In a forest, a young woman sleeps curled up in the cradle formed by the exposed root of a centuries-old tree: she is dressed in deep red, accompanied by a falcon that responds to her calls, knowledgeable about herbs and potions, said to have not been born of her mother but from a woman who came from afar. Her name is Agnes and when Will sees her, he falls in love with her immediately. Will is the young William Shakespeare, who manages to marry her despite the hostility of their families and to have three children with her, Susannah and the twins Judith and Hamnet. But a tragedy strikes them when the playwright is already working in London, and Hamnet becomes Hamlet. Based on the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, the story of Agnes (more than of William), woven with magic and femininity.
How can one say something new, cinematically speaking, about William Shakespeare and his Hamlet? Chloé Zhao starts from a bestseller by Irish author Maggie O’Farrell that takes the point of view of the Bard's wife, Anne Hathaway, to recount one of the most tragic episodes of their life, namely the death of their son Hamnet, at only 11 years old. That episode was both a profound trauma for the couple and the source of inspiration for Shakespeare's masterpiece, in English Hamlet, which almost bears the name of their lost child (in fact, the very same name, as indicated by a quote in the film directed by Zhao and co-written with O’Farrell), and which is centered on the theme of grief and the loss of identity that can result from it. "Hamlet" was indeed written right in the period following the child's death and was staged at the Globe Theatre in London four years later, cementing Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright.
Tickets: full €7.00 - reduced €5.00 for under 12s and over 65s.
