This is the sort of film that is described as devastating, heartbreaking, even hard to watch – and at times it is certainly all of these things. But it categorically isn’t a downer, thanks in no small part to the sublime final reel.
Here, Agnes makes the journey to her husband’s playhouse in London – only for her grief to be both complicated and clarified by this play he has written called Hamlet, and is now staging with acutely moving variations on the same two-humans-swap-places trick that the couple’s children once adored.
One of these springs from the casting: the actor appearing as the young Danish prince is played by Noah Jupe – the real-life older brother of the child actor, Jacobi Jupe, who portrayed Hamnet in the earlier scenes.
The play’s speeches are raw and revelatory, despite being among the most worn in the English tongue: that sense of freshness is one of the film’s wildest achievements.
What Hamnet leaves you with isn’t sadness, but joy – at the human capacity to reckon with death’s implacability through art, or love, or just the basic act of carrying-on in its defiance. It blows you back on to the street on a gust of pure exhilaration.
Screening at the London Film Festival. In UK cinemas from Friday 9th January
