2025 Top Ten List #3 The Brutalist

 

Director Brady Corbet

Corbet with Silver Lion at Venice

Corbet (right) in Haneke's Funny Games, 2007

Corbet with Mona Fastvold

The director on the set

THE BRUTALIST                 A-                                                                                             USA  Great Britain  Canada  (215 mi)  2024  d: Brady Corbet

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.                       —Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1809, in a voiceover letter read to her husband

The Holocaust is a frequent topic in cinema, with films as diverse as Alain Resnais making one of the first to confront the brutal devastation of the extermination camps in his 30-minute short film NIGHT AND FOG (1955), Marcel Ophuls’ intellectually inquisitive THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969), Claude Lanzmann’s definitive yet dizzyingly expansive testimonial documentary SHOAH (1985), Louis Malle’s lyrically compassionate AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS (1987), Roman Polanski’s tragic first-person account in THE PIANIST (2002), or László Nemes’ frustratingly claustrophobic vantage point of Son of Saul (Saul Fia) (2015), where this is another entry, tying immigration and the postwar flight of Jews from the Nazis to Weimar-era Bauhaus and postwar Brutalist architecture, creating a monumental structure that matches the formulist design with this three-and-a-half-hour film that includes a fifteen minute intermission.  While that alone can seem overwhelming, that’s also part of the intent, as this is meant to be taken seriously, where we can’t forget that Auschwitz was designed by a Bauhaus architect, Fritz Ertl - Auschwitz.  The epic scope and sheer audacity of this film is tremendously appealing, filled with giant ideas, where the boldness of the vision is hard to miss, moving with frenetic energy and pace, brimming with optimism, where the overly bombastic style is unique, creating a larger-then-life canvas that is utterly captivating, using the eloquence of highly structured, Kubrick-infused, old-school filmmaking that is intense, but the film bogs down after the intermission, shifting the focus of the film, becoming more pessimistic, taking a slow turn into a downward spiral, where the initial allure turns exhaustive and emotionally draining, even disappointing, considering the ambitious wealth of artistry in the opening half.  Not sure this film needed an intermission, though after the explosive cinematic bombast, the quietly abstract, intermission piano music was one of the pleasures of the experience, Intermission (feat. John Tilbury) - The Brutalist Original Motion Picture Soundtrack YouTube (11:22), accompanied by a still image of a historic wedding photo surrounded by family (ghosts of the past) that counts down the seconds, as it may have played out differently without a break, but the anticipation created from such an extensively detailed set-up is one of the pleasures for viewers, but it ran out of imagination, feeling overly conventional by the end, speedily wrapping things up in a tidy bow, becoming more in line with what other movies do.  Instead of being inspired by the force of ideas, this limps to an anticlimactic finale that simply runs out of steam.  Surely there was a better way to end this film, as it frustratingly fails to pack an emotional punch, yet it’s fascinating how the title of the film can refer to different things as the film evolves over time, as it’s an art movement but it’s also a way of behavior.  The grandiosity of the film may remind viewers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling epic There Will Be Blood (2007), while also exposing the darkness that lies within the heart of the American Dream.  Matching the ferocious spirit of Marco Bellocchio’s bombastic historical drama VINCERE (2009), which delves behind the scenes in the rise of Benito Mussolini, or the sweeping landscape of Visconti’s 19th century THE LEOPARD (1963), this fictionalized version of Jewish-Hungarian architect László Toth has a similar historical arc, escaping postwar Europe, leaving his wife and orphaned niece behind as he arrives in America to begin a new life.  The film accentuates a decisive difference in what America expects from arriving immigrants, and what an artist expects from himself.  It’s a cautionary tale, one fraught with wonders and grandeur dreams, and the price that is ultimately paid to fulfill one’s personal destiny, where narrow-minded moneyed interests have a way of interjecting their own soul shattering, narcissistic self-interests in reshaping or even undoing that artistic legacy.  In an interesting aside, Laszlo Toth is the same name of the mentally unstable Hungarian-born Australian geologist who vandalized Michelangelo’s La Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1972, attacking the sculpture multiple times with a hammer (The day Michelangelo's Pietà was vandalised in a ...), perhaps a metaphor for how an artist is both a builder and a destroyer.

Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, taking seven years to conceive, yet only 34 days to shoot in both Hungary and Italy, made for less than $10 million dollars, loosely inspired by the experiences of Jewish-Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer and Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, written by Corbet, who was one of the psychopathic home intruders in the American remake of Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES (2007), along with his partner and regular collaborator, Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold, the film is told in two chapter headings that move from 1947 to 1960 before leaping ahead to an epilogue in 1980.  Beginning with an extended overture playing over the highly stylized opening credits, Daniel Blumberg - Overture (Ship) | The Brutalist (Original ... YouTube (4:50), we hear a confusion of chaotic voices and a high-pitched siren as László (Adrien Brody) makes his way through the underdeck of a crowded ship arriving in America, while we hear his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, who doesn’t even appear until the second half, revealing a completely different side of herself) reading a letter in voiceover, indicating she must stay behind in Budapest, “There is nothing left for us here,” before we are plunged into darkness.  Emerging out of the depths, he is bombarded by light and the first signs of the Statue of Liberty, inverted initially, suggesting things are askew in pursuing the American Dream, as it keeps changing positions before finally standing upright.  Welcome to America.  Fast-forward to the present, the metaphorical tilt of Lady Liberty reminds us of the self-righteous political trend of demonizing immigrants, which is an attempt to whitewash history, as America is a nation of immigrants, founded on the premise of freedom of religion.  What stands out in this mesmerizing opening sequence is the unbridled power of cinema, in all its awe and splendor, where the technical level is astonishing, as the grand and imposing music by Daniel Blumberg (the original choice was Scott Walker, who died in 2019, where the opening credits end with “In Memory of Scott Walker”) and equally impressive sound design that includes a healthy use of industrial noises are in perfect sync with the 70mm VistaVision imagery from Lol Crawley, giving it an aesthetic of movies from the same time period, the first American film to use that format since Marlon Brando’s sole directorial credit with ONE EYED JACKS (1961), where right from the outset we can tell this is virtuoso filmmaking.  The subject, however, happens to be an intricate examination of the people who inhabit the film, a character study of adults doing adult things, living real lives, where disappointment is built into the fabric of the human experience.  There are a gazillion producers listed, with an equal number of different opinions, no doubt, on how to make this film, where the relationship between the financiers and the filmmaker couldn’t be more personal, but it’s Corbet’s singular artistic vision that stands out, unfettered by their input, as opposed to what happens in the film itself, where the benefactor interferes with every minute aspect of artistic creation.  Adrien Brody won a Best Actor Academy Award, still the youngest actor at the age of 29 to win the award, infamously kissing unsuspecting presenter Halle Berry on the lips, playing a celebrated Jewish-Polish classical pianist and Holocaust survivor in THE PIANIST (2002), also appearing in a cameo role as Salvador Dalí in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), so he’s not afraid to take on roles with extreme range and emotional depth.  Here he is the central focus of this entire film, inflicted by personal demons, having survived Buchenwald, one of the biggest Nazi concentration camps, but the weight of the past refuses to let go, remaining an oppressive burden that is in every fiber of his being, fortunate to even be alive and breathing, as so many others were not so fortunate.  As he passes through Ellis Island and makes his way to Philadelphia, he finds his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a custom furniture store that’s not exactly bustling with business, euphorically informing him that his family is alive.  Taking a spare closet in the back of the storeroom, where he has to go outside and back inside to use a bathroom, he’s a helpful hand with few complaints, but saddened at the slow developments in reuniting with his family, as Erzsébet was not born Jewish, but converted for the marriage, with all the required records and documents lost in transit, leaving them in limbo.  While standing in line at a soup kitchen, he runs into Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) a black father with his young son, immediately striking up a friendship that will last decades, as they find themselves in similar circumstances, immigrants alone struggling to survive in America, sharing that same sense of rootlessness and outsiderism.

A film about grief and loss that examines the motives of religious and racial discrimination, the misery of addictions, and economic exploitation, while offering a scathing critique of America as a bastion of freedom and the land of plenty, as there is a brutal underside to capitalism and the obscene wealth of a precious few, creating an overcontrolling, ego-driven billionaire mindset that has run amok (especially today) and derailed the hopes and dreams of ordinary people, or especially anyone that’s different, by creating unending chaos for the most vulnerable living amongst us, while also having a neutralizing impact on art, toning down the rough edges, obscuring originality, belittling anything that’s provocative, regurgitating the same formula over and over, making everything more homogenized for the mainstream.  One of the frequently recurring motifs is a head-on POV shot of a car speeding down an open road, or a train barreling down a track, typically accompanied by industrial sounds, where that percussive thump emphatically accentuates the power of progress, which is given a literary sweep, with a visualized mix of roads and rails and architecture, as time waits for no one moving forward.  There is a newsreel-like insert of the history of Pennsylvania in the making of America, as it is the center of the steel industry, with smokestacks puffing billows of smoke into the skies.  It isn’t pretty, but it illustrates how necessary the hard, dirty work is in building a nation, where there is a grim look to the postwar rebuilding years in America that this film brilliantly captures.  A break comes when a wealthy family wants to commission the services of the cousins in renovating a personal study on the grounds of a massive estate in nearby Doylestown, where Harry (Joe Alwyn) wants to surprise his millionaire father Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) by transforming his prized, yet darkly cluttered reading room into a state-of-the-art library, with László tearing down the velvet curtains covering the massive windows while cleverly shielding the books from the sunlight with moving bookshelves, transforming it into an ultramodern, minimalist mecca of open space and light, creating a quiet place of reflection that is completely different, while bringing Gordon along for the construction.  Even if you know next to nothing about architecture, this film makes you intrinsically understand that it means something personally, yet it so offends Harrison upon his return that he screams for the trespassers to leave, refusing to pay for this abomination, leaving the cousins fending for themselves afterwards, even threated with an expensive lawsuit, basically driving them in different directions, with Attila angrily kicking him out, fueled by false accusations from his Catholic wife of sexual advances.  It’s a sad state of affairs, driven to desperation and anguish, living in a shelter while turning to drugs and dangerous construction work, where it’s Harrison’s turn to surprise László, having done some research into his background, discovering he’s a visionary European architect, having studied in the Bauhaus, considered way ahead of his time, with many important buildings on his resumé, but in America he’s a misunderstood nobody.  Apologizing profusely for his unforgivable behavior, Harrison, based in part on chemist and art collector Albert C. Barnes, has become a big fan of that futuristic library transformation, becoming the envy of his peers, given a photospread in Look magazine, yet this is also the first time viewers get a chance to see to full extent of László’s creations, where he’s not some ordinary man, but a tormented artist with aspirations to leave behind a monumental legacy that’s designed to last.  Harrison, a self-made industry titan who is the epitome of the American Dream, is a wealthy patron who wants to avail himself of that daunting possibility by building an enormous shrine to his late mother on a nearby hillside high above the stately grounds of his estate, offering László the complete freedom to design a mammoth project that would include a community center comprised of an auditorium, a library, a gymnasium, a meditative house of worship, and possibly even a swimming pool, all sharing the same space, his own City upon a Hill.  Living on the grounds while it’s under construction, the family attorney Michael (Peter Polycarpou) helps him expedite the process of reuniting with his family, helping them procure the necessary documents, where the obstacles are formidable, as both women endured Dachau and are now stuck in a displaced-persons camp in Hungary under Soviet control, The Brutalist (2025) Movie Clip 'Announcement' Adrien Brody ... YouTube (1:13).  It’s the chance of a lifetime, where László’s dream mirrors America’s postwar transformation, and in each case it’s full speed ahead, where the future is suddenly limitless, as the frenetic energy on display is emblematic of László’s unconstrained joy and optimism, having dug himself out of the depths, bringing the first half to a resounding close.    

When Erzsébet and his young niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) finally arrive, it’s clear they’ve been through Hell, as the trauma of the war is everpresent, with his vulnerable wife in a wheelchair, her legs crippled from famine, while his teenage niece is mute, her parents killed in the death camps.  Despite the immensity of the tragedy and the horrible impact on their damaged lives, they are not exactly welcomed to the grounds, remaining strangers even to one another at first, thankful for the relief of finally being reunited, though the cultural disconnect with the surrounding community is everpresent.  Harry, the arrogant and entitled son, is oblivious to what they’ve been through, finding them odd and peculiar, and not one of them, suggesting they are not liked, but merely “tolerated,” while smugly insinuating sexual abuse of Zsófia, accentuating a racist perspective of hostility toward Jewish outsiders in their midst, suggesting they will never be equals, where local demands have been made to change a universal space of reflection to a Christian chapel, in accordance with the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) values of Doylestown.  While the size of the project is massive, accentuating industrial materials like concrete, steel, and glass, with starkly minimalist, modernist, and even futuristic designs, abstract shapes are used sparingly for décor, with a wealth of exposed space, using simple color schemes, creating a holistic design that is conceptually awe-inspiring while also functional.  Harrison keeps finding ways to undermine László’s vision by tightening the strings on the budget, callously insisting on changing the dimensions to something smaller, hiring cronies who are only concerned with minimizing costs, which leads to cheaper products, producing catastrophic results, as we see a freight train with building materials from an aerial view disappearing in a cloud of smoke before bursting into flames, incurring the wrath of Harrison, shutting the project down with plenty of finger-pointing and ensuing legal woes, creating an artistic divide that sends László spiraling into an alcohol and drug-dependent depression, which changes how he navigates the world.  The whirlwind nature of the first act slows down considerably as we see the deepening psychological ramifications, with Zsófia believing it is their duty to live in Israel, a newly formed Zionist nation, free from the prejudicial assaults they are continually faced with, needing a safe haven where they can live without fear.  Erzsébet is inclined to agree, though László holds out hope of fulfilling his dreams in America.  Years later, Harrison reconnects with László, going on a strange and mysterious odyssey to the mountainous village of Carrara in Italy in search of the most beautiful marble on the planet, which becomes a mind-altering experience, where a visit deep into the mines is like plunging into the depths of the underworld, but in the alcohol-fueled celebration afterwards, something deeply bullying and dominant happens, changing the entire trajectory of the film, as Harrison once again imposes his will in the most heinous manner imaginable.  The film internalizes the damage done in ways that are shocking, exposing the self-centered, insular nature of the rich and powerful, whose sole objective is making a profit by crushing those who are weaker, immune to any consequences, pretending to be pillars of the community and devoted patrons of the arts, but they prove to be heartless and soulless scoundrels caught up in narcissistic megalomania, who only want to cement their own legacy by enlarging their already considerable egos, incapable of comprehending what it takes to conceive great art.  Corbet has an ability to create carefully choreographed, elongated sequences that are dramatically impressive, allowing the actors to expand upon their roles, as there is an inevitable confrontation of this deepening divide that plunges us into the psychological depths of moral depravity, where art may be the saving grace, but it is absent in the brutality of unspeakable acts, leading to a strikingly powerful moral abyss of epic proportions, with a few shocking surprises, as Erzsébet stunningly conveys what an amazing woman she is, brazenly confronting the despicable behavior of the more privileged Van Buren family, who treacherously prey on the weak.  Their angry yet entitled response is to have her forcibly dragged out of there, yet what follows is an ecstatic labyrinthian journey of pure cinema.  The film suggests we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes we do not recognize in ourselves, revealing the cyclical nature of history, cleverly and transparently bringing the film into the present.  The brief epilogue inverts what we’ve seen before, jumping ahead two decades, where the earlier, perpetually unfinished projects have been completed, and now it’s László in a wheelchair, with Erzsébet wheeling him into a retrospective of his work that is being commemorated in Venice, where an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed, the wife of director Yorgos Lanthimos), the proud guardian of her uncle’s legacy, gives a speech highlighting how their experience with the Holocaust inspired her uncle’s works, suggesting the past is always present, while the transcendent immortality of art literally has no price.  The improbable closing music over the credits is a rousing disco song by Italian pop duo La Bionda, La Bionda - One For Me, One For You (1978) YouTube (5:33), ironically sending viewers on their merry way.   

2025 Top Ten List #4 Hamnet

 

Director Chloé Zhao

actress Jessie Buckley

the director and cinematographer with the two leads

author Maggie O'Farrell

Shakespeare and wife Anne Hathaway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAMNET                   A-                                                                                                        USA  Great Britain  (125 mi)  2025  d: Chloé Zhao

We know very little about Shakespeare, but we know even less about Agnes.                             —Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet

A Shakespearean film that places the beloved author off to the sidelines and instead focuses largely upon his wife Agnes, whose feminine consciousness and domestic existence has been diminished and disrespected throughout history, as the infamous fame of her husband largely overshadows her considerable influence, yet not much is known about her, a marginal figure of literary history suddenly thrust into the middle of the action, though in 2007 feminist academic Germaine Greer wrote a book entitled Shakespeare’s Wife, which serves as a breeding ground for the film’s premise.  Adapted from the 2020 historical fiction novel by Irish author Maggie O’Farrell, it tells the story of a young boy, a twin who grows up in Stratford, as his mother Agnes stays at home while his father is away in London, writing plays and becoming famous, yet this is the imagined story of William Shakespeare’s young son Hamnet, who died completely unexpectedly at the age of 11, most likely from the bubonic plague, a tragedy of epic proportions that may have led to the outpouring of emotions in the play Hamlet, written around 1600, literally bringing him back to life, and serving as his fitting epitaph.  His brief and precious life was more significant than literary historians suppose, as in those days, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable, one and the same, adding a different twist to Shakespeare’s legacy.  According to literary critic Harold Bloom, Hamlet is the birth of modern consciousness, and the cornerstone of the human self, representing an unparalleled depth of human complexity, viewing Hamlet as the most significant work of Western literature, Bloom on Hamlet.pdf.  When we attend a performance of Hamlet, or read it for ourselves, it becomes clear that Hamlet is a character who transcends the play, with Shakespeare addressing what he might have hoped for his young son Hamnet, a child on the verge of manhood, imagining what he might have become, endowing him with the best virtues of both a hero and a dreamer, where he is viewed as both hard and soft, cruel and gentle, also brutal and angelic, yet the profound effect this character has on our lives in indisputable.  Turning his young life into a film, providing a fictional backstory, is a unique interpretation, and one that resonates with modern audiences, with stellar performances bringing intimacy to a captivating story that could easily have been a distant period drama, like so many we’ve seen before, but Zhao builds a naturalistic story supported by a tactile, sensory visualization reminiscent of Terrence Malick, where fog, wind, rain, and the rustling of the leaves all seem to resonate, while also spending fleeting moments with the characters, focusing on people society often overlooks, where empathy is a core aspect of all her films, allowing viewers to become familiar and internalize their human characteristics, which supersedes any developing plot points.  What makes this film special is its rhythmic form, as Zhao allows the film to breathe, yet at its core, this is a film about the emergence of art, and how greatness often emerges from devastating personal loss. 

Some of the notable adaptations of Shakespeare to the screen are Laurence Olivier’s Oscar-winning HAMLET (1948), Grigori Kozintsev’s HAMLET (1964), Kenneth Branagh’s HAMLET (1996), Orson Welles’ MACBETH (1948), Akira Kurosawa’s Macbethian adaptation, THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), along with Béla Tarr’s made-for-television MACBETH (1983), Justin Kurzel’s MACBETH (2015), and Joel Coen’s 2022 Top Ten List #5 The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), Orson Welles’ OTHELLO (1951), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s JULIUS CAESAR (1953), Laurence Olivier’s RICHARD III (1955), Robert Wise’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story (1961), Franco Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET (1968), Baz Luhrmann’s ROMEO + JULIET (1996), Orson Welles’ amalgamation of scenes from various Shakespeare plays Chimes at Midnight (Campanadas a Medianoche) (1966), Gus van Sant’s Henry IV Pt. I adaptation, My Own Private Idaho (1991), Franco Zeffirelli’s THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1967), Peter Brook’s KING LEAR (1971), Grigori Kozintsev’s KING LEAR (1971), Akira Kurosawa’s King Lear adaptation, RAN (1985), Jean-Luc Godard’s KING LEAR (1987), Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Julie Taymor’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (2015), Paul Mazursky’s THE TEMPEST (1982), Kenneth Branagh’s HENRY V (1989) and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (1993), Josh Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2012), Ian McKellen’s RICHARD III (1995), Trevor Nunn’s TWELFTH NIGHT (1996), Kenneth Branagh’s LOVE’S LABOURS LOST (2000) and AS YOU LIKE IT (2006), Michael Radford’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2004), and Ralph Fiennes’ CORIOLANUS (2011), though the most famous may be John Madden’s amusing, Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes reimagining of the genesis of Romeo and Juliet in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998).  Of all these versions, this is the only one to exclusively feature Agnes, with William (the name Shakespeare is only mentioned at the very end, and never mentioned in the book) playing more of a background role, basically flipping the switch on what we’re used to seeing, offering a female perspective, directed by an immigrant Chinese-American filmmaker, Chloé Zhao, a graduate of NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, becoming the first woman of color to receive an Academy Award for Best Director with 2021 #5 Film of the Year Nomadland (2020).  Her earlier semi-Western films, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and 2018 Top Ten Film List #1 The Rider, were both shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, journeys of self-discovery shot in the American West, delving into rarely explored strata of American society.  With this film, Zhao has created something that is wrenchingly sad, an elegiac remembrance of a lost child, which is easily one of the most difficult tragedies for anyone to experience, as all that hope and promise of a new life is cut short, never to materialize, but Shakespeare essentially memorializes this tragedy of grief and loss into one of the greatest works of art, inducing a cathartic theatrical experience, reminding us of the resilience of love and memory. 

Set in the shadow of the Protestant Reformation, adapted by Zhao in collaboration with Maggie O’Farrell, eloquently scored by the incomparable Max Richter, Of the undiscovered country (From The Original Motion Picture ... YouTube (5:22), the film opens with a written prologue from Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt that reveals, “Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.”  Opening in a deeply wooded, bucolic setting (shot in Gloucestershire’s Forest), Agnes (Jessie Buckley from Charlie Kaufman’s I'm Thinking of Ending Things in 2020) is an almost mythical figure, a farmer’s daughter more at home in the forest than with her family, where she has an abusive father, finding refuge in the silence and solitary world of nature, seen attracting a flying hawk to her gloved hand, developing a spiritual closeness to all the plants and animals, proficient in the herbal qualities of various plants for medicinal purposes, where she’s something of a local healer, but she’s equally capable of reading people’s hands, sensing things before they happen while discovering their undetected emotional truths.  As the heart of the movie, her fiery Oscar-worthy performance is raw, physical, and demanding, which can be showy at times, but excels in quiet restraint, choosing contemplation over drama, where much of what’s so convincing about her is expressed through close-ups without uttering a single word.  Lurking in the nearby vicinity, William (Paul Mescal) is a Latin tutor to a classroom of uninterested students, but he’s taken by what he sees out the window, which is the figure of Agnes, so he follows her to a nearby barn.  Following a brief kiss, she urges him to stay away, not wishing to add to the local gossip that considers her an outcast, the daughter of a forest witch (an outgrowth of paganism), yet she’s proud of her ability to concoct healing potions, which seems to define what she’s about, as she’s a complex woman, an unapologetically, unconventional spirit who intuitively sees the world differently than the rest of us, HAMNET - "When We Kiss" Official Clip YouTube (53 seconds).  Seeing that firsthand, the more introverted William is intrigued, following her to a nearby cave, where she convinces him to tell her a story.  He significantly chooses the heartbreaking legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, one of the great love stories from Greek mythology.  Having captured her attention, she grabs hold of his hand, foretelling that his future will be something great, while she sees herself dying with two children.  Enamored with each other, they passionately make love, resulting in her pregnancy.  Her parents angrily banish her from their household, forced to seek refuge in the attic of William’s family, who are less than enthused, but they hastily marry, with most of the film taking place in the Shakespeare home in rural Stratford-upon-Avon, as Agnes has her first child alone in the woods, which is where William and her supportive younger brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) find her, discovering they are both doing well.   

Another holiday release that critics are raving about, though some may feel the big moments of grief, especially the screeching and the crying, are demonstrably supercharged, and while that may be true, there’s also a maturity here demonstrated in the cinematic restraint that separates what this film brings to the screen, a place where love, grief, and art all converge.  Elegantly and beautifully shot by Łukasz Żal, from Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2014 Top Ten List #2 Ida (2013) and Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018), also Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), using mobile cameras, natural light, and a constant fusion between landscape, human presence, and time, this film takes its time getting started, as it’s a slow build where you get to know these characters and follow their journey, but once it kicks in, it packs an emotional wallop.  Settling into domestic life, their commitment never wavers, but it’s clear William is struggling balancing home life with his writing career, so he is urged to move to London where he can immerse himself in the theater community.  As a result, he is gone for prolonged periods of time working on his plays, causing a strain on their relationship, leaving Agnes to raise her family alone, which she does impeccably.  What’s interesting is the way Zhao weaves the DNA of his writing from their family experiences, which are woven into the film so naturally that they feel organic, like William jotting down lines from Romeo and Juliet following their first kiss.  Both William and Agnes come from abusive fathers, as he is seen standing up to his father, a glove maker who forcibly tries to prevent him from leaving a room of manual labor, calling him “useless,” striking him several times, but William strikes back, claiming he will never tolerate that abuse again.  Both seem to have channeled this kind of injurious patriarchal harm into creative outlets, where she has a mysterious connection to nature, while he is a penniless but aspiring writer with a destiny to become arguably the greatest writer in all of history.  With another birth on the way, this time William’s mother Mary (Emily Watson) restrains Agnes from venturing into the woods, giving birth to twins, a boy, Hamnet, followed by a girl Judith who is presumably born stillborn, but miraculously comes back to life.  The kids are very close, especially the twins, who often fool people, even their father, by dressing as each other, where among the more delightful early scenes is watching them enthusiastically portray the witches scene from Macbeth to the awe of their parents, a beautiful blend of the innocence of childhood with the dramatic power of what Shakespeare would become, which is emphasized further when Hamnet dreams of playing a swordfight scene in one of his father’s plays, HAMNET - "What Do You Wish To Do" Official Clip YouTube (1:13).  But William has to return to London to work on his new play, lovingly saying his warm goodbyes to Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), HAMNET - "I Have To Go" Official Clip YouTube (1:00). 

Things take a tragic turn when Judith becomes afflicted by the plague, growing sick and feverish, with Hamnet providing comfort, even crawling into bed with her when it’s clear she may be lost, but by morning she has a miraculous recovery, only to discover Hamnet is dead, a fate that in the 16th century was tragically common, affecting about a third of all children in England before the age of ten.  The effect is immediate, as the parents are inconsolable with grief.  Agnes is filled with anger that William was not there for him when it happened, forcing her to bear that monumental loss alone, where her raw grief is not interpreted but feels immersive, literally swallowing her up whole, while also losing her ability to predict the future anymore, as something is broken between them.  Finding themselves lost, struggling to find purpose, each processes their grief differently, with William reciting Hamlet’s To be or not to be soliloquy on the banks of the Thames, with suicidal thoughts about throwing himself into the river.  Some may find this too melodramatic or overwrought, but the truth is losing a child is a distinct and awful kind of grief, which this film recognizes.  “What is given may be taken away at any time,” Mary says at one point, quietly ruminating on the deaths of her own daughters.  Mary provides Agnes with a flyer about William’s upcoming play in London entitled The Tragedy of Hamlet, which sends her into a furor about invoking his name, while William grows frustrated with his actors while rehearsing the play, trying to instill more passion into their performances.  Agnes and Bartholomew secretly attend the first performance of Hamlet at the massive open-air Globe Theatre in London, still outraged at the name of the play, yet these final few scenes are among the most dramatically powerful sequences in recent memory, as it’s all read on her face, angry and indignant at first, but as she slowly realizes it’s like an intimate love letter written exclusively for her, that anger turns to sheer amazement, likely seeing a play literally for the very first time.  Seeing her son onstage reborn into the character of Hamlet is beautifully portrayed by none other than the real-life older brother, Noah Jupe, cast to look like her late son, exactly the same age Hamnet would have been, had he lived, whose scintillating swordplay onstage is simply thrilling to see through the eyes of his mother.  William himself plays the ghost of Hamlet’s father, talking from beyond the grave to his son, speaking the final line of the novel, “Remember me,” evoking emotions so profoundly moving and emotionally devastating that audiences can’t help but react, especially reliving Hamlet’s tragic death onstage, with Agnes, standing right in front of the stage, reaching out to his hand (followed by others, miraculously shown in an overhead shot), briefly seeing the son she always imagined, smiling for the first time since his death, and finally seeing her husband in a new light, with transcendent music by Max Richter successfully moving across earthly realms to the “undiscovered country” of other side, Max Richter - On The Nature Of Daylight (Official Video) YouTube (6:36), which is exactly what this music was meant to convey.  It’s an astonishing moment and a brilliant piece of communal cinema that is provoking extreme emotional reactions, yet deserving all the accolades.  Group crying goes back to Homer and the Greeks, as Odysseus and Achilles wept openly with their men, viewing it as a fundamental aspect of the human experience.  This is a film where you can feel the pain manifest in the theater, literally transporting viewers into a different sentient space, becoming a meditative experience about love and the creative power of remembering, also the redemptive power of live theater.  By grounding one of literature’s greatest tragedies in domestic life, Zhao offers something rare, a Shakespeare story that feels deeply human, rooted in authenticity and emotional truth.