Review: Hamnet (Patreon)

Throughout its first half, Hamnet had me wondering where objective judgment ended and my own personal critique began. It's a well-directed movie — Chloé Zhao knows how to shoot quasi-cinema verité. The performances range from very good (Mescal, Watson) to brilliant (Buckley). Shut up, I told myself. Who cares if the premise is ahistorical and Shakespeare probably didn't much care about his dead son? Let Hamnet tell its story and judge it on the execution of its rote premise. Your Shakespeare nerdery is not more important than filmmakers telling the stories they want to tell.

And fair enough. A lot of the grief story works well. Hamnet's death is shot and acted well (what a good child actor), foreshadowed through doubles and omens (his sister nearly dies twice, only for the boy to take her place). Agnes' grief as a woman abandoned due to the demands of her husband's profession is potent. Sure, making Agnes a student of herblore and alleged daughter of a witch is odd, but the Shakespearean use of a forest as a place where enchantments and romance happen is neat. As drama, there's plenty to admire in Hamnet.

Then it gets to the Hamlet shit, and we have a problem. Yes, I already said that the film's dubious historical basis doesn't matter much. Raiders of the Lost Ark is based on made up history, but I'd never complain about the Ark of the Covenant showing up in North Africa. The problem with the execution of Hamnet's death inspiring Hamlet is how stupid it is. The play is about many things, but a man coping with his failure to be present for his son doesn't seem to be one of them. Why not explore Hamlet's catastrophic indecisiveness as a reflection of Shakespeare's personal failures? And even if this personal tragedy did inspire Hamlet, so what? Are we so narcissistic that every piece of art has to be autobiographical? Hamnet is based on many of the same literary and cultural assumptions that constitute Antistratfordianism. So, yes, I have a massive problem with this one, even if it is technically well-made. I shouted at my TV when the "to be or not to be" scene began. I rolled my eyes when Agnes not only comes to understand that Will wrote Hamlet to process their son's death, but forgives him for abandoning his family on that basis. By that time, the movie has given up on telling Agnes' story in favor of eulogizing her famous husband, a cowardly and hypocritical move. This is wretched, embarrassing and illiterate. The real tragedy here isn't Hamnet's death; it's that a talented director Chloé Zhao made this movie instead of leaving it to a hack like Sam Mendes.