Fírinne McIntyre ✒ writing in Being Human.
The impact of Hamnet hinges entirely on its ‘reveal’ - which is, in fact, revealed in its synopsis, and tends to be common knowledge if one has studied Shakespeare. If you are going to tell a story that is commonly known, you must be able to make it interesting, and I personally felt that Hamnet failed in this. I felt little connection to the characters, and from the ‘reveal’ onward, everything played out as one would expect, except for some moments of hit-or-miss cheese.
This suggests, to me, that the film’s impact is entirely dependent on the viewer knowing nothing of Shakespeare’s biography, which isn’t a very reliable hinge. I think of Titanic - everyone knows that this boat sinks, and James Cameron made one of the best films of the 90s.
The first half of Hamnet was great - the family dynamics, the strange but instant connection between Jesse and Paul’s characters, the witchiness of it all - it had set itself up to be amongst my favourites. The film seems to abandon all of its exposition from the first half in favour of its big reveal and neglects any further development. It felt to me like two separate films, and not in the Lynchian way that I enjoy.
A highlight is Jacobi Jupe’s performance. Having studied acting for a short period, I marvelled as I watched each thought of the character cross the actor’s face before speaking. Jupe seems naturally capable of something that takes years of study, and I felt like I had witnessed something special. Given the slew of nominations at the time of release, I went in with the expectation that Buckley would bring me this feeling - thanks to Jupe, I did not leave entirely disappointed.
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| Fírinne McIntyre of synth-pop duo “mischa and the bear” |
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