Emerging from 'Hamnet'

 

She of Nature and He of Art - it’s inevitable that they collide.

Nature is wild and generous beyond boundaries.

Art is selfish, yet without guile or malice.

Nature seems unbreakable, but when she breaks it's loud and unforgiving.

Art takes everything from Nature, but when he gives back, it's redemptive; elevating the physical to metaphysical on this mortal stage.

She of Nature and He of Art - it’s inevitable that they create life together.

And where there is life, there is its end.

In Hamnet, the end is so crippling, it threatens to destroy both Nature and Art. But they sustain, because the thread that connects them never severs, despite the storm. 

Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’ Farrell navigate the storm with such intuitive deftness, it feels as if all of the world's philosophies are moving through them. The film is soft and deep, nurturing grief, as it takes root in every character - in Agnes, Will, his mother and the children. It makes you stay in moments so stretched - so real - it's as if time has come undone, then rewoven itself to give breaking hearts, all the room in the world to crumble, then reassemble.

The first time I watched Hamnet, I couldn’t drag myself away from Jessie Buckley’s Agnes. But the second time, I saw Will’s ache, his battle with himself and finally, the non-negotiable surrender to art; a pull for which Agnes expands space. How unfair, then, that her own primal need to return to the forest is never honoured. But Art sees all. 

Will's atonement? Pressing the full might of his art into rescuing them from drowning. His Hamlet laid at her feet, love’s ultimate offering, so that she can bid goodbye to her son by witnessing, through the play, that grief isn't the only thing death brings, it's also freedom. 

In the end, both Art and Nature work together to restore Agnes’ knowing back to her, back home where it belongs. If that won't split you open in a cinema hall full of strangers weeping with you, nothing will.

- Hamnet, 2025

The Artist's Return

There's this stupid certainty that returning to my creative self at age (almost) 47, having burned pretty much all my media/art bridges 5 years ago, with no light in sight, is the wisest way to use my life from here on out. I could be out on my arse financially, I could become homeless (pretty soon actually) but there's this stupid certainty that it's where I need to head.

Because there was this silly little show, maybe you've heard of it, that managed to push through the grey, rubble-laden, packed-stiff-dry-earth of 'Netflix-&-chill' teevee to become this massive moment in popular culture globally...Yeah that little show. Boy, it showed us something.

This is the return of the artist, climbing over debris left by 'content-creators', seeing but not agreeing that audiences are 'consumers' or that art is meant only to confirm the darkness we find ourselves in as the human race. Art can build whatever world it chooses to, and in doing so, give us possibilities of whichever world we want to live in. 

This little show has given us a world which leads with kindness, where conflicts resolve not just with bravado and wits, but with empathy. It doesn't pretend evil doesn't exist, but neither does it treat us like defeatists, exhausted from living these dystopian lives. It takes all that and then gives us a story where compassion becomes the air we breathe in and, more importantly, breathe out.

Whether I define myself as an 'artist', or not, is irrelevant. We're all artists if we lead with authenticity and I guess the only question is: are we -am I- doing that? What is my voice in this world? Is it what a client or a channel or a boss or a 'market' or a political party tells me it is? If it's not, then what it is? If I were to make a silly little show, what would I lead with? Would I have courage if everyone around me said it wouldn't 'work'?

Jacob Tierney seems to have done whatever the fuck he wanted to do (I simplify, I'm sure it was more complicated than that). He has built an almost unbelievable premise, where the worst of humankind never really takes over and the plot twist is: love. How fucking audacious for these times. How fucking radical.

In doing so, he's given the artist in me strength to lead with whatever I want to lead with. My only job now is to go deep and excavate.