Hamlet (2000)
Written by William Shakespeare / Directed by Michael Almereyda
Starring: Ethan Hawke (Hamlet), Julia Styles (Ophelia), Polonius (Bill Murray), Diane Venora (Gertrude)
Written and Directed by Annie Baker
Starring: Julianne Nicholson (Janet), Zoe Ziegler (Lacy)
Dear Film Viewer,
Art is such a strange thing. Artists work on things they can’t get out of their minds, and they can toil for many hours, days, weeks, even years, and all of it comes to smoke.
It is imaginary, all of it, and somehow, the imaginary is more real than the actual substances of matter that surround an artist.
You can’t fix an artist. You can’t change her or him. You can’t uncreate or play a game to get an artist to be your shadow or your prop. Being an artist is a pathological existence, wherein life is a canvas, and every word a drop of holy water that adds to a long river, with a rich history, and which people turn to for sustenance.
This blog is not meant to criticize films, or actors, because we really don’t need more criticism. I wonder at times if critics are just frustrated artists. I know that in moments when I was a frustrated artist myself, I would find flaws in art so that I could feel smart and savvy and assume I knew the way of things. Life—at least my beautiful life—has teased that out of me. Putting something you have made into the world is like giving birth to a child, or setting a caged bird free—it is a tender and emotional space. It is courageous.
I therefore mean no criticism to say that Hamlet (2000) directed by Michael Almereyda—while holding for me some intrigue and interest—does not give me the kind of sustenance I desire from my river. It is not a work I can turn to, or would point others to, in revealing truths that give us a stepping stone in our sometimes wayward paths of life. Hamlet the character in this depiction feels so common, even though he attempts to establish that he is above everyone for his knowledge and wit. I want to feel his heart, so that I can empathize with his anger and adolescence. But I cannot find his heart—there is little room in the film for his heart, and I certainly know the actor Ethan Hawke has one. I think the heart just got edited out, or something.
If Hamlet 2000 is masculine youth—angsty, angry, bitter, assuming to know everything, wanting to battle and hurt others because he’s been hurt—then we need a team of nurturing mothers and fairies and feminine creatures to get guys like that into the woods, to feed them ripe tomatoes and let them walk barefoot and swim in the stream. We can help them take a load off. We can get them to go to Janet Planet.
The feminine brings us an alternate view of a child and a parent. In Janet Planet, directed by Annie Baker, Lacy is an 11-year-old who lives with her beautiful mother in an idyllic setting. Life is calm and simple and slow. Janet, the mom, played by Julianne Nicholson, is always in her own head, pondering, imagining, and bringing her daughter into lush spaces to meet spiritual people, dancers, fluid human beings, and sometimes rustic men who are not interesting enough to keep up with Janet’s depth.
I can’t get out of my head this little girl’s face, Lacy, played by Zoe Ziegler. The glasses she wears. The innocence she has that is merged with wisdom. The spongey way she takes in everything her mother says and does, because her mother is a goddess, and yet Lacy also holds the space of her own becoming. She is emotional at times, and her mother lets her be. Because Lacy has the freedom to feel her feelings without judgment, Lacy always calms down and listens. She wants a lot from her mom in time and attention, and her mother has it to give. Janet may be tired at times, and need space in her life for other people and events, but we know that no other relationship could matter more to her than the one she has with her daughter. Intimacy is redefined in this movie as a mother in the woods with her daughter, talking honestly about who they are and what they want for themselves as they fall asleep on flower-printed sheets.
There are poignant moments of conversation between Janet and friends, and Janet and Lacy, that are so natural and subtle, you forget you are watching a movie, and you also feel the hum of Janet as an essence. She is so quiet, and gentle, and feminine, and even confusing. And yet she pulsates with her knowing. Her daughter adores her, and watching this film, I felt like I was watching a new kind of Eden. In this ancient story, it is not a man and woman who betray anyone in a grove, but a mother and child in their home, where the birds sing outside, and the piano teacher gives out little candies at the end of her lesson, and people flow in and out like the tide, with subtle smiles.
If one is drawn to the hyper-masculine of filmmaking, he or she might think that a film like Janet Planet is not worth making. Absent is the blood and the fighting and the man overpowering nature stuff, the spectacle, the gratuitous sex.
Janet Planet just vibrates at a level that most big-picture films do not. And it is because of this 11-year-old child and her freckled-mom, who live peacefully. Not everything needs to be said. It is felt. It is known.
This is a story about the feminine, and watching a woman be her own, and discovering that maybe you can be, too. Being one’s own is not limited to wearing a business suit and conquering wall street or toppling other people, with hyper-masculine ideas of success and accomplishment. It is going dancing and breaking up with your boyfriend when he’s boring.
This kind of feminine and subtle film is what we as a culture need, so that we can imagine more cleanly what life can look like, with all its nuances and subtleties, and moments of beauty, and simplicity, and peace. It shows a life we want to come home to. So let’s get home.
Julianne Nicholson—who plays Janet—is a radiating light of beauty, depth and genuity. What grace.
Love,
Ms. Wonderful
Subscribe to the Ms. W Film Club podcast with Rose and McGraw. This episode about Hamlet ends with an original short script starring Maya Angelou! (Yeah!) On Spotify here / On Apple Podcasts here.
And if you just want a little piece of the podcast, watch this pithy clip on YouTube RoseWoodsTV about Hamlet.
Janet Planet is playing at your local artsy theater. Check it out.
Come to the in-person gathering of the Ms. Wonderful Film Club on August 4th in Philadelphia for a discussion of the 1994 film Reality Bites, directed by Ben Stiller. Coffee and snacks from 12-2 pm. Purchase your ticket on Eventbrite here.