#hament

okay so here’s the thing. not to be annoying but good bad blahahhhhhhhh means nothing and i want to be more useful than that. I LOVED IT. which also means nothing. because we may have different tastes. but i’ll give you some more information.

to begin: some more perhaps technical points. most people would probably find the pacing slow, especially the first half. i actually prefer slower-paced narratives, so i didn’t mind. the characters are also very distinct. it’s a small cast, so everyone has a sharp flavor to them— especially agnes, shakespeare’s wife. the story really centers her more than shakespeare (SO MUCH ONE COULD SAY ABOUT THAT). but she’s got a metallic bite. there’s lots of death and grief all throughout. nothing particularly gory, but sadness is the undercurrent of the film. i think you really have to be ready to commit to it. there’s not really any comedic relief. the acting is excellent. that’s unarguable.

thematically, it scratches my brain. as i say about much of my favorite art, “it’s doing so much work.” the movie refers to itself, sets itself up. but it also hinges upon the audience’s understanding of shakespeare, because the movie couldn’t have happened without shakespeare having a legacy. and it’s aware of that! it’s a story about that! and the concept of legacy, tying legacy to grief, tying legacy and grief to art making, there are so many layers of narrative, it’s quite insane. i try and wrap my head around all the ways it plays with the idea of story and my brain starts smoking. it is so incredibly smart. it’s utilization of and interplay with tragic form is astounding. it’s a love story to the tragic form. to narrative itself! to who authors, who stars, who is remembered by those stories and how. to the fact all humans have done since we could utter is try and make sense of life through story! mythologizing ourselves. making something out of something that isn’t there, until there’s something there.

a thought i had in my car (after having a sob) is that hamnet felt like zhao reaching out to me and going “i understand why you make art. it’s why we all do it.” i walked away feeling both set adrift by how moved i was, while also very cemented in my consistent decisions to center art making in my life, in whatever forms they come in. despite being so incredibly upsetting, it was also incredibly reassuring, and humanizing. i do feel like as a creative writing major and tragedy enjoyer, i’m perhaps the most intended audience for this movie. i was biased towards it when walking in— i wanted to enjoy it, and i did. and now i want to let it ping pong in my head forever.

honestly, recommending hamnet feels like recommending that you read my diary. or my english honors thesis in which i wrote my mom a genre bent creative piece utilziing ocean vuong’s work as a way to make her see me. or my poem about pointing out birds as a metaphor of keeping my grandma’s memory alive. or just everything i’ve ever written. so maybe that’s why i’m so averse to downright saying “you should see this movie.” i could also recommend that you slice me open. it’s all the same! i think what i’m trying to say is if you’re the intended audience, it will destroy you. if you’re not, you will find it okay. recommending therefore seems masochistic regardless, but for different reasons. but i also think most people not watching hamnet are missing out on something incredible. so, sure, yes, see it.