‘Hamnet’: Shakespeare Would Not Approve of Paul Mescal’s New Film

What was so artless and poetic in Chloe Zhao’s The Rider and Nomadland—the romantic evocation of the natural world and its connection to its inhabitants; the authentic performances, often from non-professionals; the striking “stolen moments” that lent the drama its lyricism—has turned severely affected in Hamnet, her adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel.

Her slow, detached pans and downward-facing compositions calling self-conscious attention to themselves, and her leads’ turns mistaking maximum effort for moving effect, the writer/director’s fifth feature is a work of tremendous look-at-me energy: all prolonged close-ups and studied master shots of actors weeping, screaming, laughing, longing, and freaking out with sweaty, grimy intensity.

It’s a film that plays so lustily to the ba