Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal star as Agnes and Will Shakespeare
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
“Hamnet,” the Chloe Zhao film about the courtship and marriage of Will (Paul Mescal) and (here named) Agnes Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley), is full of sparkling chemistry, joy, sadness and tragedy. It explores how our ephemeral lives provide the raw material we sometimes transmute into great and lasting art. Presumably somewhere near Stratford-upon-Avon in the late 16th century, young Will Shakespeare, known only as “the Latin scholar,” meets the orphan Agnes, who was raised in a farmhouse by a family that did not love her. A falconer and herbalist who prefers the solitude of the woods to the trifles of the hamlet, Agnes is known a bit ominously as “daughter of the forest witch.”
In images of her sprawled on the forest floor and when she later reminds her daughter that rosemary is “for remembrance,” she could be the original for Hamlet’s doomed love interest, Ophelia. Well-educated Will is teaching three little boys Latin in order “to pay off the debts of his (brutish) father.” A writer in his spare time, Will works on what appears to be poetry by candlelight in his garret-like lodgings. He tells the grimy, beautiful Agnes, with whom he is smitten, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which is a great love story that ends tragically. He is trying to seduce her, as well, of course. But the use of Greek mythology to get the job done is both amusing and prophetic.
Life does not have to imitate art, however. The couple marry and have three children, first-born Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and the twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). They are a happy family. Will and Agnes are in love, and the children adore their mother and father.
But he is increasingly torn away from the family by his burgeoning career as a playwright in London, where he stays for long and longer periods of time. During one of these periods, Judith contracts the plague but recovers. Hamnet, who is sickened by his stubborn exposure to Judith, however, dies in agony in his mother’s arms. Will and Agnes are devastated and heartbroken, and she blames him for “not being there,” which is entirely reasonable under the circumstances.
Based on the award-winning 2020 book “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell, who adapted it to the screen with director Zhao (“Nomadland”), “Hamnet” slyly suggests how his wife inspired Shakespeare. We also get a sense of people surrounded by organic things because of the time spent preparing meals. Will and Agnes make love for the first time in a space full of stored apples (the film is full of apples, symbols of love, fertility and temptation).
As Agnes’s cruel-at-first stepmother, who gives more of her heart (and hand) to her stepdaughter after her marriage and the birth of her children, the great Emily Watson (“Breaking the Waves”) is a huge asset. As Agnes’ loving brother, Bartholomew, Joe Alwyn is another plus in a small but important role.
The children put on a little performance for their father as three rather familiar witches, chanting “fair is foul.” Will confesses to Agnes that men are “arrant knaves all,” an expression immortalized in his work. We even catch a glimpse of shadow puppets, precursors of the cinema.
“Hamnet” is better than the overrated “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and Kenneth Branagh’s disappointing Shakespeare film “All Is True” (2018), both of which feature Judi Dench as Shakespeare’s wife (named Anne). In its denouement, “Hamnet” suggests how Hamnet the person becomes “Hamlet,” the play. In fact, much of the action and dialogue of the last act is lifted directly from “Hamlet,” which we see performed with Agnes at the edge of the stage at the open-air Globe Theater in London. Agnes and the audience are utterly enchanted by what they see. Theater was much like magic at the turn of the 17th century. At this point, “life” in “Hamnet” exists beside the art of Shakespeare’s most popular and enduring work. The play’s the thing, all right. But which is the play? One of Zhao’s other brilliant jokes is that the production of “Hamlet” in “Hamnet,” is not really very good. But Mescal, Buckley, Watson and “Hamnet” are more than good. They are great.
‘Hamnet’
Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, some strong sexuality, and partial nudity.
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson
Director: Chloe Zhao
Writers: Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: A
Boston Movie News 