I went to see Hamnet with my flatmates on a cold January night that had us hurrying through The Meadows as fast as the icy paths allowed. I admit I was apprehensive about the film, simultaneously expecting something beautiful while wondering if there was any way I would leave not a little disappointed—after all, I am an English Literature student who studied Hamlet for years, and also a History student who, a little begrudgingly, knows more about the Tudor period than she ever wished to.
And yet, my main worry was not that I wouldn’t like the film, but rather that I, as so many online seem to, would find this film about a child’s death too reliant on my knowledge of that fact—that is to say, that it would tell me to be sad rather than move me to be. That I would be, as one Letterboxd reviewer wrote, “an easy mark […] for shameless emotional manipulation.”
I was wrong, of course. I cried from the moment our protagonist, Agnes Shakespeare, began calling out for her mother when giving birth. I thought of my own mother—how could I not? Tears continued, as the brilliant Jacobi Jupe delivered perhaps the strongest child acting I have ever seen as the eponymous Hamnet, offering his life for his twin sister Judith’s.
But, as difficult as it was to watch Hamnet die, the emotional heart of the film was undeniably Agnes as both a woman and a mother, and Jessie Buckley’s stellar embodiment of this. While the impetus of the story comes from Hamnet’s death, Hamnet the film is not really about him and who he was but rather about the telling of absence and what the wake of loss does to people. As the film’s finale so beautifully demonstrates, Hamlet can be understood as William’s ode to his son, a memorialisation of the boy he loved and yet never got to know in entirety. However, Hamnet the book, and now film, are Maggie O’Farrell and Chloe Zhao’s odes to Agnes and the emotional reality of grieving for the loss of that brightened doorway that a young child’s life brings to a mother’s universe.
But, as difficult as it was to watch Hamnet die, the emotional heart of the film was undeniably Agnes as both a woman and a mother
While we as the audience perhaps tend to search for William and some hidden piece of information about the English language’s most beloved author, Agnes is undeniably the anchor of the film—we follow her, and this is the world that she is left with—one indelibly tinged by grief.
I must question, therefore, the debate around the film’s supposed “emotional manipulation” of its audience. This is Agnes’ story, the story of a woman whom we know loves those around her as she does the forest for its interconnections and gentle balancing acts—is it therefore rational or fair to suggest that Zhao’s telling of such a profound moment of loss, which she experienced without the man her life is bound to, should be anything except raw and difficult and, simply sad to watch?
“Tell me a story.”
“What would you like?”
“Something that moves you.”
This is what Agnes requests of William in one of their first encounters and what Zhao asks of her audience. If the film does not move you, that is your right and I take no issue with it. But, to come into the cinema, likely with at least some idea of what the film entails, and to accuse it of emotional manipulation strikes me as an attempt to find a more intellectual-sounding way of saying “this film didn’t do it for me.” Rather than a meaningful critique of the pacing—often slow in the first half—or the historical accuracy—often tenuous at best—this claim of “manipulation” is notably non-specific to Hamnet.
I am yet to see a film, watch a TV show, read literature, or look at artwork that has not attempted to provoke some emotion in me, even if all it succeeds in creating is frustration. Yes, Hamnet tries to communicate something deeply painful, but as the tale of a family losing their child, there is surely no alternative that wouldn’t mean the total derailing of the film’s central narrative.
I am yet to see a film, watch a TV show, read literature, or look at artwork that has not attempted to provoke some emotion in me
Ultimately, Hamnet is a story about absolute love—about the relationships that lace together our worlds at the seams. Through Agnes, Zhao brings the audience into an environment that relies on connection, mirrored in the woodland scenes that bring together life and death for her. The same can be said of William’s writing: out of great pain, the film suggests, comes Shakespeare’s most sweeping and timeless tragedy. In the closing sequence, Zhao brings the two together, united at last as Agnes can see that grief has not dissipated for William, but rather transfigured itself through the most profound act possible—creation. Whether Zhao’s interpretation of O’Farrell’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s interpretation of the pain of losing his son moves you is up to you alone. But, we cannot fault art for trying to move us, and I for one hope to continue to be brought to tears, laughter, or even annoyance if it means that sometimes I get to feel with a film as I did with Hamnet.
Illustration by Katya Roberts (instagram: @katyaillustrates) for The Student.