I’ve been waiting for a Hamnet takedown campaign to be launched, and now we’ve got the beginnings of one!
I’m not invested in any sort of negativity toward Chloe Zhao’s film, which I haven’t seen. The Best Picture race is simply more interesting when a strongly favored contender acquires a few influential haters.
Has anyone reported that the 12-year-old kid who plays the doomed Hamnet Shakespeare (Jacobi Jupe) is the younger brother of the 20-year-old Noah Jupe, who plays Hamlet in the Globe Theatre production of the famous tragedy? Obviously Zhao wants the audience to see and feel a physical similarity between the deceased son of William and Agnes Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal) and the actor playing Prince Hamlet at the finale.
Ask any Shakespeare authority, and they’ll tell you Noah Jupe is too young for the role. A friend who’s seen Hamnet feels that Zhao’s strategy is cloying, manipulative, contrived.
For what it’s worth, the general consensus is that Hamlet is around 30. Okay, maybe 27 or 28 but no younger. Most of the big-time actors who’ve played Hamlet (David Warner, John Gielgud, Ben Whishaw, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, Derek Jacobi, Sarah Bernhardt, Ian McKellen) have been 30ish.