Why does grief affect your lucidity? You encounter something so beautiful, that it moves you. You spend time with it so much, that it becomes part of your senses, your memory, and your body. But when you are comfortable and not paying attention, something you love so much, is suddenly taken away from you. You either try to replicate that feeling that it evoked in you or try to replace it with something else, or both. That ensuing chaos that sets in you is grief. Chloe Zhao uses this chaos in Hamnet, to show the heartbreaking origins of one of the most told stories of all time.

Director: Chloe Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe

Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and Will (Paul Mescal) are two rebellious forces that challenge the norms of the constricted world of 16th century England. For Agnes, the forests are home and brick structures are the wild. She's deeply intuitive and intensely empathetic, living her life as her mother wanted to, 'with her heart open to the sun'. Buckley in a tour de force performance, is the light that guides the audience through the complex emotions of her character and the film. The complex emotions of Agnes comes with one singular catalyst that drives her, empathy. Buckley embodies this as she lights up the happy moments that Agnes and her family shares, and through the extended period of grief plunges the audience in those cold waters along with her. While the body of the film, maybe about the child and his tale that stood the test of time, but the heart belongs to the Buckley.

If Agnes turned to nature, then Will turned to words in his time of grief. In an intertitle before the film starts, we are made aware, that in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, the names Hamnet and Hamlet are the same, and therefore interchangable. But that isn't because Will wants to tell the story of his child, he wants to tell the story of his emotions, which is how Zhao moves Hamnet. Like holding a child in one hand and pointing to the various moods of the film, Zhao uses emotions as the stepping off point from one scene to another. As Agnes tries to convince her brother to let her marry Will, it isn't the fact that Agnes is pregnant out of wedlock that moves her brother, it is Agnes' feelings towards will that brings them together. When Agnes is in danger of losing a child, age old techniques of cure isn't effective, it is Agnes' memories of her mother that breathes life into the child.

But with such weighted showcase of grief, Hamnet doesn't weigh you down. The crew behind the scenes can be credited for their harmonious product that became the world of Hamnet. Cinematographer Lukasz Zal uses frames to switch between the actors and the environment to use subject of a frame, to flip perspectives. As the swords click and the players fight each other with vigour, the audience are amazed, but through a small gap we see Agnes' growing intrigue. We do not see the audience that fill the frame. We donot look at the growing awe on their faces. We look past the silhouettes of the players, towards Agnes. Zal along with Zhao and Affonso Goncalves does not force the audience to move their eyes to the subject of the frame, the frame slowly changes the subject and takes the eyes on a journey of their own.

But towering amongst the technicians is Max Richter, who delivers the final blow in the hammering of sentiments. After writing for Buckley, Mescal, and a whole bunch of actors, using Zal's cinematography to the maximum to tell a story, Zhao uses Richter and his seminal piece, 'On the Basis of Daylight', to end a scene without words.

As the story of Hamnet, we see the reason for grief unfold. Agnes understands why Will's grief is told through art. But Zhao humanises William Shakespeare, as he understands Agnes' grief, by looking over the Thames, and asks, "To be or not be?"