Maggie O'Farrell's lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare's family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O'Farrell's so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloe Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.
Consider what has happened to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. After Romeo Montague kills Juliet Capulet's cousin Tybalt in their families' feud, one character argues that Romeo should be forgiven, since Tybalt had just killed a friend of Romeo's.
Seeing me in these Hollywood glossy comedies, you wouldn't expect me to do a turn as Lady Capulet. But I was a new mother when I got offered this role.