Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao, is a visually beautiful film and a moving portrait of marriage and grief. But the film is let down by its ahistorical treatment of religion.
First, the absence of Christianity: not once in Hamnet do any of the characters mention God – let alone invoke the name of a saint. This omission is not surprising. We have come to expect period dramas to present a past in which Christianity seems never to have existed. If it is shown at all, it tends to be portrayed as the sole province of cruel and sadistic characters, like The White Princess’s Margaret Beaufort and Wolf Hall’s Thomas More. Perhaps the fact that Hamnet ignores Christianity is hardly worth commenting on. Of slightly more concern is the fact that Shakespeare’s wife appears to be a neo-pagan.
