My wife and I looked forward to seeing the new movie Hamnet. So in mid-December, we went to the Spectrum 8 in Albany.
This is what I liked: the mysterious nature of Agnes (Jessie Buckley), who is a healer and a bit of a mystic. Unsurprisingly, Will (Paul Mescal) is captivated by her. There’s definitely serious chemistry there. After she becomes pregnant, and despite resistance from both their families, they marry.
Wait. Do you know what this sounds like? The actual courtship of Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare, who got married in 1582. The story is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. Due to the non-standardization of English in 16th and 17th-century England, Anne/Agnes, and for that matter Hamnet/Hamlet, are essentially the same.
This is something we unfortunately did not like: the dialogue was often hard to follow. Sometimes, it was volume, sometimes the words, occasionally both. And it wasn’t just us; I could hear other people in the theater whisper, “What did they say?”
Language barrier
I have a working theory about this. From the Times of London: “Chloé Zhao…, said she understood only a third of the language and depended on [Mescal] to guide her on set.” She said: “When I was on set of Hamnet, when Paul was delivering his speech, I only understand a third of it, technically, because I don’t understand what those words mean.”
Further, she noted, ” Paul said to me, ‘Listen, if Shakespeare is performed right, you don’t have to understand what they’re saying. You feel it in the body, the language is written like that.’”
I think there is an element of truth in that. Still, I’m more aligned with Adrian Chiles in the Guardian. “You know what that is, don’t you? That’s balls, that’s what that is. Of course, you need to understand what’s being said and what’s going on. At least I do. I’ve often been told not to trouble myself with such trifling details. Just let the artistry wash over you, I’m told, and consider how it makes me feel. Well, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. It makes me feel confused, rather inadequate, frustrated, even angry, ultimately disengaged, and therefore bored. Just plain bored.”
I was confused and frustrated, for sure. Yet there was enough in the two crucial moments to sustain me. One is mentioned in the IMDb description and on Anne Hathaway’s Wikipedia page. (Yet there were people in the theater who were audibly confused.)
The other critical moment is the play’s production, which, interestingly, was MUCH easier to hear.
It was good enough that I might watch it again at home. Young Jacobi Jupe as the title character was quite good. But I would turn on the captions. Critics were 86% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, with audiences at 93% thumbs-up.