I’ve been waiting for many weeks to dive into Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet (Focus Features, 11.26), and tomorrow oh dear Lordy that climactic encounter will finally occur. Sunday, 11.16 at 1pm. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, for it may toll for thee.
Is it, in fact, a fair or at least a semi-justified thing to apply “porn” terms (trauma, grief, misery) to this Elizabethan tale of the troubled marriage between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway (Jessie Buckley)? That is the question, oh my knaves.
Until HE has really and fully settled into Hamnet, this issue can never be truly clarified.
That said, I will not be approaching Hamnet with an attitude. When entering a theatre I am always open to a transcendent experience.
Tomorrow afternoon’s screening is important. The fate and the tilt of the 2025/‘26 Best Picture Oscar race will be affected one way or the other. On the face of it I’m more into the hypothetical fantasy of Hamnet beating the agitproppy One Battle After Another than vice versa.
