separate project, then it’s a crying shame — literally, I cried — that a film sporting the unquestionable best performance of the year can’t say the same.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
