Sir Ian McKellen, an Oscar voter, will not be casting his ballot for Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet.” In fact, he was far from impressed by the film, which left him somewhat bewildered.
The British actor, a member of the Academy since receiving an Oscar nomination for his work in “Gods and Monsters,” is a well-known Shakespeare expert who has played everyone from Hamlet and King Lear to Macbeth and John Falstaff.
Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son in the 1500s, “Hamnet” imagines how the tragedy might have unfolded, with his wife (Jessie Buckley) left alone to grieve while he is in London, inspired by the tragedy to write “Hamlet.”
McKellen, 86, admits “Hamnet” left him unconvinced and unmoved — he was turned off by the characters’ motivations, which go against everything he had studied about Shakespeare:
“I don’t quite get it. I’m not very interested in trying to work out where Shakespeare’s imagination came from, but it certainly didn’t just come from family life […] Shakespeare’s perhaps the most famous person who ever lived, so of course there is some interest in what he looked like, what his relationship with his family was. And we can’t know, but the idea that [his wife] Anne Hathaway has never seen a play before? It’s improbable, considering what her husband did for a living. And she doesn’t seem to know what a play is! I think there are a few doubts of probability.”
As one of the field’s leading authorities on Shakespeare, with nearly unmatched practical knowledge built over decades of performance, interpretation, and study, McKellen’s perspective is naturally more exacting than most, and his critique shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a personal slight. He is bound to take anything related to Shakespeare very seriously—and to heart.
I do agree with him that Agnes’ reaction to the play at the end felt odd— her response makes it seem like she’s encountering the notion of make-believe, fiction, for the first time. Still, implausibilities left aside, that ending works, and that’s coming from someone who genuinely wanted to like “Hamnet” more than I ultimately did.
If anything, what seems to have completely escaped McKellen is that Hamnet was always intended as fiction. Shakespeare and his family serve merely as the backdrop for the themes being explored. Fidelity to Shakespeare’s life was never the goal—it’s more a story about grief than a biopic meant to be scrutinized by the Bard’s scholars.
Zach Cregger’s next film, “The Flood,” has found its lead actress, and it’s none other than Jennifer Lawrence. Steven Spielberg is producing. Warner Bros. has it dated for August 11, 2028