Hamnet - Book Vs. Movie

In this episode we’re comparing the Hamnet book vs the Hamnet movie adaptation to see which version tells the story better.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell became one of the most talked about historical novels of recent years, telling the story of Hamnet, the son of William Shakespeare, and the devastating impact his death had on the family. The novel is famous for its incredible atmosphere and emotional storytelling.

But how does the Hamnet film adaptation directed by Chloé Zhao compare?

In this episode we break down the key differences between the Hamnet book and movie, including what the film changes, what it keeps, and whether simplifying the story actually makes the adaptation stronger.

I talk about:

• The incredible atmosphere in the Hamnet novel
• Why the story isn’t really about Shakespeare at all
• Hamnet’s inner monologue and why it makes the tragedy even more devastating
• The performances in the Hamnet movie
• The emotional moments that completely ruined us (yes… the “my boy” scene)
• Why the film reaches Hamnet’s death much earlier
• And whether the movie or the book tells the story of Shakespeare’s family better

If you’re interested in book vs movie comparisons, literary adaptations, Shakespeare history, or Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, this episode breaks down everything that works — and what doesn’t — in both versions of the story.

Transcript

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On this week's episode, we are getting into Hamlet, the book versus the film, Maggio Fowl versus Chloe Zhao. Who came through? Who did it best? Let's see. Thanks for joining me. This is Is the Book Better? With me, Jay Martini. Hello, welcome back to the podcast. If this is your first time listening, this is going to be a sad one. Just heads up. So if you want to go to more some of the more fun ones, give Forrest Gump a go. I think that's the second episode. That's there's a lot happening in that. That should have been an hour-long episode, if I'm honest. But I had to trim it down, you know, 30 minutes. That's fine. So this week though, we are taking on Hamlet. If you are new here, full disclosure, spoilers throughout this. If you've not seen it, if you've not read it, I will be talking about what happens in it. Because it's very hard to compare and contrast book against film without talking about what happens in said book and said film. So if you haven't, just go go give it a read now, just let it pop off, read the book quickly, come back, and if you haven't also seen the film, go watch that too. So how we do it, if you are new here, we talk about the positives and negatives of both the book and the film and then pit them against each other. See which one is more worth your time. We all have busy lives, which one's gonna be more worth your time? The rather long book or the semi-long film? Which one's gonna be worth it? Are they both worth your time? Do you have to throw yourself into the world of Hamlet and fully appreciate both? Let's see. Right, we're gonna start with a book. I usually, this is a positive for this book, but it's what I usually don't like. When books try too hard to be atmospheric, to really paint the landscape, really like take painstaking time over telling you about the pitch of the roof and how it looks in. I usually can't stand it. But when the place that they're describing is a character in itself, I'm here for it. Well, I will always listen to a description of New York City, I will always listen to a description of most cities. Like if you set a book at Crazy Rich Asians, the focus and the description of the places they were going to, I'm all here for it. Because the culture and the area was a character in itself, that's fine. But if I was to write a book or read a book about a guy sat in his attic, and all we talk about is the planks of wood on the ceiling and all that lot. I'm I'm not here for it. Let's just get to the narrative. But this got me. Maggie O'Farrell does so well in making Stratford and making the areas they live a character. And I know that some people, which we'll get into the negatives, find this book slow. I think the time she takes to talk and describe it allows you to be in Agneus' head for a bit. Agnes is at one with nature, and Maggie O'Farrell says, Hey, you can come along with me in this ride to really appreciate nature, or you can put the book down and move away. If you want to get on Agneus' level, come along. Get stuck into this, and that's what she does. And like I said, I usually can't stand that. I usually find it like really tedious. Like, okay, can we just get on with stuff happening? But this, I was like, I want, I wanted more forest action. I wanted, or not action, I just wanted more, more forest, more just Agnes wandering off into nature is it's a new it's a new thing I like that I didn't know about. Not when she wanted us to go give birth, she stopped doing that, didn't like that at all. I'm not gonna lie, I think I would be a bit upset with my wife if she just wandered off into the woods to give birth. But hey, that was Agneas' prerogative, and there's reasons why. My other thing is it's not about Shakespeare. Obviously, it's not called Shakespeare, it's called Hamlet, so it's gonna be about Hamlet. But Shakespeare's a supporting character in this, it's about Agnes, it's about the kids, and it's about Shakespeare kind of coming in stage left, X in the stage right, and back and forth, back and forth. And I like that because, like a lot of children, the English school system, we've had Shakespeare forced down our throats for a long time. And hey, doesn't I'm not saying I hate Shakespeare. I'm not before the Shakespeare Purists come at me, I'm not saying I hate Shakespeare. I'm just saying it's like broccoli. If you're forced to have it as a kid, you're probably not gonna like it as an adult, and that's what Shakespeare was like to me. It was forced on me. There is a much dirtier version of that joke, but I'm not gonna do it. It was forced on me, so I was kind of when it was I knew it was about Shakespeare, I was I was a bit like, ugh, can I am I bothered? Am I bothered about something that happened 400 years ago? Is it really that hard hitting for me to know about him? Yeah, it's it's worth it. And it's and him not being in it and it not being about his successes in theatre until the final third. Make this the backstory that you rarely hear. You only ever hear about Shakespeare when he's successful. You only ever hear about him giving Anne Hathaway his second best bed in his will. That's all you hear about in his from his personal life. You just hear the kind of boring stuff, um, and him being mates with Christopher Marlowe, I think it was. That's about all I know about Shakespeare. And hey, that maybe me not being well read and knowing about the past of Shakespeare. Because if you don't really know about the history of Shakespeare, you don't kind of understand his come-up. Like he keeps popping back back and forth to London, and every time he comes back, he's he's doing well, but you kind of don't you don't know why. You don't know why he's doing well. You're you're as in the dark as Agnes is. You don't know what he's doing in London, but every time he comes back, he's doing better, he's doing better, he's doing better, he's sending money back. But it does make you wonder, was that success tainted by the fact that he most likely definitely brought the plague back to his kids? I mean, obviously they didn't know a lot about germs back then, didn't know a lot about how to transmit diseases, so maybe he didn't beat himself up about it, but if I were Shakespeare with a modern knowledge, I would be kicking myself that I definitely brought the plague back to my kids. I was leaving Cespit London, going back to the fresh air of the countryside, and the kids are getting ill. So, Shakespeare's the bad guy in this. He really is. He's not, but you know what I mean? He didn't know, he didn't know what he was doing. So, as we don't hear it from Shakespeare, we hear mostly from Agnes or Hamlet. And Hamlet's inner monologue is so sweet, so endearing, and having a two-year-old son, myself, it just gets me so excited to have a mini me to play with and bounce off and teach about things that I love. Like my four-year-old daughter now, she's likes music that I like. Like, we we don't really listen to as much nursery rhymes anymore. She does want to listen to some of my songs, which is lovely, and she does watch Arsenal matches with me, which is lovely. And I know she just watches the Arsenal matches so she can stay up late, but still, it's nice to think that I'm passing something on to her. But this is what it feels like. Hamnet had that in him. He wanted to work in the theatre, he wanted to be one of the players, he wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, and it makes it all the more heart-wrenching that he just doesn't get to. But what it's paired with is the devastation is paired with his childlike imagination of the situation. He thinks that he can trick death and he can take his sister's illness away because death can't tell the difference between the twins, and that like naivety or complete innocence just makes it so horrible when he does, you know, when he does die. It's it's rough, it's really rough, and it takes a while to get there. But you and you you read the thing is with this book, you're reading it knowing it's about the death of Hamlet. So if you're just waiting and waiting and waiting, and you don't want it to come, but you know it is, you know it's gonna come. And that's what gets you. You're like, well, maybe that maybe I was wrong. You start doubting yourself, maybe I was wrong about the fact that this is a book about uh Shakespeare's son dying, maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe Agnes is is wrong in all like her visions about how her life's gonna be. Maybe she's wrong, maybe she does have three kids at her deathbed, not two, and so but when she gets there, absolute, absolute gut punch. But it's in that dragging out, this is where we get to the negatives, that the pacing is slow. It is, and I understand why a lot of people give up on this book, but it needs that, it needs all of that to create the atmosphere of the place because it's a book set in the 1600s, you need to know how these people were living, you need to know why they think Agnes is weird, and her being weird needs to be backed up by what's going on at the time, so you need all this backstory because she doesn't do anything that's that weird, but it's weird of the time, so you need to know all of that first. Because I don't I think the average person doesn't really know much about 1600s England. I don't. You just think about bread rolls and peasants and castle walls and I mean that's medieval. Well, yeah, I think that's what I think of. I think basically from 1066 to 1600 is kind of just the same stuff. That's that's how I see it, it's just peasant revolt. So, and they everyone's just dirty and sweaty and horrible and dying of dying at 30 and having 15 kids to work the farm. That's that's how I imagine it. So to actually get an education and it not feel like a history book, for it to actually feel like you're living a day in the life of someone in the 1600s, that's it's good writing, but some people I think it's a it might be a bit heavy, heavy on the heavy on the history, heavy on the exposition, which is fine, I understand that. And also, not only is it slow, the timeline jumps around. So I can also see people being like, Whoa, back up here. Like, what do you mean? Oh, we were just getting to the part and now we're back here, what's going on? So, but you need to know about Agnes' childhood, you need to know what happened, you need to know what her mum was like, you need to know all of this to understand why Agnes is the way she is, why the stepmother's such a prick, why Shakespeare the way he is, because his dad's such a prick. Or you need to know all these things, you need to know what the driving forces are behind behind Shakespeare, which I didn't know. I didn't know the shape the the driving force behind Shakespeare. I didn't know his dad was a glovemaker that basically shamed the family constantly. I didn't know that. Didn't know the one of his driving forces to write was to get the fuck out of where he was because his dad was such a dick and he just wanted to move away. Didn't know that. I also didn't know that her name was Agnes and not I know this is um translations, but I just always had it as Anne Hathaway. And obviously we've all seen the thing where Anne Hathaway and her husband look exactly like Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare. If you haven't looked at that, go find it, it's cool. So yeah, it's um it's slow and jumps around, so I can see I can see why people are put off by this book. And then if you're coming into this book, like I said earlier, looking for some Shakespeare stuff, there's a bit of it sprinkled in there, and I liked it. I like those little morsels of Shakespeare, little fun facts about him. I like those little personality traits of why he was like he was. I like that. But if you're wanting like a Shakespeare heavy how Shakespeare sat and dealt with Hamlet's death and all that lot, there's in the book for you, pal. It's in the book. So, getting into the film. Now I read this book, I read the book, and obviously it takes a while to get to Hamlet's death, and then the book kind of ends. So when the film came out, and then the death happens about halfway, I think. I d I there wasn't timing it, I was in the cinema. But you're thinking, what's gonna happen? What's kind of the last half final third gonna be like? Like, I'm I'm crying, but I'm wondering like, surely the film's about to end. It's a short film. Cause it got me. I was I was done. Absolutely done. But the final third I thought was fucking fantastic. How can you do the bit that everyone's there to go see halfway and still gut punch at the end? What's that power of filmmaking? Someone explain that to me. It's I don't I it's like the Titanic sinking 40 minutes in and then the rest of it's just they're paddling on boats. Like I the the thing happened. And I went I went with my friend and we just didn't look at each other throughout the whole thing because we knew we were both gonna get ruined by it. But afterwards we both said to each other, like, we were like, what's gonna happen next? But we cried more in the final third than the death of Hamnet. So I need to know what magic Chloe Zhao put into this because it didn't it didn't compute with me. Even thinking back on it now having seen the film, I don't know how she got me again. I thought I I'd heard the th the final third was wishy-washy and Anya's couldn't tell the difference between reality and acting, and it's all a bit like oh surreal and whatever, but no, it was a woman experiencing grief while also seeing what she thinks is her son on stage. And what would that do to your mentality? This is 300 years before people ran out of the cinema because the train was coming through the screen. 300 years before that. So that they're before they're just at the birth of acting on on stage and players and whatnot. So and she's a very sheltered girl who lives in the middle of nowhere, you know, she doesn't doesn't know with much of the outside world. She knows very a lot of nature, she doesn't know much of the outside world, so she's dealing with grief, but also thinking that her son's back alive again. She's trying to wrap her head around the magic that her husband has created. And if you see that and you go, bit fucking silly that. How is she so stupid thinking that's her son on stage, her son's died, she know. Do you not understand the time? Do you not get that? Do you need to go read the Hamlet book first to realise what the time period is when this took place? Come on. Idiots. I've heard that a lot. I've heard the final thirds a bit silly, a bit surreal, blah blah blah blah. Grow up. It's it's it's storytelling is cinema, it's it's cinema, is what it is. And people have also said, I always whenever I do this, I always look at what people don't like about the film, and I'm like, that's one of the good parts. Simplifying the story works. There's so much in that book, so many different offshoots and avenues that I do think bring a lot to the book. I do think, like I said, we need that narrative background, and it gives you little little bits to pick at and work out how it all comes to this, how we get to where we get to. But simplifying the timeline, making it run A to B, not including absolutely everything, not including flashbacks to the mum, not including all that, just allows for them to do quality over quantity. Take those core moments and really send it. That's what it feels like. They they went, listen, Jesse, Jesse Bookley, listen, mate. The whole book, a good majority of the book, is your inner turmoil, your emotional journey inside your own head. We need you to do that with your face. Okay? We need you to do that with your face. We need all the emotions, we need them to read your mind by looking at your face. Can you do that? And she went, I'll give it a fucking good go. And she did. She is incredible in this film. I mean, I've been I've been all over Jesse Bookley since Wild Rose. I want to say I've been all over her since um her TV show where she was running up in uh the Sound of Music uh thing she went for. But I wasn't, I did I didn't know that was her. But yeah, since I saw Wild Rose, I was like, I love this woman, I'll watch everything she's in, and I have. There is not a Jesse Bookley thing that's come out that I haven't seen. So just saying, biggest Jesse Bookley fan over here. And on the other hand, Paul Mescal, I haven't seen him much. And and I also get a lot of grief when I say that I didn't really love After Sun. It will I I think I'd watch that after people have told me it's the best thing you'll ever see. It's incredible, it'll ruin you. It didn't. So I didn't really like that. I um I didn't watch his main thing. Other people is that the one? The one that everyone went mental for. Him and Daisy Aga Jones. Why has that escaped me entirely now? Other people. People anyway that didn't watch it. Um so I I kind of miss the Paul Mess gal naissance. That won't catch on. But I missed it. I didn't I didn't hear it, I didn't get it. I fucking got it in this. My goodness, I got it in this. And like I said, he's not in it, he's he's in it, but near the back end he's he's coming back and forth, back and forth. But his and this is obviously his spoiler I told you about the scene where he comes home after hearing his child is taken ill, his daughter is taken ill, and he sees his daughter, and he's filled with such relief, and he gives her the biggest hug, he starts talking to her, and in that one moment everything is right, everything is how it should be. He is elated, and he just catches a glimpse of the covered up of his son covered over with a with a sheet on the table, and you see him break. That incredible that wrecked me. I already knew the son was dead, that got me. Him then thinking everything was okay and coming to the realization where they took his boy, poor god, absolutely ruined me. I was I'm I'm going now. I was just like this in the cinema. Like, just sniffling, just bawling, bawling my eyes out. And I'm always a an advocate of cry. Don't hold in, don't hold back from crying. Why would you do that? You wouldn't hold a fart in. It's it's as bad, I think, scientifically, it's as bad to hold your tears in as it is to hold a fart. Don't quote me on that, but it's true. So yeah, that that scene alone makes me think he should win everything, Jesse Brooklyn should win everything. I just thought this film was incredible. I really did, and I and I'd heard it was great, and I thought there's no way, there's no way it can be as good as everyone's claiming it is. Because Christ, I've I've I've read the book, I understand, I understand the weight of it, but it's gonna be a heavy film, and it is, but the way she does it is just incredible, and I wish, I wish I could speak more clearly on that, but I'm still um still absolutely rattled by thinking about Hamlet again. Oh, yeah, so um that being said, obviously, um because it's the film, and I always get around to this point, because they haven't got the time the book has, you do lose aspects of the book. And yeah, like I said, it's a positive that I streamlined it. I think they picked the bits that they needed to use and they ran with it. But you do miss out on stuff. Like I said, you miss out on the inner perspective of the characters. But like I said, Jesse Buckley and Paul Mascal painted that shit all over their face. You knew what they were thinking, you were in there. The whole grabbing of the hand thing. Fucking hell. And then um you don't get as much historical detail, you don't get much of Elizabethan life. And if you go into this knowing about it, I assume it it leans accurate, it feels like it was accurate, there wasn't any glaring things to me, but like I said, I don't know much about Elizabethan life. So for me, this felt it felt Elizabethan. It felt like if I got in a time machine and I went back, that's what the streets would look like, that's what the people would look like. Like that's how the people would think and act. You know, him going off to wanting to do to write stuff that were like, but he's not got a trade, the fucking loser. You can see that. The one thing I will say though is that and you still say, that's okay. That's okay. And as we know, OK was created in the 1920s? And it was um I think it was Harvard. They had like a society where they would talk in different languages, and OK would stands for all correct. O L L K O R R E C T. So it wasn't around Elizabethan times. But hey, she was also acting with kids and the kid made a mistake and she said, that's okay. So she was just being a sweet, great person. But hey, if I was to point out one thing, that would be it. And someone, if you if that is wrong, call me on it. Um and yeah, we do get less time with Hamlet and but the time we do get it's just so fucking brilliant. It's so the where they're going ro when Shakespeare's leaving and it's the last time he's gonna see him alive. We don't know this, but they're leaving, they're going around the house and they keep popping their head back to say, Goodbye, bye. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. We don't know it, he doesn't know it, but you start to realise oh fuck that was the last time, and you think back, and I think that's what gets you in the final third. You think back on when was the last time he saw Hamlet? Oh, when he was being the cutest fucking boy ever. Great. Of course, when he was being an absolute heaven-sent boy heaven-sent son. Doing the cutest shit, of course, that's gonna be the last time you see him, which I guess is a gift that's actually the last time I remember him, I suppose. Okay, getting down to it. If I were to compare the two, which is the point of this podcast, the book is richer, it's slower, and it's a lot more intro intro introspective. But I still feel you get the same emotion from the book. I still feel you get the same emotion from the film. I do. I feel like it's uh it is more streamlined, but in that immediacy it just hits you it just hits you like a steam train, but there's still a build to it. There's still a build that gets you to feel the emotions you need to be feeling as Chloe Zhao then uh punches you in the face and stomach. It's in there. It's in there. And it's it's more accessible for sure. I think more people will sit through Hamlet as a film than they than will the book. Absolutely. I've read this and I've uh told people it's the book's fantastic, the book's brilliant, and they've all gone, I don't know. I don't know, it's a lot, it's a lot for me. The film was a lot, so I don't know if I can hack the book. So I will say that I think as a sell and as a pound for pound, I think the film's better. And I was not taking anything away from Maggie O'Farrell because I thought the film was incredible and I thought the book was fantastic. So this is the exact opposite of Life of Chuck for me. You're going to have a well-spent time. Both of these are worth your time. If you have uh ten hours to sit and read Hamlet or listen to the audiobook, do it. If you only have two hours to watch the film, do that. You will take something away from it either way. So that's the verdict. That film is better by a margin. And I think that what pushed it over was how much I love Jesse Buckley, how much I now love Paul Mescal, how much I love Emily Watson. That's a curveball that she was in. I didn't know she was going to be in it. Uh Joe Olwyn. I thought he was pretty solid in this. He's nothing like the guy in the book. He's nothing like his book counterpart. His book counterpart is an absolute mammoth of the man. I'm not saying Joe Olwyn short, but I'm just saying he's a mammoth of the man. And as we all know, Swift is. Joe Olwyn's the uh is it the smallest man in the world? Something like that. I don't want to start any beef with Joe Alwyn, though. Um either way, it they're both worth your time. That's the takeaway. These are both absolutely worth your time, no matter how important and busy you are, get stuck in on this because if you want a a proper proper good look at grief, and if you want a proper cry, this is the boy. This is the book. And this is the film. Honestly, fantastic. So that is it. Are you shocked? Are you shocked that I picked the film? Are you are you a bookhead? That's what I call people who love books bookheads. Um, or you're uh are you a film head? Which one are you? But I will say, and I'm sorry for having a little bit of a wobble in the middle there, but there's just something I mean, I can't I can't watch anything without having a cry these days. Having kids will do that to you. But that is it for the episode. If you would like, please give me five stars, it's very helpful. My TikTok presence I do believe is helping. My views are going my listens, my downloads are going up and up and up every single week, and our stats, guys, that really does give me the motivation to watch more films, read more books, and like I said, this isn't just a thing for me to shout into the void, this is really helping me explore more genres. As I've said before, I was a big autobiography guy, that's all I would read, that's all I would listen to. But this is really making me just go out there. And I've also found that I'm a bit of a savant for what's gonna be made into a film because like Hail Mary's coming out, I read that a couple years ago, and now that's gonna be a film. I mean, I know it's an Andy Weber book, so it was probably gonna be a film anyway, but it's starting to I'm I've got the power. So if you want anything adapted, let me know, uh, because I'll have a word and get it done for you. But until a couple weeks' time, I'll I'll see you. But if you do also, just before I go, if you are interested in me just doing like mini book reviews, mini film reviews, as a little like 10-minute podcast thing just to fill the gaps, because obviously I do every other Monday. If you want another little thing in there I can sprinkle through, pop it in the comments. If you comment saying, review this for me, review that for me, I'll do it. I am a people pleaser to the highest degree. So until next time, see ya.