To Grieve or Not to Grieve: On 'Hamnet'.
It can be difficult to humanize a name as aggrandized as Shakespeare. One of the first things high schools use in a desperate attempt to get teenagers excited about old English is that we actually do not fully know who William Shakespeare was, with the only proof of his humanity that sustains itself into the modern day being the life and personhood he was able to breathe into all of his uniquely (for his time) multifaceted and substantial characters. In Hamnet , Chloe Zhao adapts a novel by the same name that imagines the struggle that could have led the almost mythical Shakespeare to create what many call his best work: Hamlet . Both the film and novel delve viscerally into parenthood, religion, gender roles, and more to paint an awe-striking picture of navigating the singular kind of grief that comes with the death of one's child. Thus, it is no surprise that watching this film (in theaters, as god intended) was what finally got me to make a blog after thinking and not d...