To paraphrase a great actor, we need art. We live in a world where everything is increasingly financialized, and things are often valued only by what they can return to our pockets, but this fixation on the monetary ignores the richness of our souls and hinders our processing of difficult emotions. We need art because without it, we are diminished as humans, and Hamnet is one of the greatest recent pieces of art espousing this fundamental truth.
Helmed by Chloé Zhao and co-written by Maggie O’Farrell (who authored the novel the film is based on), Hamnet follows the family life of a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Anges (Jessie Buckley) from the time that they meet through the aftermath of their young son, Hamnet.
The big story here is, of course, Jessie Buckley as Agnes, a performance for which she has won every major award for, including an Oscar. While this review will not spoil the film’s ending, her performance in it is nothing short of spectacular. There are moments when she conveys the film’s theme and delivers the emotional weight of what it’s trying to communicate with only body language, much of it subtle shifts in weight or the tilt of a head. The look on her face at one point effectively sums up the entire film, and that is no easy feat.
Mescal is similarly excellent as Shakespeare himself, a character usually portrayed with an air of sophistication, but here with more tumult in his heart and mind. Mescal’s Shakespeare has a desperate need to create, and the actor goes to great pains to show us what that means, not only when the character pours his entire heart into a moment, but also what bubbles up when he’s at home and idle.
These are two all-time performances from two of our brightest working performers, and while Mescal hasn’t enjoyed the attention that Buckley rightly has, rest assured that this film is a stirring indication of what he is capable of.
Image/sound quality
As with most 4 K UHD Blu-Rays, the video quality of this Hamnet release is very good. There are moments when the crystal clear footage may actually work against the film, the crisp photography seeming slightly out of place with the period settings and costumes, but this is a minor quibble.
The sound mix is superb. So many of the smaller moments in the film are without a score, focusing on whispered dialogue or the simple sounds of nature around the characters. These moments are stirring and affecting. Toward the end of the film, in which a sold-out crowd of people are watching a production of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre, the sound becomes even more important as every line of dialogue is important and infused with meaning in a way that perhaps hasn’t been seen or heard before. Similarly, even the murmur of the crowd or the shuffling of feet is felt, all heightening the experience of the play.
This is a film that understands subtlety in its craft, at all levels, and the video and audio mix both highlight that.
Special Features for the Hamnet UHD Release
There are precious few special features included in this release, and the three included pieces are all quite short.
Family Is Forever has the cast and crew discussing the Shakespeare family and how they captured that for the film.
Cultivating Creativity has the cast and crew discussing the creative process they used to bring the story to the screen, how they approached all aspects of filmmaking (or at least as many as can be addressed in under five minutes).
Recreating The Tudor at ten minutes long is the longest and most in-depth of the features, and spends its entire run time discussing the technical aspects of the film, particularly production design and costuming that were used to bring the Tudor world to life again.
All of these are well produced, but there simply isn’t very much. The total runtime of all the features is only about 16 minutes, which is not enough time to go into any real depth or details.
There is also a feature-length commentary with Chloé Zhao and while there are some interesting tidbits within that, the film is so quiet that any speaking over it at all feels more disruptive than usual.
Conclusion
Hamnet is one of the year’s best films and owning it on UHD Blu-Ray is an easy recommendation. The film itself is gorgeous to look at and especially listen to, and the clear audio and video will make the ending even more emotional. This is a film that will shatter you to pieces, but then help you pick those pieces up. They may not go together exactly the same way, but they will all be there even if things feel slightly different. This is the function of great art, to make us reconsider, to bear our soul, and to change us without us realizing it. Hamnet achieves this in space, and then some.
Hamnet UHD is available to purchase at your retailer of choice.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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