Chloe Zhao lives! Last we saw the Oscar winning director, Marvel had chewed her up and spit her out on their descent into movie hell. Zhao took a deep breath, and went back to the classics. Hamnet sees her push herself into other new directions; this time, however, born of artistic impulses, not IP driven filmmaking. Although William Shakespeare is another form of IP I guess.
It’s not a misspelling. Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) was the son of William (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley) Shakespeare. The boy was a twin with Judith (Olivia Lynes) and had an older sister Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Hamnet the movie is the Shakespeare family origin story: how the parents met, and how the family grew. Putting these people on a path leading to maybe the best play ever written. What a weird Marvel Easter Egg this is.
Zhao got famous for her epic cinematography layered over simple, but powerful storytelling. She finds some wonderful locations and shots in Hamnet as expected. But this time she really challenged herself to tell a deeply emotional tale that inspired one of the greatest writers in human history. Zhao does incredible work translating that inspiration into movie language. Hamnet feels like a long lost play Shakespeare could never write, built around complex emotional relationships with a necessary intertwinement with spirituality. We don’t ever see any spirts, but we don’t need to; the emotions of the characters fill in the puzzle pieces we can’t see or feel, and that relationship between the divine and the human gives Zhao’s film a propulsive intensity that builds to it’s big climax about 2/3 of the way through.
That momentum is due to Hamnet’s incredible cast, all at the top of their game. Paul Mescal is one of the best looking William Shakespeare imitators we will see, but he fits in nicely in this world as an emotionally open man in a sea of repressed laborers. Jacobi Jupe is the breakout here, making Hamnet definitely 10 or 11, but making his inner life feel more like his father in terms of wisdom as the story necessitates. But for a movie about the Shakepeares, it’s “Agnes”the wife” that’s the real star. Jessie Buckley continues her ascent up the acting ladder, possibly peaking here. All the subtext of the movie is wrapped up in Buckley’s Agnes, a beautiful woman who lives in the space between the real and the surreal. She’s everything you would want a mother to be, in good times or bad. And when it’s bad, that’s when Buckley shines brightest, carrying one of the best sequences of the year on her talented shoulders, with all eyes transfixed upon her.
I expected Hamnet to be your standard period piece Oscar bait that would come and go. But Chloe Zhao, Jessie Buckley et al really dive deep to deliver something much more rich and interesting than just awards fodder, digging deep for the real. Take that Shakespeare in Love! You surface level Miramax Shakespeare! There I said it.