Hamnet, Obsession, Art & Death

by Lewa ~ <3

It’s not finished

Hamnet is a really good story, and an excellent movie. I didn’t read the book, although, the book’s author; Maggie O’Farrel was an executive producer for the film. I find that the way it portrays Shakespeare as a human first, and an artist second is so important to the message of Shakespeare.

He finds it difficult to talk to his lover, Agnes. He paces back and forth, because he does not know how to say what he feels.

“What are you looking at?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“-I...”
"I thought you were a man of words, master tutor."
“Yes.”
”Are you not?”
“Speaking with people is sometimes difficult for me.”

He’s me.

Their love story progresses, and then one night, Agnes is stirred awake by William writing late into the night. He is visibly upset and very drunk. She asks him to read it to her,

"Perhaps when it's finished, it will..."
"Perhaps when it's finished."

”Why don’t you read me what you’ve written?

"Agnes, it's not finished. It's not finished, it's not finished."

Those three words haunt me. That shot of William Shakespeare fumbling around in the dark, losing his fucking mind, screaming & banging on the table amidst the frustration of trying to string together scraps of paper into something that makes any sense is seared into my skull.

Finalizing a project is scary, and you have to stop creating eventually. So you can move on to the next thing. But the period of transition from working to not working on a piece of art is terrifying. You've put so much work into saying what you want to say in the way you want to say it. What if nobody understands? What if you're stuck feeling this feeling alone forever? You want it to be presentable, you want it to make sense, be accessible, approachable, interesting, blah blah blah. Whatever your parameters, you must choose to start cutting corners eventually. The magic only happens when it's done.

This artistic obsession with perfection has pushed some of the greatest artists of all time to create truly great art, but it does come with a price. You may work for a decade or a week. Either way, the artist must be done eventually, and the artist must be ready to let go when the time comes.

Obsession

“You’re caught by that place.”

“What place?”

“That Place in your head. It’s now more real to you than anywhere else. Not even the death of our child can keep you from it.”

Jessie Buckley may as well have looked directly into the camera while delivering those last two lines. This is what it feels like to recede into yourself. To feel as though the world is blind to your pain, and even if the world could see it, it wouldn’t care. You feel alone with your pain, you wander in circles in your own mind, trying to make sense of it. And the worst part? The wandering never does make it make sense, all it really accomplishes is to make you more alone.

Drink of this potion

In the story of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s answer to this is of course, the play: Hamlet. I mean, how do you explain to your grieving wife who is mad at you because your son died that you do in fact also feel her pain in a different way? He’s created an artistic fortress that’s become a trap, not just from the world, but also from Agnes. He can’t express how he feels directly, so he’s stuck with finishing the damn thing himself.

In an attempt to cope, William had created isolation from someone he really loves; all because of the sudden, traumatizing death of his son. Agnes did everything she could to keep Hamnet alive. She used every witches spell & herb she knew of to save him. It wasn’t enough, Hamnet died in pain. & without William to support her, she became angry.

The final act of the film is entirely Agnes’s reaction to this play William has created. As the people funnel into the playhouse, foreboding trumpets scream of the danger that awaits Agnes. In the opening moments, Anges cries out & yells @ the actors, who expertly ignore her. She is shushed, and berated by the others in the opera house. We watch over the course of roughly 27 minutes as the the play slowly diffuses Agnes. There’s one line that gets downright accusatory. Hamlet takes the king’s goblet after stabbing him in the back & screams at the top of his lungs: ”Here! Thou incestuous murderous, damnded dane. Drink of this potion! Is thy union here? Follow my mother.” We get a shot of bewilderment & shock as Agnes realizes the pain she’s put her family through.

The rest is silence.

Hamlet then realizes that the poison is within him as well. He lurches onto the ground, screaming in agony, within arm’s reach of Agnes. ”The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.”

...then something special happens. Anges, with tear-soaked cheeks reaches out, to hold Hamlet’s hand. Hamlet’s actor then looks at her in awe, takes her hand and lets the moment linger. The others in the pit join her, reaching out for the man who’s about to die. To let him know that he will be missed, to let him know that it’s okay. A room full of people, so immersed and moved by this make-believe story that they all truly do mourn for a person who isn’t even really there. Hamlet’s actor raises his hands to the heavens while knelt before the crowd. He sheds a tear, looks Agnes in the eyes & delivers the final line.

”The rest is silence.”

The dreaming is not just a thing we do for fun, it’s why we are what we are. We are the creatures that remember, the creatures that hurt, the creatures too big for our britches.

The dreaming has the power to mend our deepest scars, to break down our inner fortresses, to help us find our way in the night. But we must learn to let go, to forget everything so we can remember what matters, to hide so we can yearn, to wander so that we might be found. At the bottom of all our problems is always this stupid stupid idea that we’ve held onto for far too long. And when someone finally convinces us to drop it & we let go, we find out that we never needed it to begin with.

Throughout the creation of Spring Unsprawling Backwards, the themes of Hamnet have driven me. You don’t know what you’re capable of til you really push yourself. That great work only becomes real through the power of will, and on willpower alone the art stands. So then, what do you do when it’s done? What’s left of you when you’ve poured all of you into something else? When the sky turns dark & the night comes, and everything you’ve ever done fades to the black of the dreaming once again?

Well, what else is there to do but rest in the quiet?