One of my most eager reads growing up as an aspiring playwright was Samual Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. The philosophy and minimalist structure searching for meaning and salvation kept me turning each page waiting for that sweet rush of inner beauty and divine energy, Beckett calls upon in so many ways, eloquently humorously and with a thrilling deeply pensive anticipation but it never comes. The existentialist dread of nothingness like Albert Camus finding peace during a weeklong wake they sulk the meaning of all that’s good in favor of self-gratifying emotion, as if that in itself is worthy of salvation or justification. After reading the play my 20-something-year-old self tore it up and promptly dumped it in the garbage. There is no sweeping speech and bold sounding phrases that heal outside of positive delusions even if the drama is bold in scope and tantamount to emotions that fill us with great expectations, as in Hemingway’s “Old Man in the Sea”, there is no meat on the bone in the end. This instinctual resolution based on heroics and hopeful clamor even when masterfully presented like Alec Baldwin’s winners only speech in “Glengarry Glen Ross” is dangerous fantasy that seeks only to entertain our misgivings and ill found faiths.
This was the sentiment that shook my head after watching the Hamnet, a fictional portrayal of William Shakespear’s life and loss equating the later to Hamlet’s relationship with his father’s ghost and soliloquy at Yorick, the former court jester’s, grave. The film Hamnet is incredibly well written, acted and directed. Jessie Buckley playing Shakespear’s wife brings out an amazing range of natural emotions that fill us with a deep understanding of all the subtle feelings of this fanciful character. Being a product of the 16th century her bold ravenous choices made in the script can be excused but it’s unfortunately socially unjust and dangerous. Paul Mescal likewise turns a brilliant performance digging us profoundly into a pitt of his substance as a writer who conveys and resolves his most intimate grief through Hamlet’s dialogue but these sentiments were not what the Dane prince’s play was about. Although I haven’t read the Book the film is based on it seems it was all conceived from one scene from Hamlet, as his dead father the king bids adieu to his son as a ghost. The film’s story is heart wrenching and entertaining, unrooted in reality for a unique surrealism but the interaction between the couple is erroneous. Agnes is presented as an enlightened soul with the natural divine energy of a druid but then turns around and shuts out Shakespeare and their communication breaks down after a tragic family loss. This isn’t Donald Sutherland ending his marriage with Mary Tyler Moore in “Ordinary People” while discussing their understanding of substance during their son’s wake. In Hamnet the clear view of decent hearts are abandoned. The tragedy swoons and cradles us with surprise and thrilling drama at the expense of our identities as human beings and superstitions struggling to make things right. There's an enchanting abandonment of reality here that isn’t explored but we don't care because the story is told so wonderfully sublime. Towards the end of the film when she finally discovers his art she initiates a very powerful scene epitomizing the most ideal virtue of theater, continuing the extraordinary tone, she reaches out and touches Hamlet on stage as he dies. He takes this cue and uses it to embody the final line as others also touch him, then he holds out his hands to the rest of the crowd as if to give them all a hug. It was such a powerful display of how the grandeur of art speaks from soul to soul as if contentment can be achieved together but the main characters did not. This is what makes the film so ironically special and unique but are we all to go about our lives embracing unhinged reactionary emotion?
You can't embrace such divine beauty and then cut it off without explanation or even some closure. Was it a treatise on the exposition of how cult-like belief blinds us from the source of love? If that's the idea, that Agnes was so swept up in her blind beliefs that they became her harmful id that shielded her from a healthy openness, then bravo, but to have such symbolism hidden is detrimental to those that come away unself actualized to their identity. I dare say most would come away thinking her defiance caused by ill-conceived rules of faith were not discord but disjointed harmony they not only can relate to but now desire to act out. People release their anger, cut off their own love and peace for a stringent falsehood thinking their situation is somehow unique or separate from grace, the only thing that holds hearts together, as that final scene with Hamlet yet Chole left the Shakespeares' closure to a mere smile. Don’t we need more as a society? Don’t we need are most in-depth meaning to be a part of our peace and harmony or do we want it unhinged from time to time so that we can better appreciate when it’s at a loss. Sounds like an excuse, an ironic scapegoat to being real; afraid of being even remotely vulnerable when in fact it’s that open cohesion that protects us.
During the backstage speeches at the Oscars director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Oscar worthy film “One Battle After Another” won best picture, was asked about racial politics. While he didn’t directly answer the question he talked about Teyana Taylor’s Oscar nominated performance of Perfidia revealing how the character was flawed and made decisions that were detrimental to the revolution. How she started as a hero but became the anti-hero in fact fleeing the nation because she had killed someone. They owned up to the flaws with an eye on a future, one in which her daughter could be a better person. This integrity is missing from Hamnet during which we are robbed of a beacon of moral clarity. A few lines owing up to this or explaining the issue would have been enough and taken the film to a unifying effect. Instead, Jessie Buckley during her extremely worthy best actress winning speech said. “Chloé [Zhao] and Maggie [O’Farrell, the film’s screenwriters], to get to know this incandescent woman and journey to understand the capacity of a mother’s love is the greatest collision of my life. It’s Mother’s Day in the U.K. today, so I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart. We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds.” The chaos though, indeed extremely heart felt and beautiful, was not explored or explained leaving the viewer with a misconception. How can we move forward as a married couple when one of the greatest writers of all time and one of the most soulful spiritual characters ever on screen, as so conveyed by Jessie, do not communicate with reason and accountability. This at a time in our history where ignorant disgruntled voters are still angry about how the president they voted for is treated by the media, the context of his actions unknown to them. Their souls mute to the damage wrought.
Oscar winning actor Cillian Murphy recently expressed his strong aversion to entertainment media that dictates emotional responses to the audience during an interview with the Sunday Times saying, "The last thing I want to be involved in is preachy or dogmatic work because films should never tell you how to feel. They should just ask questions". I’d argue the opposite and in Hamnet, Chloe and O’Farrell give us questions no one should be asking. We don’t need to discover ghosts or gaping holes in the earth harping on superficial superstitions waiting for Godot; we need Godot to show up and help us up by pointing out what’s wrong in the proper context and showing us what needs to be done. The film’s director, Chloé Zhao relied on her genius eye for sound and frame as well as award winning earnest acting to lead the way as she masterfully searched for answers without any reality-based structure. Zhao expressed a divine tone and timing rarely seen in cinema, her efforts to bring out beauty and serene simplicity is quite magical, but the script gives bad advice.
On the flip side the hospital drama series “the Pitt”, streaming on HBO MAX, bags a relentless emotion based on truth, justice and profound meaning. While Hamnet oozes fanciful yet profound emotion the Pitt bangs us on the head with humanity constantly bringing us to the brink of soulful existence so that we can love ourselves and our fellow man. It challenges our ill-gotten corrupted preconceived norms and practices as individuals and as a society in an earnest simplicity even a child can understand and grow from. We as a society are better when we come to terms with our own substance not dance around it like a court jester killed for speaking out. “To be or not to be” indeed. While we continue to hang million dollar de Koonings and Picassos let us not forget Basquiat’s warnings or Dali’s melting clocks as we embrace truth and justice; concepts that our slipping from us into a soulless abyss.
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