In her Golden Globes acceptance speech, Hamnet actress Jessie Buckley thanked the key grip, Tomasz Sternicki, for a soup that he made:

“I’d really like to thank our grip, Tomasz, because during shooting, Tomasz started to disappear a little bit during the shoot, and I found him one day at the back of his truck, and he was chopping up potatoes and onions and meat, and he was making—and he brought his ginormous cast-iron pot over from Poland—and he was making soup, and this soup started turning up on set. It was delicious. Thanks, Tomasz, for bringing your pot to set.”

I appreciated her entire speech, but this is the moment I keep returning to—the goulash that Tomasz made in the cast-iron pot he brought with him from Poland.

Hamnet, especially the novel from which the film is adapted, is not really about William Shakespeare. When we read that name—Shakespeare—the image that’s conjured is more myth than man, the legend who wrote some of the greatest plays the world has ever seen. But the film strips away the aura of myth and leaves us with whom Shakespeare really was: a man. Will, son of a glove-maker, lover of words and wildness, desperate for an escape from the confines of his family of origin. A man with hopes and fears, like any of us.

The film tells the story of Will and Agnes, played brilliantly by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, respectively. We are not watching a movie as much as we are witnessing something—the love between Will and Agnes, born out of understanding and admiration, and fractured by the loss of their son, Hamnet. It’s an intimate family drama, a portal into two lives that, while they’re on screen, feel so incredibly real.

Will and Agnes lose sight of their mutual love after their son’s death because their emotional responses are so different from each other—for Agnes, primal rage, and for Will, cavernous depression—that they are unable to understand each other as they once did so well. Will is overwhelmed and struggles to express himself; Agnes feels abandoned by Will’s silence and his departure for London. They both need time and space to process their grief in their own ways.

We all know the story of how Will processes the loss of his son: he writes and stages Hamlet.

Agnes, though, is not a writer. She returns to the earth to cope with her loss. She visits the forest in which she spent her early years—where she and Will met. She moves from his family home in the cramped village to the country house Will has built for their family, able to spend more time outside in their large garden. She continues teaching her daughters about medicinal herbs. And she continues the daily labor of their lives: cooking, cleaning, tending to her family.

When Agnes learns about Hamlet, the tragedy her husband wrote while she thought he was writing a comedy, the use of her son’s name incenses her. She travels with her brother to London to find Will.

What she finds instead, when they arrive at Will’s apartment, is evidence of Will’s attempts to take care of his family even as he seeks solitude to navigate his depression. He has been living in a tiny attic apartment, while she and their daughters live in the largest house in their village. Will has already come to understand that Agnes will never move to London, connected as she is to the wild forests and gardens of her home. He does his best to provide what sustains her.

Agnes and her brother go to the Globe Theatre, hoping to see Will and stumbling into the performance of Hamlet. As the play begins, Agnes struggles with the use of her son’s name, unable to contain her anger. When Will takes the stage as Hamlet’s dead father, Agnes begins to settle into the experience of being in the audience.

Hamnet’s final act, the performance of Hamlet, is a testament to art’s power to move and transform us. Will’s grief and sorrow are able to play out on stage, and in doing so, Agnes is able to share that experience and connect it to her own. The whole audience is able to find that relationship to the work: starting with Agnes, they reach out to Hamlet as he dies on stage—to touch him, to feel his presence as real as they are. The film doesn’t give us an easy answer to the conflict in Will and Agnes’s relationship, but we do see how, perhaps, they will be able to understand each other once again.

This is what stories offer us: understanding.

Jozef and I saw Hamnet in theaters, and I sobbed through—oh, let’s say the last half of the movie. It was raw and devastating and beautiful. I loved the film—as a writer and artist, as a person experiencing grief, as a person who longs to be a parent, and as a person who tends to the daily tasks of living. I am sure I can speak for Jozef and say he loved it in all the same contexts.

By not placing Will on a pedestal, the movie ensures his labor and his way of navigating the world aren’t on a pedestal, either. Agnes’s experiences are of equal significance.

I think a lot about the cultural conversations around art and art-making. So often, people talk about how art is necessary—how it is vital, nourishment for our souls. And I agree! But I wish we talked about the other necessities that nourish us with the same appreciation of their beauty. Put another way, I think we have worked hard to emphasize art as life-giving and -making, but I feel we should also emphasize those life-giving and -making things—the labor so often referred to as “home-making,” cooking and cleaning and tending to children—as art. They are just as beautiful and vital to me as writing and drawing and painting and quilting.

Which brings me back to Jessie Buckley’s acceptance speech. As she was internationally recognized for her performance in Hamnet (a film that asserts home-making, foraging, and gardening are just as important as Shakespeare’s writing), she took the opportunity to thank Tomasz Sternicki for his soup. Not the way we might be familiar with seeing “fine” cooking celebrated, like Michelin stars and James Beard awards and declarations of the “best” dish, but simply as good soup that nourished her and the other people working on the movie.

In that moment, the nourishment of food made with care was elevated to the same stage as a Golden Globe-winning performance. I can think of no more fitting “thank you” from the actress who played Agnes than that.

Appreciate what we do? Get something out of this piece? Consider leaving a tip.

tip jar

You may have noticed we paused paid subscriptions. We’re keenly aware of the pains of the current economy, and we feel that having the option to tip if desired and zero pressure to become a paid subscriber is more appropriate for our community at this time. We love you all, and we’re glad you’re here. This newsletter is a labor of love, and we’re glad to share it with you.