This year was my first time receiving a media pass for the Twin Cities Film Fest, so I was at an all time high in my movie going brain. I was going to be able to bring my fiancé with me, we were meeting up with other members of the critics association before the opening night screening, and we were then going to attend said screening (Hamnet) six weeks before the general public would have the chance to see it. Before any of this could happen, I had to pick up my media ticket that was saved under my name in the ticket office. Upon receiving my ticket I read that I was seated in seat A5. A5!? I hadn’t sat in the front row for a movie since Mockingjay part 2, and that was only because seats were not yet assigned and I arrived too late for the midnight premiere.

Obviously I wasn’t too thrilled to have been put that close, especially since I had purchased a ticket in a better row for my fiance. Nonetheless, I was still excited to be one of the first few people in the country to see this film. I found my seat right under the screen, and luckily I wasn’t the only critic to be sat that close. The showtime had come and gone, 7:15 became 7:30. I never expect festival screenings to happen right on time, but I also wasn’t in the mindset to see a flash mob dance to unlicensed music that had nothing to do with the film. After a few other speakers we were finally at showtime.

Hamnet is the story of the Shakespheare’s, more specifically the time around the death of the title character and only son. My relationship with Shakespheare’s work is what I would call non-existent. I understand his themes of tragedy, love, and exploration of what it is to be human, but what I’ve never understood is the purpose of just saying his famous lines in a movie for the sake of having the lines there. At times this made it very obvious that this was in the Shakespearean universe, and at others it made changes or purposely avoided saying names of characters to confuse you out of the story. I know this is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, so things were either changed on purpose for artistic freedom or pulled from historical works. Either way, those little aspects of how the story was told bothered me to an finite amount.

Removing the issues I had with some of the ways this story was told, I found a lot of it to be quite extraordinary. Chloé Zhao puts forth her best looking and most potent love story. It’s once again impossible not to fall in love with Jessice Buckley and everything she brings to the screen. Her acting is clearly the most important of her career and it buckles you with every turn of the knife. While I can’t say I had 100% empathy for what her character goes through, you’d be remiss if the way she screams through grief doesn’t pierce your heart a million times. Paul Mescal barely needed to do anything to captivate the entire audience even when he wasn’t the only one who was begging for your attention. His and Jessie’s on screen presence makes for the most romantic outing of the year with a story full of young love and heartache.

Most of Hamnet feels like a period piece that isn’t quite past being anything more than that, it does still have its grand moments and heroic themes though. The actors all do an incredible job at portraying every emotion necessary while the set design should go down in history as one of the best ever. It’s quite possible that my disdain and general uninterest in children muddled the impact of the emotion, or maybe it was my perspective of the screen. Either way this leads to the most competent and breathtaking finale of the year where its smarts are shown off in a profound way that catches you off guard. I shall expect to see a ton of Hament during awards season where I will be rooting for individuals but not the whole.

7.4/10 for the movie, 6/10 for the start of the fest. We can only go up (the auditorium) from here.