Grief and grandeur

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, February 20th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Hey, before we move on: Applications are right now open for the World Journalism Institute! That is our two-week program for college students and recent grads.

So if that describes you or you have a young person in your life interested in journalism, we did want you to know, now is the time to get to work on that application. It is going to take some effort.

WJI Collegiate is a two-week intensive—I'm not sure which is more important, two week or intensive, maybe it's just both, because it is super intense—and it allows students to learn first hand how to approach journalism professionally and Biblically.

The program runs from May 14th to May 30th. It is on the campus of Dordt University in beautiful northwest Iowa.

REICHARD: And it's so cool, because generous donors allow us to offer full scholarships for those who are accepted, so that means no charge to students, room and board is covered as well, but it is highly competitive and slots are limited. 

Here’s one of our recent graduates from last year to tell you a little about why this program is so popular:

WILKERSON: I'm Claire Wilkerson, and since WJI, I've had the opportunity to do on the ground reporting about timely events. Just this past month, I reported for WORLD about the ongoing debate over doctor-assisted suicide in the UK's Parliament. 

WJI helped give me the necessary logistical skills and confidence to report on this issue. I am currently a fellow at the John Jay Institute, and when I finish the program, I will begin a career in journalism. None of this would be possible without the skills I gained at WJI.

The deadline for applications is Monday, March 23rd. And it is quite a lengthy application, so don’t wait on this. You can apply online at WJI.WORLD. That’s WJI.WORLD.

EICHER: Alright Mary, well I’m not sure which of the two is more competitive: getting into WJI or winning an Oscar—how's that for a transition? But Academy Awards season is also right around the corner, and one of the leading nominees for an Oscar imagines the grief behind Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy. 

Here is WORLD reviewer Max Belz.

MAX BELZ: The movie Hamnet is based on a 2010 novel that tells the largely fictional story of Willam Shakespeare and his wife Agnes. It depicts how they meet, marry, and raise children.

WILLIAM: What is your name?

AGNES: I shan’t tell you.

William is the son of a glover, and he’s first introduced to Agnes while tutoring her stepbrothers in Latin at the family table. 

She wanders in and out of the forest, engrossed in its grandeur and beauty. It’s in the midst of this that Will recognizes Agnes’ beauty.

WILLIAM: I wish to be handfasted to you. No, I must be handfasted to you. No one else will do.

Because her parents are dead, Agnes has to receive the blessing of her brother, who eventually grants it.

AGNES: He loves me for what I am. Not what I ought to be.

BROTHER: Then marry him you shall.

One caution is that Hamnet is rated PG-13 because it contains a brief and uncomfortable scene of sexuality (though not nudity). Because of that and the height of emotional intensity, it’s not a movie for children or sensitive viewers.

With that caution stated, the movie is a dramatic story about grief. 

In a review for WORLD magazine, Collin Garbarino noted that the film shows how grief shapes creativity, and how creativity helps us heal. It also speculates about how real life events inspired Shakespeare to write his masterpiece play and one of the great works in English literature. Hamnet after all is roughly the same name as Hamlet.

Although the film carries the name of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, it’s really a movie about Agnes. Her relationship to her brother and her husband and her children is something to admire, even if she is unfeeling toward her stepmother who raised her. 

In fact, Agnes claims that she came from the forest, a place where she finds solace.

AGNES: What brought you into the garden? [laughs] It’s just a question, master tutor.

WILLIAM: Yes, I, I suppose the air was fresh out here and I saw you with your bird.

AGNES: It’s a hawk.

Agnes has an uncommon skill to grow and use herbs for medicine. She knows all the trees and keeps a trained falcon. On the other hand, her husband’s gift, as we know from history, is playwriting. And we see mirror scenes of them battling with those gifts. 

Sometimes, he can’t put the words together, and no matter how hard she tries, sometimes the medicine won’t work.

BROTHER: Why marry a pasty-faced scholar? What use is he?

AGNES: He’s got more inside of him than any man I've ever met.

The movie’s leads are gifted Irish actors Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, and they keep the movie from being maudlin. But I don’t want to spoil the story. 

Instead, I want to talk about Cloe Zhao’s directing style. Terrance Malick, who made The Tree of Life and The New World, is a clear influence on Zhao. His movies are more like extended prose-poems, and Zhao creates a similar thing with her camera. For example, the camera will cut to the earth or to the sky between dramatic turns in the story. For me, this creates poetic light amidst the loss.

And the story isn’t just about death, it’s also about life. 

Here’s Zhao talking about the film on the New Yorker podcast.

ZHAO: New life will come, and there’s hope in Hamlet. He wrote, “All living things must die, passing through nature to eternity.” And to me, that eternity is love.

Zhao is interested in the weariness and mystery of life, which is part of the theme of Hamlet’s soliloquy.

HAMLET: To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Some of her earlier work touches on this theme of grace and beauty in the lives of ordinary people. Her movie The Rider from 2017 is about a rodeo star near the Black Hills of South Dakota who gets terribly injured in competition. 

As he heals, he serves his family and his disabled friend. It’s a quiet and powerful movie.

TRAILER: I believe God gives each of us a purpose. To the horse it’s to run across the prairie. For a cowboy, it’s to ride.

Her movie Nomadland won the Best Picture in 2020 for her depiction of bands of people who lived out of their vans and campers in the American West.

I don’t suspect that Chloe Zhao is a Christian, but she treats her characters with compassion and understanding. I want to champion stories like these because many movies trade human interest for cheap thrills. Does the creator understand the conflict the character is enduring? Does he or she look with humanity on the characters in their duress?

These sensitivities dignify human life amidst the struggle, and the blessings of writing and literature, bearing and raising children, and serving one another. Zhao’s movies help me see that a little more clearly.

I’m Max Belz.

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