Finally watched Hamnet tonight!
Thankfully I managed to see it with a friend by being a bit more proactive than I usually am. One of my new year’s resolutions was to do more things because I want to do them and not because anyone else asked me to. Although it’s a maxim I’ve held on to since high school, I’ve decided it’s finally time to embrace the fact that if I keep waiting for people to come back to me, I’ll just end up stuck and alone.
My brief thoughts are on my Letterboxd (linked up top) but I’ll put the hits here first too!
One of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen from Jessie Buckley here which I really hope gets her an Oscar in March!
Also some phenomenal stuff from the child actors too, which really surprised me because typically they’re a bit meh. I don’t know what they told that little girl but you’d be sure her brother had died for real.
I managed to sneak in a Doctor Who reference and gave some more personal thoughts on the concept of the story as a whole, but as “Brevity is the soul of wit” to quote the Bard, I didn’t go into much else on the app.
I save the juicy stuff for you, dear reader (Looking at you, Alex!)
A majority of my thoughts are about Shakespeare’s part in all of this. Not to diminish Anne’s story here, but while I could feel the palpable sadness all throughout her parts of the movie it didn’t really strike a chord with me? Which is fine I think? I’m selfishly grateful that I’ll never have to experience a mother’s grief.
Going into it, I was sure I’d do a bit where I’d tell people I related to Will in this because * tucks hair behind ear * I’m not like other boys, but fortunately they made it nice and easy for me.
I appreciated that for such a gifted writer he seemed to struggle with words when dealing with people in front of him. Something I’m trying to to relate to, but I guess I don’t really have a choice? I’m wired the same way, I think.
Anyway, here we go:
The Father:
Starting the movie with an open wound on his head was a fun choice, I wasn’t sure if it was just an excuse for Agnes to tend to his wounds to show off her witchy skills, but given that his father is quick to anger and quicker to violence it doesn’t take much to connect the dots.
It was touching that he was still worried about being “an angry and violent man” once his daughter had come along. It’s difficult to put into words how it feels to have become cruel only so that you may survive cruelty, knowing that you don’t want to pass that burden onto someone else, but also understanding that because you’ve changed so much it might not really be your choice anymore.
Paul’s acting through that entire scene was one of the most powerful things I think I’ve ever seen and affected more than most other things in the movie. Hiding his own pain behind dissatisfaction with his work, or his drinking only for it to still come to the one unavoidable truth about why he is the way he is? Chef’s kiss.
The Son:
Just to preface this bit, while I am not yet a father, it’s has been perhaps the most constant driving force in my life for maybe 14 years now. Both because of my relationship with my father and my grandfather, and in spite of it, I have always wanted kids one day. Either to prove something to myself or to everyone else. For the sake of our children, I will be better than all of our failures.
Little Hamnet got the first tears out of me tonight. It’s all well and good promising your dad to be brave, but everything feels different when he’s gone. Either for work or something else, Dad wasn’t around all the time growing up so that sadness that you can’t really articulate at that age hits me where I fucking live. Of course, the audience knows that he’ll never see his dad again, which makes everything one million times worse.
There’s something to be said about some kind of death of innocence, or death of goodness maybe from the world after this. Will can think he’s bad, but the boy came from him, and the boy was good, so Will must be good too. What does it mean when that’s taken away from the world?
The Holy Spirit:
Alright so if you’ve met me in person you know I’m quite fond of Hamlet. After being kin-assigned by my English teacher at the tender age of 14, I’ve felt pulled in the same directions as the good prince. The inaction, the familial burden you didn’t really ask for but get anyway. A fondness for redheads you ultimately scare away with your ‘antic disposition’. He just like me fr.
Nice to see so much of it here at the end of this movie, I often found myself mouthing the words alongside Will. Using the old story that Bill played the Ghost himself once or twice was a nice way to set everything up too.
Really loved the cathartic scene were he finally broke down, alone, after being able to tell the story he wanted. I don’t think it’s a statement on masculinity or anything as to why he wasn’t really emotional in front of people, but just an acceptance of the fact that everyone grieves differently, and that’s how it is for him.
Also incredible usage of the stage of the Globe slowly being constructed being the bridge to the afterlife kinda thingy. Something something stories let people live beyond their years something something. I don’t know, I’ve gone into this already. See the aforementioned Doctor Who-ing.
Closing Remarks:
Anyway this is probably one of the greatest movies of the year which is a hell of a thing seeing as it’s January.
Big up the Plague Doctors and calling it the Pestilence, I was too sad to really react to them, but there’s still a little boy in my soul who wants to be SCP-049 when he grows up.
I was too sad to make any actual jokes while the film was rolling, but just to get it out of my system:
The don’t just have a regular hawk, they have ghost hawk too, huh?
Absolute cinema. What else is there to say?
Geek, Uninterrupted 
Leave a comment