Cinema Flagey : Hamnet
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Cinema Flagey : Hamnet
24/01 @ 18h50
Toronto film festival: The two stars are knockouts in Chloé Zhao’s poignant adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel with a stirring tearjerker ending
Maggie O’Farrell’s lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare’s family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O’Farrell’s so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloé Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.
Zhao is a good fit for the material. She, too, is a close observer of nature and of the many aching, yearning people passing through it. But she has previously not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this. The humbler dimensions of her films The Rider and Nomadland are missed here; Hamnet too often gives off the effortful hum of prestige awards-bait.
But Zhao’s hallmark compassion and curiosity remain, qualities necessary to Hamnet, which could easily tilt into the realm of manipulative tearjerkers. Hamnet was, records tell us, Shakespeare’s son, who died at a young age and is thought to have inspired, at the very least, the title of Hamlet, the story of a young prince who meets a tragic end. What O’Farrell and now Zhao imagine is that the writing of Hamlet was an exercise in grieving, a way for Shakespeare to honor his son and bid him adieu.
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Whatever Zhao doesn’t supply, though, is mostly made up for by the richly felt performances of the film’s two leads. Mescal is able to be far more expressive than he’s been allowed in quieter films such as Aftersun and The History of Sound. It is a pleasure to see the full breadth of his range, from seductive to shattered. It’s Buckley, though, who wholly envelops the film, giving staggering breath and body to Hamnet’s portrait of loss. She is nothing short of a wonder. (She also recorded a new version of the audiobook and does a terrific job at that.) It is on her shoulders that the film’s knockout climax rests. As she rises to the task, it is as if she is no longer acting but instead channeling a whole history of human
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Cinema Flagey
Richard Lawson in Toronto for The Guardian
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