“Hamnet” tests tear ducts and patience

“Keep your heart open.” This is the request made of William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) — or, as she’s more commonly known, Anne Hathaway — in Chloé Zhao’s latest film, “Hamnet.” But in the case of this maudlin, overwrought drama, “keep your eyes open” would be a more fitting demand. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, “Hamnet” spends all 126 of its protracted minutes mistaking tranquility for tension, meandering through the forest and its narrative at such a languid pace that it starts to feel like the film’s emotional resonance is playing hide-and-seek among the trees. Occasionally, a long-lost sense of gravity will emerge for a sweeping moment of gravitas. But this is merely a quick sucker punch to the gut, a cheap shot to draw as many tears from the viewer as possible in hopes that they’ll mistake their physical reaction for a sentimental connection.

This is an easy enough trick to perform. After all, this is the true yet semi-fictionalized story of a mother who loses her son to pestilence in the 16th century and how his death inspires Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” a prolific tragedy and one of the greatest works of art ever made. If you’ve ever experienced loss or read “Hamlet” — so if you’re most people on Earth — you’re an easy mark for Zhao’s weepy, cinematic schmaltz.

That’s precisely why walking away from “Hamnet” feeling so disconnected and disaffected came as a shock. I am, by the average measure, certainly no callous stoic. I’ve never needed to be told to keep my heart open while watching a film; that’s its natural state. It’s that instructive line of dialogue, which doubles as the film’s poster tagline and thus asks the same of its audience, that reveals the movie’s biggest intention. “Hamnet” is not a movie that seeks to bore into the viewers’ hearts, drawing out empathy from the depths of their souls; it’s a film that wants the audience to do all of the work. Open your heart and let it stay unobstructed so “Hamnet” can reach you more easily, so that you’ll be moved to tears faster, so the shallow dialogue uttered by its thinly written characters doesn’t have to work any harder to pierce your attention span than it needs to.

If you’re having trouble with that assignment, Zhao’s got some tricks up her sleeve to pique her audience’s romanticism. Like a doctor with a plush toy or a Christmas card photographer making a funny face to get a baby to smile, Zhao’s beautifully photographed images of the natural world go a long way in eliciting awe. In previous films “Nomadland” and “The Rider” — and, honestly, some of Marvel’s “Eternals” — Zhao used her eye to great effect. She sees the splendor in land, water and wilderness and understands how to capture it with all the grace of a song. Perhaps that’s where her clear connection to O’Farrell’s novel stems. In the book, Agnes is portrayed as a nymphish, perceptive young woman, one who is of the land and hails from a line of women united with the natural world around them. Buckley’s Agnes is the same, a woman of the woods whose spritely mysticism captures William Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) heart.

After the two wed and have their first child, Agnes becomes pregnant with fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Her new daughter, Judith, barely survives the delivery. Now consumed with the idea that what is given to her can be taken away at a moment’s notice, Agnes vows to do whatever it takes to keep Judith healthy. For all of her good, natural sense, motherhood gives Agnes a glaring blind spot. Agnes cares for her second daughter so devoutly that her worry can’t help but portend tragedy, and Zhao and O’Farrell’s foreshadowing is as subtle as a sword to the spleen. From the title alone, we know something is going to happen to poor Hamnet, and we’re forced to spend the interim closely watching every detail, ready to mourn a child’s tragic death long before it arrives. If our hearts weren’t already open, they’ve just been forced ajar with a rusty, emotional crowbar.

(Focus Features) Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in “Hamnet”

Twelve years later, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) is healthy and happy. His mother and father encourage him to see the beauty and balladry in everyday life, and with earnest, wide-eyed awe, Jupe quickly runs circles around costars twice his age. While Buckley and Mescal muddle through a dense script aiming for authenticity, Jupe lives it, delivering every line with a seasoned actor’s veracity. But by the time Hamnet dies, our tear ducts have been well-trained. Zhao has been signaling this moment from the start of the film, and when Hamnet’s bright, earnest voice is replaced by Buckley’s full-bodied, guttural wail, it’s nearly impossible to stay stone-faced. To her credit, Buckley’s physical performance is sensational. When Anges’ initial screams twist into silent, open-mouthed sobs, “Hamnet” briefly becomes a conduit for grief’s potency.

The brilliance is short-lived. Immediately following the titular character’s death, “Hamnet” reverts to the stale, sluggish dynamic between Agnes and William. The loss of their son creates an inevitable break in their intimacy. But Zhao and O’Farrell’s screenplay consistently reverts to histrionics and outsized displays of emotion, never once burrowing into how either William or Agnes really feels. Feelings are conveyed with such airs that the poetry of a moment of silence disappears the instant someone speaks. Mescal and Buckley perform grief with unvaried, loud monotony or total silence, and thrusting the audience between these two poles at such breakneck pace never lets them truly understand the poignancy that lives in misery’s shadowy middle.

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While Mescal’s no stranger to playing the put-upon father in his relatively brief yet prolific career, his brooding verges on laughable. Agnes, on the other hand, is reduced to a shell of herself. After spending so much of the film conveying what a refined, multifaceted person Agnes is, Buckley is robbed of her character’s nuance in two seconds flat. Perhaps that’s Zhao’s point, that loss deprives us of the people we once were. But if that’s the case, “Hamnet” should spend far more time fleshing out its titular character than its tertiary ones, letting the viewer see so much more of little Hamnet’s life than we’re ultimately afforded. How can we be expected to feel the same bone-deep despair as Agnes if our time with Hamnet is cut so short, in favor of watching his mother suffer? It’s both perplexing and extremely telling that “Hamnet” doesn’t let the viewer see the world through Hamnet’s eyes until the boy is near death, cast into a world between ours and the next one. For a brief moment, we have Hamnet’s perspective, but it is just that: brief, only enough time to watch Jupe’s bright, cherubic expression replaced by fear and confusion. Zhao may as well be standing before her audience, holding up a neon sign that says “CRY.” It’s effective, sure. It’s also incredibly manipulative.

(Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features) Noah Jupe as Hamlet in “Hamnet”

“Hamnet” isn’t outright trauma porn; more of a trauma dump. Zhao heaps so much shock and distress onto the viewer that they have no choice but to seek the same catharsis as Agnes. In the film’s climactic sequence — the first staged performance of “Hamlet” — Zhao finally provides the tools the viewer needs to navigate this bleak tale. But by then, it’s too late. The film rests in a dismal tone for so long that its gloominess becomes sappy, making the ending feel hackneyed and inevitable. It must be said that this change is not helped by a scene where Mescal gazes out a window at night, staring into grief’s abyss while improvising the renowned “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s play. In what should be a pivotal scene, “Hamnet” looks much more like a satire of lachrymose Oscar bait than a portrait of the real thing.

By now, Zhao’s at it again with the crowbar, jimmying our hearts open for one last tearjerk. The “Hamlet” production is a fantastic set piece, with man-made sets and Shakespeare’s theatre-in-the-round filmed as accurately and affectionately as the nature that consumes so much of the film’s first two acts. Zhao and O’Farrell analyze Shakespeare’s play purely as self-reflexive tragedy, and the therapeutic tone works as well for the viewer as it does for Agnes, who understands the powerful connection between art and life in real time.

(Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features) Jessie Buckley as Agnes in “Hamnet”

It’s all quite moving, and there is a faint glimmer of hope that “Hamnet” will stick its landing. That is, until the familiar strings in Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” begin to play, and the film once again feels like a parody of itself. For those unaware of Richter’s composition, this needle drop will likely prove effective; it is, at the end of the day, a stunning piece of music. But those who have heard the song in significant moments from “The Last of Us,” “Arrival,” “Shutter Island,” or even an episode of “9-1-1” know this game. Richter’s spare composition is meant to tug at the heartstrings, and it does its job just as well here, especially for unsuspecting viewers.

But I have to wonder, would that be the case if our hearts weren’t already open, if Zhao hadn’t spent the last two hours commanding the viewer to be tender by dropping so many instances of leaden anguish that the door to their hearts was knocked off its hinges? “Hamnet” works so tirelessly to affect its audience that it sacrifices a lethal amount of story and character depth, all in service of shuffling the viewer to its grand finale. Zhao’s so laser-focused on marrying Shakespeare’s true tragedy with his fictional one that there’s barely any honesty left in the margins. “Hamnet” is an exercise in performance closely tied to the one happening on stage, as if to remind us that all great art is born from trials and triumphs, while hoping the audience will conflate the power of Shakespeare’s play with this film. It’s a neat trick, but Zhao’s film reduces “Hamlet” to a single thing rather than examining it as the multifaceted work that it is. In “Hamlet,” there is tragedy, yes, but there is also comedy, action, betrayal and a sense of the divine. The absence of those elements here makes “Hamnet” simply derivative; a loose thread, grabbed swiftly and pulled hard in the hopes that the audience will be undone.