I recently watched the film Hamnet and I had
some thoughts. First, we should recognize that this is a work of fiction. The
film was based on a novel by Maggie O’Farrell. Though the big life events are
correctly placed (births, deaths, marriage) everything in between those events
is speculative. There is very little we know about Shakespeare’s personal life.
For example, it has been theorized that Shakespeare did some private tutoring
to make ends meet. This is depicted in the film. But we have no direct evidence
that he did so. So little is known about his life that people have speculated
that the man from Stratford (Shakespeare) did not write the plays and sonnets
at all. A variety of other authors have been proposed.
Personally, I believe that the man from Stratford was
the playwright. None of his contemporaries ever doubted that Shakespeare wrote the
plays. There was no theory running around at the time that Shakespeare’s plays
were written by somebody else. Those theories came much later, more than 200
years after his death. Well, it is easy to come up with theories that fit some
of the facts hundreds of years after everyone involved is dead. It seems more
likely to me that what everyone believed in the early 1600’s was in fact the
case.
(The Holocaust denial is a similar situation. No one
denied the Holocaust in the years just after the war. There were too many
witnesses. Too many survivors. Too many Russian or American or British troops
that had liberated the camps. There were even guards from the concentration
camps who talked. But eighty years after the fact when all the witnesses are
dead, it becomes easy to create false narratives and conspiracy theories and
pretend the Holocaust never happened.)
But I digress. Hamnet is a work of historical fiction.
That means the big picture life events fit what is historically known and
everything else (like all the dialogue) is made up. This in itself is no small
feat. Coming up with a plot that fits the framework and is still compelling to
the reader/viewer is an achievement.
I have not read the novel, so I can only comment on the movie. The first ¾ of the film was a good movie, not a great movie, not a bad movie, just a good movie. The acting is well done. They do a nice job of transporting the viewers to that time and place. The pace of the film is maybe a bit slow, but not annoyingly so. But the final scene of the movie redeems all. Jessie Buckley playing Shakespeare’s wife Agnes is confused at first watching the play Hamlet, but soon finds what Shakespeare is trying to say. She pulls us into her world and we understand what she is feeling. The final scene is so beautiful and entrancing that it makes the whole film worth seeing. And I can only say that Jessie Buckley is well deserving of her Academy Award.
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