Hamnet

A Hard to Enjoy Pain-Fest

Hamnet is hard to love like a porcupine: it’s difficult to get close without getting hurt. The plot is very simple actually. Action: William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, dies of the plague. Reaction: William Shakespeare writes Hamlet. That is to say, the entire narrative hinge of the movie is a child dying of plague. Plenty of films have used that plot device before, but rarely as heartbreakingly as Hamnet. It zeroes in on Hamnet’s mother Agnes’ grief in a way that is both deeply moving and a tad bit arduous.

Clearly, this was thoughtfully and painstakingly written by Maggie O’Farrell and Chloé Zhao, based on O’Farrell’s novel. There are plenty of throughlines and throughlines-within-throughlines, such as Hamnet’s love of stagecraft and swordplay, which will be echoed later in his father’s play, Hamlet. There is also plenty about the primality of motherhood, and how the primality of Agnes’ grief relates to her love of nature. There is nothing to fault in the skill of the filmmaking, except for some heavy-handed symbolism such as an open door representing the passageway between life and death. The performances are fantastic, particularly from Jessie Buckley, as Agnes, who is at the top of her game here. Her performance is so sensitive, so raw; in other words, she really pulled it off. Or, in the parlance of the theatre, she really broke a leg. It’s likely this is Buckley’s year at the Oscars, and unless someone could come in and snatch it (Kate Hudson?!?!), I think she is deserving. Also fabulous is her scene partner and co-lead, Paul Mescal. A quick word on Paul Mescal, he seemingly showed up a couple years ago and he has been in nothing but interesting projects since. From the transcendent All of Us Strangers (2023), to the noble failure Gladiator II (2024), he is nothing if not magnetic. That includes his performance here as William Shakespeare, which is a difficult pair of shoes to fill.

Did I hate Hamnet? No. Do I wish it went easy on the trauma porn? Yes. In scenes when I noticed many wet eyes around me in the theater, my eyes were dry, because I found the abundance of grief so off-putting. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.