By the end of Hamnet, all of Screen Two at Light House Cinema was in tears. From older people reliving parenthood to young couples preparing for it, from eldest to youngest siblings, the movie struck a chord with everyone. Hamnet is, at its heart, a narration of human connections and emotions; the story stems from grief. After I watched Chloé Zhao’s film, I couldn’t help but associate it with Greta Gerwig’s 2019 Little Women, another film where loss plays an important role.
Parents Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and Will (Paul Mescal) lose their son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), and Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) loses her younger sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen). In both movies, the death of a young person profoundly disrupts the peace of an otherwise united and happy family, and both culminate in pieces of literature through which characters understand and process their sorrows. There are several parallel elements in the directors’ approach to grief in these different set-ups. An important example is their treatment of spaces and the characters’ movements through them.
Both Hamnet and Little Women are largely set inside family homes. In the former, the room where Hamnet and his twin sister Judith sleep and play is inundated with natural sunlight, and the beds are unmade and messy. When Judith falls sick, the light turns cold, and the place exhibits a stillness. After Hamnet’s death, the entire house becomes emptier and darker, until the family finally moves out, and Agnes is the only figure standing in a once lively home. In Little Women, it is the attic that is the centre of the March sisters’ lives. It is also seeped in warm oranges and yellows, and chaotically disorganised because of the constant ferment. But after Beth’s death, this same attic becomes hollow and vacant. Everything is packed away, and only dark brown wooden panels remain. Jo is the last inhabitant, standing in the void of the attic, just like Agnes in her lonely house.
Another interesting element are the costumes. In most of Hamnet, Agnes wears the same red dress with a darker red waistcoat. Director Chloé Zhao stated to Cinemablend that red, in relation to Agnes, ‘is the colour of […] the beating heart’. Agnes’ red is often the only colour in the scenes and she is also the only character who wears a colour other than blues and greys. She essentially represents life. Therefore, when she does change her clothes, to a brown gown with a dark-grey waistcoat, it creates a significant impact. She wears this right after Hamnet’s death, and does not change until the very end of the movie.
Costumes featured in Zhao’s Hamnet (above) and Gerwig’s Little Women (below)
In Gerwig’s film, Jo’s wardrobe is vivid and even playful at times, as she switches clothes with her neighbour and friend Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), wearing military jackets and foulards in layered colours. Her neat, dark clothes during Beth’s fatal illness and later death are in stark contrast with her earlier lively character. Both women do not go back to light and cheerful colours until the very end.
Colour returns with Agnes in red, and Jo in a white shirt and a pastel pink gown when grief has been processed. This processing is implied through visual devices but ultimately, grief is confronted and spoken about in refined verbal means. It is fascinating that both films rely on a different medium to help their characters: literature.
While both movies are based on books (Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott), neither of them are directly or explicitly about literature. It is not Will but Agnes who is Hamnet’s protagonist and Jo’s writing is a by-product of the time spent with her sisters. The focus of the movies are Agnes and Jo’s lives and how their coincidence with art makes existence – or lack thereof – bearable. Literature becomes a metaphor for moving on. Will writes ‘Hamlet’ to give himself and his family peace, and imagines the farewells he was not able to give his son while he was alive. Jo writes ‘Little Women’ while grieving Beth’s death, remembering their collective childhood and giving her sister a form of immortality.
‘I am no Shakespeare’, Jo says about herself in Gerwig’s adaptation. Hamnet shows that she actually does have at least one thing in common with Shakespeare: they both process their loss through their words. In Hamnet’s closing scene, Agnes raises her hand towards the actor playing Hamlet (Noah Jupe, Jacobi Jupe’s brother), and sees in him glimpses of her own son. In that moment, because of her husband’s play, she is finally able to let her son go. All other spectators raise their hands towards the stage, breaking the fourth wall, as if they want to touch the poetry, the art that is being performed. Literature becomes a bridge between what is and what could (or should) have been. After all, literature is what has always kept humans alive and kicking.
