Hamnet, the movie
excellent despite its flaws
Hamnet is an excellent novel which speculates about Shakespeare’s private life. Maggie O’Farrell’s portrayal of Anne Hathaway as Agnes, a seer and a herbalist, is very imaginative and consistent with some of Shakespeare’s plays. Something of O’Farrell’s nuance and precision is inevitably lost in filming. Hamnet will give you some material to work with if you enjoy the minor art of pedantry. Some of the dialogue is truly execrable, for example. But—the flaws stand out because the film, overall, is wonderful. The countryside and the woods are beautiful, the flood scene is great, the death of Hamnet has excellent, excellent acting from both Agnes and Hamnet, the two best actors in the film, though Judith was also very very good. What talented children. (Shakespeare isn’t good enough, at all.) O’Farrell’s novel is hugely moving and that emotion has been preserved in the film, which is what matters most. I heard plenty of sniffling in the (full) movie theatre at the end.
Harold Bloom said of Hamlet
it isn’t actually a tragedy. It’s an apotheosis, a transfiguration, a kind of upward-breaking transcendence of the protagonist. It actually has more in common with the high comedies written just before and after it—As You Like It and Twelfth Night—than it does with Julius Caesar or Othello.
That is the spirit in which Hamnet understands Hamlet. The scene in the Globe is a wonderful depiction of that. I am very glad I saw this film, however “true” or not it may be.
And if you haven’t read the novel, it’s a good one for Christmas stockings!
A fabulous novel! I surprised myself with how much i enjoyed it, as i promptly told my daughter, who gave it to me, ‘but it’s in present tense!’
Rather sad, tho, that novels are somehow deemed more noteworthy if they get transformed into film….
Hamnet is one of the few books I wish I could read again for the first time. And I can't wait to see the movie.