On the podcast, host Alex Heeney and guest Angelo Muredda dig into Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet as a work of adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel and why the film left use dry-eyed.
Discover one film you didn’t know you needed:
Not in the zeitgeist. Not pushed by streamers.
But still easy to find — and worth sitting with.
And a guide to help you do just that.
Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award, often a strong predictor of Oscar potential.
But while many found themselves weeping for large chunks of the film, Alex Heeney (Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row) left it dry-eyed.
And so did her guest on today’s podcast, Angelo Muredda.
(And we’re easy criers. So we tried to figure out why this film didn’t work for us.)
Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel — which imagines a part of Shakespeare’s life we know little about, including the courtship with his wife, the death of their son Hamnet, and the possibly autobiographical links to Hamlet — the film tries to map Shakespeare’s biography onto Hamlet in ways that felt…unsatisfying.
Today on the podcast, we dig into what works in the film (a short list) and what doesn’t (a longer one), and whether having read a synopsis of Hamlet on Wikipedia might actually impede your enjoyment of the film.
On this episode on Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet:
- How knowing your Hamlet or Shakespeare means the film offers less, not more
- How the book reclaims women’s stories that are usually kept off-stage in Shakespeare’s plays — and how the film undoes that by putting Shakespeare himself in most scenes instead of keeping him off-stage
- Why it’s odd to insist Hamlet is “about his dead son” — when Shakespeare famously never writes plays about just one thing
- How the film restructures the novel to deprioritize Hamnet’s story
- Whether Shakespeare should look a little tired or grubby after that two-day horseback commute from London to Stratford
- Whether it’s possible to have sex on a table full of eggs and not crack any
👉 Stay updated on Alex’s next group experiences
Related Episodes
169. David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds with Angelo Muredda
132. Sarah Polley’s Women Talking with Angelo Muredda
159. Macbeth with David Tennant
Podcast Credits
Alex Heeney edited, produced, and recorded the episode.
Follow Seventh Row on Twitter, Bluesky and Instagram. Read our articles at seventh-row.com.
Follow Alex Heeney on Bluesky, Twitter and Instagram.
An AI-generated transcript for the episode is available on Apple Podcasts.
Discover one film you didn’t know you needed:
Not in the zeitgeist. Not pushed by streamers.
But still easy to find — and worth sitting with.
And a guide to help you do just that.
