Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)
Watched this after reading the book. It’s easy to see why Zhao might have been attracted to the material. The writing leans into her Malickian sensibilities. The still painting of grief in Nomadland, or the exploration of myth in the Eternals (despite its commercial failure) seemed like a warm up to what should’ve been a home run. But this has got to be the most disappointing movie of the year.
Everything from the structure, to the edit (studio interference?) and even some of the performances seem inert. Zhao’s images are lush but sexless (literally: what should’ve been a scene of medieval passion with Buckley and Mescal is reduced to a couple of utilitarian thrusts pictured in a wide shot). That this was cowritten with Maggie Farell is confounding because the writing disregards the source material. Where the book is layered, non-linear, and rich with texture for that specific time and place, the film simply deals in highlights in a linear manner. It shows no interest in its people and instead uses them as mere props to manufacture feeling.
The performances are one note. There is no room for joy here, the joy of being a parent or brother or sister. No room for fear or anger or even confusion. There’s barely room for the rest of the family! This is a 2 hour montage of people play acting ‘sad’ amidst all the portent. Mescal lumbers and broods; a powerful Buckley performace feels edited down to a supercut of her acting portfolio; the younger Jupe is reduced to a convulsing patient and by the time the older Jupe milks that soliloquy it merely serves to cue that final money shot. That an overused Max Richter piece was reused for that is as good as the movie holding up to the audience a cue card labelled: cry.
The inherent premise of a successful play is that despite the obvious artifice of its setting, great words and performances elevate it into a kind of magic that manifest in the minds eye. Hamnet proves that all the temporal trickery of the camera cannot manufacture magic out of something essentially impotent.
A better movie about grief and trauma, and one that is an exemplar of the atemporal medium of film, is Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling.