Vulgar (2002)

Trusting Chloé Zhao's vision, I watched this film completely blindfolded, as I had no idea of the premise or who the main characters were. At the beginning, the title card stated Hamnet was used interchangeably with Hamlet. I could picture that this film is related to Hamlet and Shakespeare, but I didn’t know how exactly. Growing up outside of the English world, my knowledge of Shakespeare is limited: I’ve watched some versions and adaptations of some of his works, but I knew nothing of the personal life of the playwright himself. At the beginning of the final section, the full name ‘William Shakespeare’ was spoken for the first time by his wife while looking for him in the theater, which finally confirmed my suspicion. Up until that moment, the forename ‘William’ wasn’t mentioned or called by anyone. Therefore, every turn of how the main characters develop is unpredictable for me, without feeling that that boy, Hamnet, was born to die. My unknowing made the film a fresh drama, possibly different from lots of audiences’ viewing experiences. 

The film begins with Agnes lying down on the ground of the forest and then calling a hawk to land on her forearm, while the variant shadows of green and Agnes’s crimson dress are blooming through the screen. We followed Agnes via a passage through the forest to an English cottage, where she met her future husband for the first time. The film doesn’t apply a stylish coloring filter that is often associated with historical periods but prefers the color scheme with natural lighting. We entered the world of Agnes as regular townsfolk, making the storytelling intimate without a prepositioned distance. The most stylizing movement of the camera is the rare slow zoom in, transmitting the mysteriousness of the masterful forest.