If you liked the film from beginning to end then maybe you are not going to enjoy reading this. And if you are going to see the film and don’t want spoilers, then also don’t read this.
And as a general point, my desire is to be positive in life and bring people together. Then along comes a film like Hamnet and I think that that is a good principle but a difference of opinion is also a good thing to bring to the table.
Just keep it tolerably polite.
Right from the start, I was not taken with the voice or the delivery of Paul Mescal, the male lead. I just didn’t think he was a very good actor. People are divided on this, and I have to accept that some people think he is a fine actor.
I read that he is “one of the most talented actors of his generation, iwidely lauded for his ability to deliver authentic, nuanced, and emotionally raw performances, particularly in dramatic roles.”
But I also read that he is “a wooden actor who gets cast in movies just because he was in Gladiator 2. And he acting in Gladiator 2 is the worst acting in the last 10 years. The speech at the end is so bad that I started laughing. This actor has zero charisma, and the worst of all, his career is only getting started.”
Well, I have already said where I stand on this divide, so with my opinion of Paul Mescal, nothing was going to go right.
The first experience was in the wooing scene between the two leads at the start in close up. It was kind of enticing, except for that wooden delivery.
But from then on it was turgid. It seemed we were looking at lives unfold while at the same time being told to prepare ourselves for tragedy. It was akin to an actor telegraphing his lines.
Portentous and turgid. Oh dear.
If I could have shouted at the director I would have said – Don’t prepare me. Don’t tell me how to seize up, how to feel tense in anticipation of tragedy. Don’t weigh each scene down with feelings that are not yet fitting and ready to be felt in the drama. And do not drown me in the dirge music of Max Richter. Oh God, save me from this.
When Hamnet died, and Will came back from London after he heard that his daughter was gravely ill, and came home to find that Hamnet had died, I was steeling myself. I was steeling myself against him crying and screaming like Anne had screamed. Please, no more.
And before Hamnet died, the child actor who played him was asked to take on an emotional range that even if he could have coped with it, he was a child. The director should not have made him behave with an attempt at the range of an adult. It didn’t carry, and it could never have carried. Well perhaps in a magic realism film where children behave strangely. But not here. It was manipulative, overwrought, and limp.
More than that, the film did not flow. It was episodic, and while I may be remembering this wrongly, I think the sound quality was strange, as though the full range of the human voice was clipped to make it seem distant. Or perhaps it was Max Richter’s music.
A major bloop was when one of the subsidiary characters tells Ann what Will is doing in London – and Ann’s reaction was all wrong. Why would she not have known what her husband was doing before the person who told her knew? And if the other character did know, then Ann’s reaction was still more strange. Any human being would display a different emotion on being told what her own husband was doing.
The film was so dark – literally dark – that it was like peering into a mist, not quite able to pick things out clearly. And on and on and on. Dirge.
And then at the end with Hamlet, the play, performed on the stage, I was affected by it. It was as though everything was leading me to this point so it could finally reach my emotions.
And Will’s smile was good – the best bit of his acting in the film.
And then Anne laughed and I thought – who directed this??
Last comment – the actor who played Hamlet on the stage in the final scene was good.