Hamnet film review

The monster behind the curtain is death, and she’s coming for us all. It is who we spend our lives with along the way that softens the journey to the great beyond.

I’m sitting there on the plush seats in the Everyman cinema, a ball of anxiety in my stomach. I’ve read the book, I know what happens. Most people who know anything about Will Shakespeare know the tragedy that unfolded in his family in the late 16th century. They know the tragedie of the Prince of Denmark, named almost identically to his son, Hamnet. These two names, the book and film tells us at the beginning, were interchangeable in Stratford at that time.

So why am I paying good money to be tortured? Why am I not like my friends who all ‘loved the book, but I wouldn’t want to see the film, I think it’d be way too depressing.’

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I couldn’t answer this question at the time. But here I am, still thinking about it a few weeks alter.

Muddy Waters – Let Stand – Become Clear (Lao Zsu) after all…..

…. and I’ve been under a blanket with raging flu. My mother leaves hospital today after another long stint. Things have been muddy as hell. A quagmire. But it’s in the trenches we find some answers, retrospectively. The cave we fear to enter always holds the treasure we seek (Joseph Campbell).

Perhaps I want and wanted to see films like Hamnet to indulge in the collective human experience of pain. Why have tales of tragedy and redemption gripped us since time began, after all?

My six year old daughter’s love of Taylor Swift also adds value to this topic. The Fate of Ophelia has been blasting out on every school run for weeks now. You cannot help but listen to the gilded words.

(I nearly wrote Taylor’s song as the ‘fat,’ of Ophelia, and giggled to myself and then remember that incredible album ‘The Fat of the Land’ in The Prodigy’s yesteryear. Let’s see if I can find a link to all this, too. My account is about connections, and there are ALWAYS connections).

So back to Taylor and the words of her song, about the fate of Hamlet’s dysfunctional love, Ophelia. There’s an obvious connection to the film, the clue is in the name. Interestingly (or maybe not), one of Taylor’s exes Joe Alwyn plays Shakespeare’s brother-in-law Bartholomew, a caring and sympathetic brother to Agnes Shakespeare who accompanies her (SPOILER ALERT BUT IF YOU’VE READ THE BOOK THE SAME THING HAPPENS) to London on a quest to find her husband and see, really, what on earth this playwriting fuss is all about. Agnes’ disdain for his way of handling their child’s death is palpable and heartbreaking, just as it is in the book. What could a Danish Prince have to do with sweet adorable Hamnet, one half of a twin, taken too young by the hideous plague?

The book and subsequent film have shown me that Shakespeare’s most celebrated and world renowned tragedy with its quote ‘to be or not to be’ is really more about helping Agnes than it is about helping him. Perhaps I let him off the hook too easily. He does run away to London and actually, he had no knowledge in his head that she was going to come and find him. However, perhaps his heart had a calling. It is all about the heart, where the treasure is (the cave of the heart in yoga philosophy) and Hamlet has more heart than any piece of literature. It is as my bio tells you, what inspired me to become a writer, despite not being at all academic (Shakespeare may turn in his grave if he thought his works were being used for academia, for they are works to make you feel, think, cry, rage and of course laugh).

I think Swift is on the money when she sings:

All that time
I sat alone in my tower
You were just honing your powers
Now I can see it all (see it all)
Late one night
You dug me out of my grave and
Saved my heart from the fate of
Ophelia

Let’s pick this apart for a minute. Agnes sits alone in her Stratford House (Taylor’s tower), like Tay did after a string of bad exes (maybe Alwyn, who is on the very set of the film in The Globe Theatre where Agnes ties up lots of emotional loose ends).

Shakespeare was honing his powers as a playwright, to convey in fiction what never could be in real life – it’s too tricky. For Taylor I presume this is her fiancée who is fairly powerful with an American Football.

She can see it all (Taylor), and at the end of the film, so can Agnes. The waters have become clear after the event. Always the way. We can only know the path looking back, not forward.

Agnes Shakespeare can see it, up there on the stage at The Globe, being acted out, her life and all the sadness that has gone before, all the rage and pain flung at her husband for his way of handling things. This perhaps saves her from an early grave, and of course the fate of Ophelia who after being told to go to a nunnery, died young in a ditch. Swift is no fool. As my youngest brother told me, she can write a guitar rift standing on her head. She writes poetry, music, looks absolutely gorgeous and brings literature to the masses, the billion dollar masses. A bit like Will Shakespeare. Like The Bard, who’s violent father doubted him and said he’d amount to nothing, she’s had the last laugh from the girls who used to bully her at school. She’s now met Mr Right. No Ophelia here.

As for Agnes? We don’t know, in fact ‘IRL’ as I am told means ‘in real life’ it’s unclear if the trip to London ever even happened. I hope it did, and she found some peace in her life via the great panacea of watching, reading and listening to fiction.

We also I don’t know if the words at the end of the book, uttered by the ghost in Hamlet, .which were – (SPOILER ALERT, READ THE BOOK FIRST, IT’S EPIC).

I hope Agnes saw this play. I love how Maggie O’Farrell, the books author and co-creator of the film used this line to portray the couple’s shared grief. For me there was resolution. I found the book’s ending one of the greatest last pages I have ever read, it left me gasping. The film pretty much lived up to that, too. Go and see it.

I’m grateful I can post again after yet another gap, grateful to my subscribers who read this and those who pay. It felt surreal to be paid to write again the other day after a near two decade gap since my journo days. Thank you xx