TORONTO (AP) — “Why are you making me cry?”
It’s an ironic question for Chloé Zhao, of all people, to be asking the morning after premiering “Hamnet” at the Toronto International Film Festival. On the festival circuit this fall, no film has spawned more of an outpouring of emotion than “Hamnet,” a speculative drama about William Shakespeare, his wife, Agnes, and the death of their 11-year-old son.
Since first playing at the Telluride Festival, Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed 2020 novel has left a trail of weeping moviegoers, moved to tears by its tale of love, grief and art. The fall festivals bring all sorts of harbingers for the movie season to come, but one of the clearest portents this year is that “Hamnet” will wreck you.
“When you love something so much — I’m not a mother, I haven’t had children, I’d like to — but I imagine when you love something so much, the greatest love you can give is to let go,” Zhao says. “I got a glimpse of what that feels like.”
It’s probably a sign of the power of “Hamnet” that, even for its director, it quickly stirs up the threat of tears. At its TIFF premiere, Zhao led the audience in a breathing exercise (“completely optional,” she announced) to honor everyone’s collective presence.
“I haven’t really felt this way about any of my other films,” says Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of “Nomadland,”“The Rider” and “Eternals.” “But I am older now. I’m in my 40s. The other films came out in my 30s.”
“Hamnet,” which Focus Features will release in theaters Nov. 27, stars Paul Mescal as “Will” Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Agnes. The majority of the film, which Zhao wrote with O’Farrell, is set far away from London, the Globe Theatre and the world of Shakespeare’s plays. In a rugged countryside — this is a deeply woodsy and earthy movie — we see the two meet, fall in love and begin a family with three children, including the twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe).
An opening caption informs us that, in 17th century England, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable. When tragedy befalls the Shakespeares, they handle their grief in separate and increasingly divided ways. “Hamnet,” leading up to the first performance of “Hamlet,” reaches toward a climax of overwhelming intensity, where art — and not just any art but the finest play ever written — opens a pathway for understanding between not just two souls in anguish, but many others, too.
“When your actors and cast and crew are allowed to express and be in their full range of emotion, the camera does something miraculous,” Zhao says. “Whatever this invention is, maybe it does capture the soul, maybe Indigenous people should be afraid of it. And it transmits energy to the audience. It’s impossible for me not to be present and record what is happening at that time for this group of people swimming in the river together.”
“It’s never my vision,” she adds. “Something is trying to speak through us. How we can know? We’re only 30, 40, 50 years old. What do we know? But we can become a conduit for something much older to come through.”