“What dreams may come . . . .” Hamlet
You will learn too little about William Shakespeare when you see Hamnet, which is about his son’s, Hamnet’s death. What you will see, however is the reconstructed 16th century Elizabethan world in its beautiful Jacobean architecture, its plague, and a genius who was lost before going to London: “I have lost my way.”
Director/co-writer Chloe Zhao has recruited a premiere actress, Jessie Buckley, to play his wife, Agnes (or Anne as we also know her). Agnes deals with child deaths and the disorienting absence of her husband to London to produce his plays. The reconstructed Globe is a beauty, and Agnes’ first visit to it while it shows the first Hamlet is wonderful beyond words.
The production gives Agnes scope to come to terms with her deaths, her husband’s reason to be gone, and catharsis. I wept at the production, as I remembered the new Globe and watched a consummate actress caress minimalism in honor of the great playwright and the heroine his wife had become.
Yet there’s more: As a companion to Hamlet’s words about death, Zhao and co-writer Maggie O’Farrell have fashioned a replica of enough Elizabethan England to make you feel right at home. Most of all, like the Bard himself, the filmmakers reveal our common humanity over 400 years old for this film.
Our sense of loss of a loved one, the absence of a spouse off to work (he does, however, buy her the biggest home in Stratford), and the challenges of pandemic (covid, anyone?) are just a few of the universal themes in Hamnet and, of course, Hamlet.
“What is given may be taken away at any time.” Mary (Emily Watson)
One of the best films of 2006, and one of the best about the times of greatest writer who ever lived.