Words by JANE CROWTHER

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It’s a matter of common knowledge that Shakespeare lost a son, Hamnet, and his subsequent grief informed the crafting of one of his one most celebrated plays delving into sorrow, parenthood and death; Hamlet. The theatrical, narrative and emotionally resonant feat that Chloe Zhao pulls off with Hamnet – blindsiding audiences with devastation despite this prior intel – is uncommon, remarkable.

Adapted by Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell (whose bestseller it is based on), Hamnet charts the romance of the Bard (Paul Mescal) with Agnes (Jessie Buckley) through to their shattering as a family and the premiere performance of Hamlet. While Will is a man of ideas (scraping money together as a teacher while he pens his masterpieces by candlelight at night), Agnes is of the earth – an elemental woman who practices folk magic, wanders the woods in her muddy dress and snoozes in piles of leaves at the foot of mossy, towering oak trees. She burns as brightly as her scarlet gown, a force of nature that knocks Shakespeare off his feet, their hot and fast romance quickly begetting an imminent child and a marriage. Their children are brought up in an atmosphere of love and respect for the earth, closely bonded to each other. Shakespeare travels to London to ply his playwriting, bidding fond farewells to his brood as he commutes (a bittersweet parting moment at a street corner will be recognised by all parents), and the spectre of the plague takes hold.

Death sits alongside family life; is examined when a pet dies, is fought when illness descends. Death destroys and remakes, renders the Shakepeares strangers to each other and also, ultimately, connects them. In exploring the undertow of grief – in a feral howl, in despair, in process and in using it as a tool, Zhao and O’Farrell unpick the universal experience of losing a loved one while also celebrating the power and yes, necessity, of art to reflect, unite and heal.

Key to that transference is the ability of Mescal and Buckley to fully inhabit their characters, convincing immediately of their connection, lust and love – and of their adoration of their onscreen children. Jacobi Jupe (brother of Noah) is astonishing as the boy at the centre of an experience that breaks them; cheeky, sweet, afraid, and vulnerable. The black hole to hell seen at the beginning of the film, the gaping mouth of a dank tunnel in the roots of a tree promises a dark journey of the heart, but even prepared for an emotional assault, what follows is heartbreaking.

Buckley is understandably getting awards heat for her delicate sketching of a woman out of time; both too modern and too grounded in ancient spirituality for Elizabethan life, a ‘witch’ whose ferocious fight for her child is painful and beautiful to watch. Mescal meets her at every step though his role is necessarily more contained, while the Tudor home and village that the couple inhabited (Weobley in Hertfordshire standing in for Stratford) is brought to such visceral life that it seems we can smell the fire smoke and the poultices, taste the food Agnes puts on her heavy wooden table, feel the cool mud splatter in the street. Zhao’s eye for detail and beauty has never been better.

One critic has gone so far as to call Hamnet the ‘greatest film ever made’ and while that description might be up to interpretation of each viewer, what is undeniable is that this is a picture of great humanity, artistry and heart – heavy though it may be.

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Pictures courtesy of Focus Features/Universal Pictures
Hamnet is in cinemas now