Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has been made into a movie and it seems like a big Oscar contender at this point. It's been mostly well-received and I personally loved it as well.
The movie sub has discussion about the movie itself, but I was curious what people who read the book thought of it!
I read the book several years ago. I don't remember every detail, but I could feel the movie condensed a lot and eliminated some sideplots and back stories. That's always necessary when you're condensing a whole book into 2 hours on screen.
I think they made really good choices for the most part. Chloe Zhao is a great director and Maggie O'Farrell cowrote the screenplay. That doesn't always happen with adaptations and I'm glad it did here! It's probably why the movie felt so true to the book, though with a slightly different focus and less ability to be inside the head of the characters, which is to be expected.
If I remember correctly, the book opens with Hamnet on the stairs wondering where everybody is. He needs to tell someone Judith is sick, but everyone is out. In the movie, that scene isn't even included, I suppose for the sake of time.
In the book, we get very little about Agnes' husband, to the point where if you didn't know the book was historical fiction about William Shakespeare's family you might not realize at all until the end. The movie also doesn't focus on William's identity, so I'm curious if anyone who went in blind was surprised to discover the movie was about Shakespeare.
His character is much more a part of the story on screen, though I still think the focus is on Agnes and motherhood, it expands to shed light on how each parent deals with grief differently.
There was a lot of symbolism and really great choices carried through the movie. One scene they added in was William coming up with the lines "to be or not to be" while contemplating suicide as a result of his grief. I found it a bit heavy handed, but didn't totally hate it.
One thing I noticed was how empty the town they lived in seemed. There weren't very many extras in this movie, except for the scenes in London. That felt a bit off because even a small town would have people moving around and animals making noise and whatnot. I think there was a choice to make it feel more quiet and intimately focused on this one family, a little bit at the expense of reality.
In the book, I'm pretty sure the stepmother and mother-in-law were both pretty terrible. The mother-in-law comes off pretty well once Agnes and William are married. There's little conflict between her and Agnes on screen while I recall more conflict in the book. Her stepmother is basically not a character in the film, so it was jarring when she showed up and Agnes told her off. I feel like we needed one more scene to justify her reaction in that garden scene towards the end. It's a minor quibble though. I was happy the movie didn't spoonfeed us everything.
The ending felt like it expanded the ending of the book quite a bit. It was a very moving scene. I also just loved seeing what it would have been like to see a Shakespeare play at the time.
What did you think of the film? What differences did you pick up on between the film and the book?
Were you happy with the casting? I thought the actors they cast were phenomenal and they made a genuinely brilliant choice casting Hamnet and the actor who later plays Hamlet on stage. Casting real life brothers for those roles was a stroke of genius.
Do you feel like you were better off having read the book first? I do, but I think the film stands on its own. I'll be happy when it recieves many awards.
by Comprehensive-Fun47