‘Hamnet’ Review: Chloe Zhao returns with quiet confidence
The way that Chloe Zhao depicts grief in Hamnet feels impossible for a film with a two hour run time. If you could stuff the five stages of grief, an entire family history, and the beginnings of the greatest playwriters in history into a film, you’d think it was doing too much.
But that’s not the case with ‘Hamnet.’ It earns its run time by quietly being one of the year’s most underrated films. The film opens with Agnes (Jessie Buckley) flying her hawk around. We’re shown early in the film that Agnes has little regard for societal norms or people’s opinions of her, which is why she is surprised to find herself being courted and swept up by a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal).
Agnes doesn’t put up much of a fight against the charm of William, and the two quickly marry and welcome children into their lives. Zhao moves through the first act by hitting the highlights of William and Agnes before they met, a mostly happy affair, to set you up for one of many gut punches.
The firsts being the birth of the twins. In this scene, Agnes is told by her chambermaid that she has delivered a healthy baby boy, only to have complications with their younger daughter Judith. Despite what she’s told, Anges never gives up hope that her baby will survive. This scene ends up being a taste of Buckley’s range when the true devastation hits later in the film.
The second half of the story depicts how the family structure crumbles after losing a child. Agnes blames William for not being there for Hamnet, William becomes distant with his family and dives into his work and the rest of the family seemingly move along while William works on his masterpiece, a new tragedy after years of writing comedies.
One of the film’s shortfalls is how it deals with Shakespeare as a celebrity of sorts. Mescal’s character’s name is kept out of the script until near the end of the film, saving ‘William Shakespeare’ as a big reveal or secret that we weren’t supposed to know. On the surface, I understand that William isn’t the film’s lead and you don’t want to risk the audience thinking he is. On the other hand, dancing around and dodging his name for the rest of the film felt distracting.
Joe Alwyn appears as Agnes brother in a role so small you might forget he was even there. The time he does spend on screen is used well, even if sparingly. Alwyn is in the midst of his own personal renaissance, having worked with acclaimed directors Yorgos Lanthimos, Brady Corbet and now Chloe Zhao.
At one point in the film, William opines that Hamnet can’t really be gone, he’s just disappeared and we need to look for him. Mescal’s portrayal of denial is a stroke of brilliance in a film that is overshadowed almost entirely by Jessie Buckley.
Buckley’s performance as Agnes stands above the rest of the collective efforts of everyone set on making Hamnet a masterpiece. The direction, performances, set design, costume design and score are all award-worthy, but they’ll all be lost in the conversations being had about Jessie Buckley. Chloe Zhao’s quiet confidence in her direction is what makes Hamnet a classic in its own right.