After a brief hiatus to make a Marvel, Chloe Zhao returns to much more comfortable territory with Hamnet, which explores the family life and in particular grief suffered by William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway following the death of their son Hamnet. Of course, he went on to write Hamlet and she went on to star in The Devil Wears Prada, and it’s this contrast in grieving that is at the heart of the film.
Zhao’s last proper film was Nomadland (which won her the Oscar) and was scored with music by contemporary classical composer Ludovico Einaudi and she has chosen to work with someone of the same ilk this time round in Max Richter, though a much more substantive part of it is original for Hamnet.
Nobody familiar with Richter’s body of work will be surprised by what it sounds like: contemplative, hypnotic, at times borderline somnambulant -but also really quite beautiful – he latched in particular onto Hathaway’s love of the natural world and how it offered something of a coping mechanism to her, and at times there’s something quite profound in the combination of the music with Zhao’s visuals. Take a piece like “Of Earth and Heaven” – it is so slow and quiet that at times you almost forget it’s there, but the haunting desolation in the aural soundscape is really quite something. The ensemble is small, highlighting period instrumentation but contrasting this with electronic sounds, and it’s really touching. When the simple main theme emerges on solo piano in the middle of the piece, it’s like a glimmer of light seeping through dark clouds.
There is plenty of emotion here – it’s a very modern film music way of handling emotion, eschewing any sort of sentiment and remaining firmly subtle. Perhaps the sole concession to more traditional methods is the occasional use of a solo voice – it’s there in the opening track, “Of Agnes”, and later in “Look at Me” and “Of the Sky” – and this is where the score is at its most obviously beautiful.
The stark contrast to this comes in some other pieces which are quite abstract and jarring, while remaining entirely calm – “An Abysm of Time”, “Of the Heart” – slowly, painfully slowly, drifting on like an unstoppable force, the simplest of textures repeating and conjuring thoughts of loss. Near the end, the lengthy “Of a Ghost” could be from a psychological horror film, this time the simple repetition including an oppressive, staccato blast.
At the risk of exposing myself as a philistine (as if it were not already obvious), my favourite moments come when the composer takes very rare steps towards writing something a bit more voluminous – the remarkable “I Was the More Deceived” gradually builds and builds a stirringly dramatic motif before everything collapses down to a piercingly poignant piano solo, and later “The Great Globe Itself” is (while still retaining a certain sombre feel) about as grand as the music gets, as Hathaway arrives at the world’s most famous theatre.
The pivotal finale is scored with perhaps Richter’s most famous piece, “On the Nature of Daylight” – this is quite controversial I think because it has now been used so often in different films, I wonder if its association with them is to this film’s detriment (and the composer did write an original piece for the scene, but Zhao was very attached to “Daylight”). Still, it is quite a work and there’s no denying its effectiveness despite this.
It is not difficult to understand why Hamnet’s score has been receiving so much positive attention, including being nominated for most of the major awards – it is subtle and simple in its construction, minimalist in all its tendencies, yet still leaves an impression – while it is so slow it occasionally grinds to a near-total halt, and so laid-back it is virtually horizontal, I find it has a certain power. The mood must be right – this is not an album likely to be played over and over – but I do think Richter has adapted his very distinctive voice into something that’s absolutely on-the-money, and as a musical portrait of grief and reflection it works very well. I admire it more than I enjoy it, and sometimes that’s fine. It’s an impressive piece of work.
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