As we learn from the title card at the opening of Chloe Zhao's new film, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were functionally interchangeable during Shakespeare's lifetime.
As your English teacher may have told you, Shakespeare's son Hamnet died tragically at the age of 11. And, as we know from scraps of documentation that have survived over the centuries, Hamnet's death probably occurred about four years before Shakespeare put pen to paper for his book. Hamlet.
Combining these pieces of information, a considerable number of literary historians have come to the conclusion that Hamlet — about a grief-stricken prince who sets his life and kingdom on fire after seeing the ghost of his late father — was actually inspired by the death of Hamnet.
Clearly, this is the theme of Zhao's heartbreaking, heartbreaking tale of woe: a somewhat deliberately static exploration of Shakespeare's (Paul Mescal) meeting and marriage to his wife Anne Hathaway (often called Agnes, the name of the character played here by Jessie Buckley), followed by a brief, happy time spent with his children. And then, of course, the sudden loss of his only son (played with impressive maturity by Jacobi Jupe).
The almost crushing damage this causes to the delicate world, which Zhao carefully reconstructs, seems apocalyptic in its scope, almost completely ignoring the traditional plot concept of character development.
Instead, Zhao Hamnet simply recreates the disaster, treating it as a biblical event. There is a time before their son's death that is joyful and simple, although Agnes's terrible premonitions threaten to destroy their happiness, reflected in the audience's knowledge of what will happen. And then the time comes – an unbearable silence, which, like Hamlet’s last line in the play, speaks of the deceptively simple truth of death and the fight against it: “the rest is silence.”
WATCH | Hamnet trailer:
Given the mouth-watering parallels between Hamlet and Hamnet's grief, you can perhaps understand why so many people have theorized for so long that Hamlet's grief and inability to overcome it—which ultimately leads to his death, the death of his lover Ophelia, and the end of his family line and kingdom—may have been ripped straight from Shakespeare's life.
You might even guess that one of the people who holds this belief is Maggie O'Farrell, the Irish writer who wrote the book. Hamnet based on.
But there's something else going on there. To begin with, O'Farrell is the first to admit that the data are too sketchy to make a positive judgment. Going back to the earliest days of Shakespeare's biography, the writer's family (wife Anne, eldest daughter Susannah, and twins Hamnet and Judith) were often relegated to footnotes.
There is also no information about how Hamnet died. His death is often linked to the bubonic plague, as in this version of the story, but also in other sources, such as the 2018 film. That's right — think of it as an accidental drowning. Others, such as Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, simply attribute it to an unspecified disease or illness, given that it was what commonly killed children at the time.
What is more or less universal, however, is that scholars place more importance on Shakespeare's work than on his personal life. When they were not arguing that Shakespeare came from his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to London because he did not care about his family, or theorizing that the death of a child did not matter to parents in the 16th century, these scholars often ignored his family completely.
O'Farrell Hamnet – and, as a result, Zhao’s interpretation of it – does not aim to reveal the objective historical truth about what happened that summer. Instead, it strives for something much more tragic and universal, which has somehow become the defining trend of this year's cinematic triumphs.
“I refuse to believe it [at] At any point in time, anywhere in the world, losing a child is something less than catastrophic,” O'Farrell, who co-wrote the script with Zhao, told CBC's Q in an interview.
“The whole impetus for writing the book was to make sure as many people as possible understood that this boy lived and that he was sad and that he was loved.”
The way Zhao achieves this goal is overall as impressive as all the critics and their mothers claim. The pastoral, defocused subtlety of her camera gives the whole thing a dreamlike feel—sometimes contrasting with the symmetrical, upright shots that keep everything in focus.
We see this one day when Shakespeare is working on a play at his desk while his wife comforts their first sobbing child behind him; we see it again: Agnes grieving, peeling eggs at the table, Shakespeare standing behind her, comforting, massaging her shoulders; and finally we see it with Agnes at the Globe Theater watching the first production in awe Hamlet, with the main character played by Jacobi's older brother Jupa, cute boy child star Noah Jupe.
For Zhao, every scene that examines craft and home life passes through some sharp boundary: a desk, a table, a stage. In each we see the characters struggle to stay in the same world. And in each of them, we see another character cross that line to bring them back.
Whether intentional or not, this reflects the most striking part Hamnet; a seemingly deliberate lack of direct comfort, even when he finds solace in the darkest of places. This thread can be seen in a number of other players who received awards this year, from Ann Lee's willTo Blue Moon, Marty Supreme and most importantly, darkly inspiring Dream train.
Instead of offering a comforting happy ending to characters who have experienced trauma, these films reflect on pain. They admit that life is pain. And somehow, like magic, they help you feel a little less alone.
Ignoring pointless criticism Hamnet existence “emotionally manipulative” — which seems to be an unscrupulous synonym for “narratively effective” — it’s still not perfect.
Zhao's careful distance from his characters borders on the clinical at times. Elsewhere, Buckley's bloodcurdling screams almost veer into sentimental territory.
But these are minor complaints. And they are erased by the honesty of human experience; a window into a trauma too terrible to name and a powerful reframing Hamlet myth.
Although the play has long been described as being about a man baffled by his indecision, Hamnet helps support the counternarrative. Instead of being an over-intelligent coward, too weak to act without thinking, Zhao's potentially historically inaccurate backstory gives Hamlet a different foundation.
Struck by the deep emotional horror that Zhao is capable of causing, who wouldn't gloomily wonder, “To be or not to be?” And, as Hamlet fatally quips, who wouldn’t decide that the sad and difficult way forward is simply “Let it be”?
