Hamnet--don't miss it

 

Way back when--in the years I was a graduate student--I took a class titled simply "Shakespeare" from a middle-aged prof who I thought, as did others, to be an expert on the Bard. He was, for certain, an apologist, very much in love with Will Shakespeare with an intensity that made every class period bountifully dramatic in and of itself.

What made Prof. Doebler particularly effective was his knowledge of the era--the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras of the English Renaissance--a culturally rich time in English history when the theaters were full and not just the province of society's elite. I remember him going on and on about how ordinary people, including the lower class, were entertained by staged productions, Macbeth being seen by loads of people right off the street. 

When he'd talk about the Globe Theater, Shakespeare's own stage sounded like something akin to a World Cup soccer stadium offering a game between, say, Spain and Brazil, a madhouse. It wasn't difficult to get a reading on how the show was going over. The teeming audience made sure you knew.

I thought of Prof Doebler during the last scene of Hamnet, the very popular movie now available on Netflix. You have to see it. It's riveting, beautifully shot and wonderfully assembled with just enough mystery to keep you attuned. Honestly, I can't say enough about it. It's just must-see.

That last scene lingers for a long, long time. Shakespeare's estranged wife has come to London for seemingly the first time and becomes one of the common people who are given the floor of the Globe to stand and watch the production, which happens to be a new play by her husband, a brand-new show titled Hamlet. 

What director Chloé Zhao does in that long scene is bring her audience ring brand new meaning from the most treasured soliloquy in all of Shakespeare and tie it into a story of loss and sadness in a way that gives all new meaning to "to be or not to be." How she orchestrates that long, final scene is just plain brilliant, unforgettable. 

Hamnet is, first of all, a story about unfathomable grief--anytime, anyplace. It's about losing a child, period.  It shakes the disbelief out of you by putting Agnes (Jesse Buckley) and her overwhelming sadness on the screen so succinctly that, even if you'd rather not experience the suffering Agnes does, you're powerless to turn away. 

But Hamnet is also about art, about what art can do for us, for all of us. "The play's the thing" in a fashion I'd never seen before, or experienced. What Zhao does in this movie is bewitchery, beautiful bewitchery; she determinedly rings brand new meaning--and redemptive meaning--out of a few words the whole world knows. Something deep as real human anguish gains a step toward healing when Agnes, amidst society's rabble, hears words her husband's most famous utterance convey to all right there in the madhouse theater.   

Hamnet streams right now on Netflix. It's marvelous, plain marvelous. Prof. Doebler would love it, I'm sure, as do his old students.