When Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao first studied Shakespeare at her British boarding school, the young Chinese pupil did not even speak English.
So it has been a long journey to her latest film “Hamnet,” a poetic period drama that speculates on the life story of William Shakespeare himself, and is an early Academy Award frontrunner.
“It was so hard,” she told AFP, of her school days.
Zhao’s English teacher, Mr Robinson, would put classic texts in front of her and say, “Just stay after class every day. I’ll page-by-page help you,” she recalled.
The hard work appears to have paid off.
Premiering Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, Zhao’s “Hamnet” colors in the gaps of the little we know about William, his wife Agnes, their family and a tragedy that inspired arguably his greatest work.
It is based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, which drew on evidence that the Shakespeares had a son called Hamnet — a name that scholars say would have sounded indistinguishable from “Hamlet” in Elizabethan-era England.
Novel and film speculate that Agnes encouraged William to move to London solo and pursue his dreams in the theater, confident that their love was strong enough to endure the separation.
But in a time when death and heartbreak lurked around every corner, particularly from childbirth and plague, the marriage grows emotionally as well as physically distant.
“Maggie’s novel, it was like a poem,” Zhao told AFP.
“To see them fall in love and come together, be torn apart… it’s an inner civil war that we all battle with as we grow and mature.”
– ‘Sunset-chasing’ –
Zhao’s interpretation takes a more chronological approach than the novel, and does not skimp on harrowing depictions of grief, leaving many in the Toronto audience in tears.
It is the culmination of an astonishing journey for the director, from a self-described “weird exchange student” at England’s Brighton College to the top echelons of global cinema.
Zhao earned early acclaim with US indie hits like “The Rider” before 2020’s “Nomadland,” a semi-fictional drama about the road-dwellers of the American West that won three Oscars including best picture and best director.
After an ill-fated blockbuster detour with Marvel superhero flop “Eternals,” “Hamnet” marks a decisive return to more intimate, high-brow filmmaking for Zhao.
Zhao, 43, told the Toronto premiere audience she had spent her thirties making “horizon and sunset-chasing films” that were “very wide and expansive.”
Now “in my 40s, when I go through some difficult midlife crisis, I realized I was running away from myself, very similar to Will in the film,” she said.
Still, it seems that Mr Robinson’s diligent tuition has continued to shape Zhao’s identity as a director.
Noah Jupe, who plays an actor performing as Hamlet on stage at The Globe, said his character’s role was still being re-written and re-worked well into production.
Nonetheless, Zhao insisted that he memorize “every single speech” from the play, just in case required.
“It was a big burden, but I was excited and happy,” he told AFP.
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