In a recent interview with Chloé Zhao, the broadcaster Edith Bowman apologised for her emotional response to the director’s new film, Hamnet. “Please, that’s what this is for,” Zhao replied, not unlike a therapist. Bowman is, of course, far from alone in her reaction. Hamnet has generated a Jonestown-like response in audiences so far. At my BFI London Film Festival screening in October, people were paralysed in their seats sobbing, friends clutching each other. Such a physical response to a piece of filmmaking should be commended – it has, evidently, achieved its goal. One of the most rewarding parts of watching films is the richness of feeling when art has earned your tears. You feel alive because a piece of filmmaking has met you halfway and inspired such a reaction. It’s unfortunate, then, that Hamnet is so insistent on sandblasting the tears out of you.
If a film makes you cry, does that make it good? Writer Caitlin Quinlan raised this question in a 2023 essay for Art Review, about the bland, crowd-pleasing homogeneity of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and that year’s cinematic offerings. “If filmmaking can reject mass appeal as a business model, this pink period might be followed by a purple patch,” she concluded. Hamnet, a film calculated to appeal to everyone, is here to shoot down her optimism. Crafting something designed to make you cry is not actually proof of expert filmmaking; the John Lewis Christmas ad achieves the same effect in under two minutes. Tears are not an objective marker of a film’s quality. The charge of “emotional manipulation” has been levied against Hamnet, and the counterargument is that all films are a form of emotional manipulation. But, as we’re in the business of film criticism here, it’s important to note that some films are extraordinarily successful at disguising the guile and manoeuvring involved in manipulation. Hamnet is not one of them.
