I cannot eat garlic.
This is one of the things I recently learned about myself. After I eat it, its taste lingers with me for days. The annoying thing is that when I am doing something else – like writing this paper, studying or cooking – it follows me.
“Hamnet” had the same effect on me. It lingered. It returned. It refused to fade, quietly threading itself through my thoughts long after I left that theatre.
But first, some context
“Hamnet” is the latest feature film by director Chloé Zhao. It is based on the namesake historical fiction novel by Maggie O’Farrell. It gives a different insight into William Shakespeare’s life. A kind of life behind (and far from) the Globe Theatre.
But be aware: this is not a story about Shakespeare. This is a story about parenthood, an intertwined vision told from the perspective of both spouses. Indeed there are two fires burning here: William (aka Will) and his wife Agnes.
“Agneses” are red, and “Williams” are blue
I used to think that good costumes are the ones that merge so well into the screen that you don’t even notice them. But, in movies like this one, I remind myself of the opposite: they can be just as expressive as a crying or screaming scene (but beware Jessie Buckley took care of that too!).
Indeed costumes can reveal another layer of a character: Agnes’ character is highly associated with nature, and she has such a strong connection to it, to the point where she is even called a “witch”.
If it were a school assignment to associate Agnes with a colour, I would have chosen green or brown to highlight her bond with nature. But not Malgosia Turzanska (“Hamnet” costume designer). In fact she chose red, and scored 100%. It is so clear of how Agnes couldn’t be anything but red: she feels like (and is) the pumping organ of this ensemble.
However, you will soon notice that red changes its meaning throughout the movie: it isn’t just for passion or love or pain or anger, it’s all of the above. It almost felt as if her dress were a real-life creature, with blood running in its seams, living with Agnes and changing with her. Indeed, when we first meet Agnes she is pure passion, as she “speaks” with nature and its inhabitants. Gradually, passion became love – first for “Will” and then for her children. But when her son Hamnet died, the blood that ran inside her dress, slowly started to fade.
Now, I have to admit, eating garlic wasn’t the only thing I did after watching Hamnet. In fact, a major thing happened in my life: I watched “Wuthering Heights”. And in this movie too, the colour red plays an important role in defining Cathy’s journey. However, the red that this protagonist wears, does not change in terms of shades like Agnes’ dress does. Indeed, Cathy’s dresses are always of the same radiant shade of red.
Here we can see how the two films portray character development through different means. For Cathy the change in her persona was mostly shown through the types of red dresses that she wears. While for Agnes, things are different: she only wears two dresses throughout the movie,, so the only way to portray her emotional journey was through the shades of the red used in her two dresses.
And then there are Will’s costumes…
When we first meet him, his clothes are pale blue, almost grey. But when the story unfolds and his son dies, this colour starts to change like with Agnes, but in a different way. In fact in Will’s case, the blue completely vanished. To me, it felt as though the colour of his clothes had been transferred into the ink of his pen. Finally, at the end of the movie, when “Hamlet” is shown to the public, he is covered in white – as if he didn’t have any more colour in his life.
And then it was so clear to me how, at that point, for Will, the theatre became the bearer of his colours and, eventually, of his life.
“Look at Me”
Will’s and Agnes’ love story begins with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In this tragic love story, Eurydice dies on her wedding day to Orpheus. Unable to bare life without her, he travels to the Underworld where he was granted the chance to take her back, under one condition: he couldn’t look at her as they were traveling back to the living world. With his final step, Orpheus caved and looked back as he couldn’t hear her footsteps. Then Eurydice immediately went back to the Underworld and Orpheus lived a tormented life without his soulmate by his side.
But Agnes did not agree with the story, she didn’t want Will to avoid caving to human emotions just because he was scared of the consequences. He didn’t have to build a shield to protect his family.
She wanted him to turn back toward her, to be human, to suffer with her. So by telling him to look at her, Agnes was also inviting Will to face tragic events not alone, because she wanted him to live them with her by her side.
Indeed this was the basis of a true love story – one that wasn’t written by Shakespeare.
But wait…who is Shakespeare?
To me, one of the most delicate parts of the movie was to avoid telling a story about Shakespeare. This is a movie about two lovers, then parents, who live the tragic events of life together – not as artist and muse, but as husband and wife. Agnes’ persistent use of “Will” is not accidental. It preserves the version of him that exists within the domestic sphere, moments before the world started to fully acknowledge his name. She knew of a William that – as he says – is not good with words when they are used in conversations. Her unawareness of the existence of “William Shakespeare” becomes clear in the final scenes, when she goes to London to see her husband’s play. If up until that point she hadn’t seen Will mourning their son’s death, she found him grieving as William Shakespeare.
And in the end art didn’t replace Will’s grief, it absorbed it. Agnes’ red didn’t fully vanish, it transformed. And when their love dared to look back, it became more than a myth.
That is what stayed with me. That is what still does.
The Long Shot 
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