Kaffhocker

I’ve got to voice a dissenting opinion here. I saw “Hamnet” and despite all the rave reviews, I think it’s an overly long, pretentious piece of crap with sloppy editing, half-baked camera angles, and a lead couple with zero chemistry. I checked my watch four times—that never happens to me at the movies. One critic writes, “The brutal beauty of this film rips your soul so completely from your chest that its seismic grief almost feels like falling in love.” I guess I don’t have a soul. I was just so brutally annoyed that I almost didn’t perceive the last quarter of an hour—which is actually okay—as okay. If you want to see a strong-willed woman in a historical setting, you’re better off watching Jane Campion’s over 30-year-old “The Piano” and then seeing the complex, poetic masterpiece that “Hamnet” promised to be. It is devastating how the idea of an origin piece to Hamlet is wasted like that.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]