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Tag: Paul Mescal

  • ‘Hamnet’ transforms grief into art | analysis and review

    ‘Hamnet’ transforms grief into art | analysis and review

    TIFF 2025 | “Hamnet” follows a couple as they grow into a family only to suffer a devastating loss that forces them to confront the question of how to move on

    “Hamnet” is devastating, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. They are why as we leave some behind we persist through grief. Through a vivid dreamlike vision, Chloe Zhao tackles the mysticism and lyricism of a family confronting loss with power and empthy. A cinematic masterpiece.

    Hamnet is playing at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

    “Hamnet” may be about a death, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. In the face of a devastating loss, two parents have to find a way to go on. Writer-director Chloe Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, has an answer for them. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. It is these pieces of our history and humanity that push us to persist through the pain of grief as we leave some behind. Not in spite of the loss, but in honor of it. To mourn is to remember. And to remember is to love. And “Hamnet” will be remembered as one of the best movies of the decade.

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    Adapting the novel was no easy task. While the story is simple, there’s a quiet mysticism and lyricism that ebbs and flows to create a tapestry of the family at its center. Not to mention, the Shakespeare of it all. It’s an atmosphere not easily captured on film. Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal allow each frame to speak for the characters. They allow each image to carry all the interiority and emotionality of the characters. When William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, “Aftersun“) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things“) meet, it is like a force is driving them together. With few words and gentle touches, the magnitude of their connection is understood and will eventually drive them to marry.

    There is a dreamlike quality to the early scenes of “Hamnet.” As we watch William and Agnes grow up out of their families—they both never quite fit in with them anyway—and into their own just the two of them, it’s like we’re watching a prophecy fulfilled in front of us. And in a way, Agnes, who we learn is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch, has a certainty to her life through an ability to see a person’s true nature (and future) by holding a person’s hand between the thumb and index finger.

    Zhao allows the story to unfold without urgency. Vivid visuals and crisp sound carry us through William and Agnes’s lives as they move into their own house, get married, and have children—Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Warmth and joy are emanating from the screen, especially thanks to Buckley’s performance, which makes Agnes feel like a character with a past and future and Mescal who allows William’s interior genius to show on the surface. All is well until it isn’t.

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    Like its namesake play, “Hamnet” is a tragedy. However, because the movie takes its time building this family before our eyes, the death doesn’t simply feel like a piece of a story. It feels like a tragedy happening to us, like we are being robbed of our time with these people. Their loss is our loss. And like all grief, the rest plays in fits and starts as William disappears and Agnes performs the machinations of everyday life, filled with sadness, anger, and questioning. But that isn’t the story’s main focus.

    Instead, it strives to give the family and us, the audience, catharsis. In its stunning final act, we watch the story of “Hamnet” transform into the tale we’ve known for centuries. Except now, we have its intention. We can see the grief, anger, and questioning that we watched this family suffer. But we can also see the joy and time that they lost being reclaimed and enshrined in a story that we’re still telling today. That is the magnificent part of “Hamnet” and what makes it a masterpiece. It is cinema as therapy. It holds up a mirror to the audience and asks, “to be or not to be.” And the answer is clear.

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  • ‘Aftersun’ is a masterpiece of memory | review and analysis

    ‘Aftersun’ is a masterpiece of memory | review and analysis

    Aftersun follows the childhood memory of a girl on vacation with her father to the Turkish coast. But where there’s sun there is also shadow.

    Aftersun is one of the greatest depictions of depression and grief captured on film as it meditates on childhood, parenthood, and memory. Beautifully wrought with cinematography and score that play like a memory on loop. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I’ve seen in some time—we’re taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

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    Do you know that lethargic feeling after sitting in the sun on a hot summer day? Or the melancholic daze that follows you home after a perfect vacation? Do you get blotches in your vision after looking into a bright light or staring up at the sun? All those sensations perfectly described Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun, which feels like the perfect term to encapsulate each of those feelings. And that is what the whole movie is: a feeling. For its largely plotless 96-minute runtime nothing really happens in front of you. But rest assured, there’s plenty happening in the shadows of the sunny father-daughter beach holiday at the center of the movie.


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    Wells presents Aftersun as a childhood memory flashing into the mind of a girl 20 years later—when she’s the same age as her father at the time. But as with any memory, things look different in retrospect.

    In the early 90s, young father Calum (Normal People’s Paul Mescal) brings his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (played as a child by Francesca Corio, a real festival breakout) on a sleepy summer vacation on the Turkish coast. Gregory Oke’s dreamy cinematography simultaneously underlines the sunny haziness of a beachy summer and the soft edges of memory. In between days lounging at the pool, trips to the resort’s restaurant, and interactions with the other guests, we see interstitial clips from home video of the trip filmed by either Sophie or Calum. It’s in those clips—and interruptions often taking place at night while Sophie is asleep—that we sense there’s more meaning and heaviness in this vacation for Calum.

    Those feelings only come in waves though. We never see Calum being less than a devoted (and goofy) father to Sophie, almost a complete juxtaposition to the view we have of the usual young parent—sometimes he’s even mistaken for her brother. Sophie, as a child, sees him as nothing less than an invincible infallible hero—how many of us see our parents. Her childlike wonder extends to the world around her as she becomes enamored with a group of older kids—a bit of a nod to the typical coming-of-age story, of which Aftersun is decidedly not. However, that wonder also leads to conflict when Sophie’s frank questions lead to revealing that not all is great and perfect in the background of Calum’s life. At the moment, she thinks nothing of them. However, when adult Sophie looks back at the same clips we’re watching, they play very differently. Like videos taken before a coming disaster.

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    Stronger review — Jake Gyllenhaal shines in this bold and uplifting drama
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    Stronger review — Jake Gyllenhaal shines in this bold and uplifting drama

    Memories always have their blind spots. You remember the bright moments while blocking out the darker ones. It’s not until you look back and unpack them as an adult that you see their profundity.

    31-year-old Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall), who we cut to for short moments throughout the movie, is the same age as her father when they went on that vacation. As she remembers the bright spots—the late night karaoke, her first kiss, her dad clumsily juggling bread rolls at dinner—the darker ones slip in as well. Or, at the very least, she fills them in—her dad crying in the middle of the night, his quiet swaying while smoking a cigarette on the balcony, his muffled contentious phone calls back home. However, the movie never lingers on those moments—like adult Sophie is trying to keep them out of her perfect vision of that summer vacation. The same way that we exclude the awkward pauses at an otherwise lovely dinner or the arguments heard through walls late at night after you went to bed in our memories. You keep the good and avoid the bad until you can no longer stand the weight of the past.

    It’s difficult to describe Aftersun because nothing and everything is happening at the same time. Though what’s happening on screen may seem mundane, it’s drenched in subtext. For those that aren’t looking in the right places, the movie might be tedious to get through.

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    Aftersun is about many things, but at its core it’s about the blindspots of our memories and traumas—and how we fill them in to make them whole again.

    Our parents try to create the best childhood for us. Short of that, they at least try to create the best version of those memories for you, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It’s why nostalgia exists and why some memories float to the surface while others burrow themselves deep into our psyches. Charlotte Wells uses Aftersun to show us what it’s like to unlock that box that we all keep away in a hidden dark corner of our minds. What it’s like to admit that our perfect childhood memories are just afterimages of the brightest moments. As the movie comes to its stunningly satisfying and emotional conclusion fittingly underscored by Queen’s “Under Pressure”—perhaps one of the greatest final moments of a movie I’ve seen in some time—we’re taught that opening that box might be a means to an end. A means to heal the burn that memories can leave.

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  • Foe is its own worst enemy | review

    Foe is its own worst enemy | review

    NYFF 2023 | Foe follows the fallout after a young couple receives news that one of them will be sent to space with a clone to keep the other company

    The collective star power of Academy Award nominees Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal isn’t enough to save this sweaty (both literally and figuratively) lo-fi sci-fi melodrama from its own ambitions. Despite intriguing heady themes like the ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence, the moral ambiguity of cloning and rumination on relationship dynamics, its distrust in the intelligence of its audience leaves it as its own worst enemy.

    Foe is playing at the 2023 New York Film Festival.

    The year is 2065 and the Earth is irreparably damaged. Young couple Junior (Paul Mescal) and Hen (Saoirse Ronan) are approached by even keeled and enigmatic Terrance (Aaron Pierre). He tells the couple that in an effort to save the human race, a mysterious combination of the government and private companies is sending a group of people into space for two years to understand how to survive. Junior is selected as a part of that group, which will require him to leave Hen alone for two years. But fear not, a nearly identical biomechanical clone will be left to keep her company. What could possibly go wrong?

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    Bringing together critical darlings Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird, Little Women) and Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers) should’ve been a boon for writer-director Garth Davis’s Foe. Putting the star power and screen presence of two of the hottest young actors working today in a single-location barn-burner relationship drama seems like a recipe for success. I mean, a handful of morality science fiction from Blade Runner, a dash of marriage dynamics from A Streetcar Named Desire and a pinch of Hitchcockian psychological pastiche is enough to whet any appetite. But when the movie feels the need to spoon-feed you each plot point, emotion and moral dilemma with a heavy hand, you quickly lose your appetite. 

    It’s unfortunate considering the story, which was adapted from Ian Reid’s novel of the same name, is intriguing on its own. Reid co-wrote the screenplay with Davis. But where Reid is unafraid to be obtuse with his storytelling, like his first novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things which was adapted into a stellar psychological thriller by Charlie Kaufman, in translating the story to screen the movie over explains itself. It’s unclear whether it is a choice or for fear that the audience wouldn’t get the tale. But the fun of a twisty psychological thriller is… well, the twist. In an effort to not alienate the audience, it undercuts the narrative’s effectiveness.

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    There’s clearly a lot on Reid’s mind. The ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence, the moral ambiguity of cloning and rumination on relationship dynamics could make for an interesting story. And taken outside of Davis’s  heavy-handed direction, perhaps those themes could thrive. What we get is a sweaty (both literally and figuratively) melodramatic messy clone of a story already told well. While Mescal and Ronan are chewing the scenery with bombastic performances—screaming, crying, the works—it feels out of place in a story that could’ve been meditative speculative fiction (see: After Yang).

    When Foe finally reveals itself, a reveal you probably saw coming a mile away, it’s worn you down with its overwrought anguish. Perhaps there’s some so-bad-its-good replay value to it, but why watch a clone when you can watch the better original thing.

    Foe premiered at the 2023 New York Film Festival. It will be released by Amazon later this year.

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