Some of you may remember my plans to see HAMNET in the theaters when it
opened, but it didn't open very widely here in the DC area. And then the
two weeks of freezing snowy weather happened, which made going out at all
mostly a bad.
But one helpful result of the weather on the East Coast was that HAMNET got
released to Amazon Prime Video pretty quickly. So I own a digital copy.
Although I had not gotten around reading the novel it's based on yet, I
knew enough to know that the film departs from the novel by using much more
of Shakespeare's text, as well as in some other ways, so I watched the film
without having yet read the book (not my usual practice).
The film is powerful in all the ways I might have wanted it to be, and then
some. And its integration of parts of the play "Hamlet" was brilliantly
compelling. I urge everyone here who hasn't seen it to go see it soon--and
although I loved it when viewing it at home, I'd still recommend seeing it
in a theater if you can--it's something I think can only be more powerful
in an immersive environment like a movie theater.
Happy Presidents' Day (tomorrow), fam!
Love to all,
Mike