In Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, Agnes Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley) raises her children in Stratford while her husband William (Paul Mescal) begins his illustrious career in London as a playwright. A fierce connection to family is seared by harrowing tragedy that leaves them unmistakably affected, even if they don’t know how to process it.
Awards Buzz spoke with composer Max Richter about his relationship with William Shakespeare and how that tied in to his approach to the film:
“Of course, we all studied him in school. And that was a bit of a chore, to be honest. But I’ve always been a big reader and I love literature. Having an opportunity to spend time with the text, with this beautiful play, this extraordinary work, it’s been really a true joy. He’s pretty good, isn’t he, Shakespeare? He’s pretty good. Obviously filtered through the lens of Maggie’s amazing writing and Chloe’s amazing writing. The thing that drew me to the project was reading it. It was an incredible screenplay. All about the text, really.”
He explained where he started and how music just flowed out of him after reading the script:
“When I read it, I literally just immediately wrote a load of music, thinking about the context, the psychology, the overarching themes, I guess, and questions that the piece raised. So I just made a lot of material, about half an hour of music, sent that over to Chloe, and we talked about it and we found that we were really very much on the same page pretty much from the get-go, which is amazing and doesn’t always happen. That was really super encouraging. I felt quite strongly that, because the material itself, the writing, is about the big stuff in life, love and death, literally, I felt that the music should be really quite minimal and be very cautious about anything that could feel sentimental. Step back and let the story speak through the music.”
Watch the video above to hear about his use of the track “On the Nature of Daylight” and his reflections on past work including his first film, Waltz with Bashir.
Hamnet is currently playing in select theaters and expands this Friday, December 5th.
