‘Hamnet’ review: Grief, grace and the first stirrings of genius
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“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns,” Maggie O’Farrell writes in her bestseller Hamnet, the basis of Chloe Zhao’s Oscar-nominated film of the same name. O’Farrell’s chronicle of the heartache that follows untimely death is the Shakespearean tragedy that William Shakespeare never wrote.
Hamnet was the only son of Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway. The boy, who had a twin sister Judith, died from illnness in 1596 at the age of 11. O’Farrell’s historical fiction novel speculates that Hamnet is another name for Hamlet, and that the boy’s demise inspired one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays.
O’Farrell has co-written the screen adaptation along with Zhao. Agnes, as Anne is known in the film, is a child of nature, bursting like a wild flower out of the forest floor in her earthy red gown.
Will (Paul Mescal) is smitten with Agnes (Jessie Buckley), her unkempt hair and lack of inhibition, the force field she carries within her body. Agnes’s mother was a natural healer, and there is something otherworldly about Agnes too – a tendency to speak in riddles at times; talk of portents and prophecies; dreams that tend to come true.
Agnes encourages Will to move from their rural...