Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” presents a Shakespearean pseudo-tragedy in two acts; one naturalistic and devastating, while the other is treacly, overly self-important, and inert. The film, based on the bestselling novel of the same name, gives novelistic credence to a historical debate that seeks to connect the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet with that of his most famous creation, Hamlet. As all psychoanalytical debate regarding the mindset of centuries-long-dead men is oft to do, critical consensus ebbs and flows as to the acuteness of these connections; the most prominent of which is the simple interchangeability of the two names. Yet, for all the hand-wringing about the influence the death of a small boy had on Great Bard, I left the theater singularly eviscerated by the central emotional tie of the film, one which secures itself garrot-like around the audience and tightens with a decapitatory force; the simple relationship of a woman torn between the life that she loves and the man who couldn’t be bothered to be there.
Agnes (Jessie Buckley) is a woman most believe to be a descendant of witches. A fae-like creature more in tune with the wind through the trees and the cries of a hawk than that of her blithering stepmother, Agnes catches the attention of her brothers’ tutor, a nervous man indebted to her family, who holds a wide-eyed fascination with her. Agnes meets with the man beneath an ancient tree hollowed out by ageless time and reads his fortune. She sees within him a vast cave of hidden things, of undiscovered countries waiting to be forged. That the tutor, William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), is not at all named until the last twenty or so minutes of the film belies the film’s stated intention that this is not the story of a great man, but instead of a woman who bore the brunt of that burgeoning greatness upon her soul. If only it held that course, but we’ll get to that later. Soon, Agnes is pregnant, and the two are wed. Though William works under the thumb of his physically abusive father, he toils with his plays and poetry in solitude, tormented by the smothering embrace of this life of rural tranquility. Agnes encourages him to go to London, where his mind will find better purchase; an offer which he accepts with a palpable giddiness he tries and fails to mask from her. Little does he seem to care that she is once again pregnant. And so, when Agnes gives birth to twins, a girl Judith and a son Hamnet, a torturous affair where Judith is for a moment believed to be stillborn, her husband is not there. Years pass, and a family blossoms in his absence. Though William is certainly beloved by his children, a dark cavity is further entombed within them each time he returns to London to continue his artistic pursuits. Upon leaving, William charges the child Hamnet, a wide-eyed blonde boy who lives and dies on every glance of his father, with being brave and taking care of his mother and sisters. This task the boy undertakes with the fervor of a holy charge. So when his sister Judith is near death with plague, the brave boy says he will take the sickness upon himself to save her. And so the sickness, as if guided by providence, follows his wishes and curdles within him. The sequence of Hamnet’s death, necessary to the central thesis of the film, is rendered with a cruel reality; the awful, painful demise of a scared child and his mother, who cannot, despite her knowledge of roots and salves and all hidden things, save him. Once again, through it all, William isn’t there and is all the more damned for it.
After his son’s death, William abandons his family, once again, and writes Hamlet, seemingly as a form of mourning for the boy. A fine idea, that a father would write his masterwork to honor the boy he could not save, though any close dissection of the literary character “Hamlet” against “Hamnet” the person makes comparison sketchy at best and insulting at worst. Hamlet is a mess of a creation, mad and borderline incestuous; he preens and murders and spouts ravings of profound self-aggrandizement. In contrast, the boy Hamnet as presented is wide-eyed and curious, brave and dutiful. As a tragic figure of literature, Hamlet is a revelation, but as a facsimile of the dead boy, he is but a poor tribute, full of sound and pomposity, signifying little.
Films of this sort often baffle me, these self-serious dissections of great artists that seem to give reprieve for their flaws in the wake of their work’s infamy. I was frustrated by last year’s “A Complete Unknown,” which dared to starkly present Bob Dylan’s emotionally abusive nature, only to sidestep its effect against the totemic influence of “Highway 61 Revisited”. Why these men get a pass for the lives their actions ravaged, in large and small ways, I will never know. This narrative tendency is a disease of our culture and a severe detriment to truth. As presented in the film, William Shakespeare was assuredly not an evil man, nor was he a good father and husband. How does one balance the worth of great literature against a family well-loved? Of a singular life against words that will endure beyond damnation? If there are scales to balance these conflicting ideas, I cannot conceive their weight. Though perhaps I reject the notion that greatness and goodness are antithetical. As scripted in another movie accused of celebrating a man of great innovation and destruction, “You can be decent and brilliant at the same time”, and if one is not, I believe they should be presented thusly. The best parts of “Hamnet” allow William to be a shallow ghost in the lives of his family, the worst peg him with destiny, such as the scene where he freestyles “To Be or Not To Be” while contemplating suicide. Credit to Mescal for trying his best, but my heart had calcified toward his grief upon Hamnet’s death. His tears meant nothing to me, and all the performative demonstrations of theatrical love in the world couldn’t change that fact.
The soul of the film is embedded within Buckley’s performance as Agnes, her quiet contemplation in the forest, and her desperate yearning to save her children from the world. Bequeathed with the gift of prophecy, Agnes, at one time, foretells a future where Hamnet performs on stage with his father in London. This, of course, comes to be true, though not in the way she could have ever imagined. At the film’s climax, Agnes visits the theater to watch the first production of “Hamlet” and is deeply moved by her husband’s explusion of mourning. I wish I believed that Agnes would be touched and thrilled by the resurrection of her son onstage. I wish I felt what the film wanted me to feel, that the power of art gives immortality to the memory of the lost. Instead, all I felt was what I imagine Agnes would have felt in reality, fury at William for taking the most horrific moment of her life and retconning it for the masses. Of taking her boy and turning him into a murderous man who is sexually obsessed with his own mother. I understand what the filmmakers were trying to get at here, but perhaps recent history has removed my capacity to sympathize with great men of destiny. Their greatness is a pox, as potent as radiation, that corrupts the lives of those around them while micro-dosing its irradiated enrichment to the rest of the world. A play won’t bring the boy back, even if it was ever meant to be him in the first place. And frankly, it makes one question the value of greatness at all.
“Hamnet” is deeply affecting cinema, conflicted and challenging surely, but somehow left drowning in the shallow pool of its own aggrandizement. Buckley is a beacon, and Mescal does what he can. But for my part, when I think of the film, I’ll think of the boy who breathed in death to save the one he loved and remember him for him.
To die, to sleep, perchance to dream.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Hamnet” is playing at The Broad Theater and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
