It’s hard to say what we feel, right? Hard to find the right words, and sometimes harder still to conjure up the courage to say them out loud.
In these winter months, when catching up with distant family members and old school chums who are in town for the holidays, I often find myself tongue-tied, struck dumb, awkward and lost for words.
I take comfort in the fact that, according to director Chloe Zhao’s new film, Hamnet, William Shakespeare—yes, the most famous wordsmith in history—may himself have suffered from similar communication issues. The film, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, fictionalizes The Bard’s family life, exploring his marriage to Agnes (Jessie Buckley in the film). When the two meet early in the movie, Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) confesses to Agnes: “It’s difficult for me to talk to people.”
“Then tell me a story,” Agnes entreats him. “One that moves you.” And, to no one’s great surprise, Bill happily—and skillfully—obliges, entrancing Agnes with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. What he couldn’t express to her in plain speech—perhaps the depth of his feelings about love, devotion and loss—he is able to convey through his abilities as a storyteller. Agnes understands. Later in the film, when the couple are shattered by the death of their child, it is only by watching one of his plays that Agnes can understand the depth of William’s grief.
In the film Sentimental Value, similar themes are explored. We get to know a dysfunctional family: two adult sisters, and their estranged filmmaker father, who now wants to reconnect after the death of his ex-wife (the sisters’ mother). Specifically, the father wants one of his daughters, Nora, to star in his new film.
“I can’t work with him,” Nora (Renate Reinsve) says. “We can’t really talk.” But, as Nora will eventually discover, her father has written his new film with that exact problem in mind. He knows they can’t communicate conventionally, but he hopes that perhaps they can understand each other through other means—namely, artistic collaboration on a film.
Cinema, and art in general, has the wonderful ability to communicate that which is hard, or impossible, to communicate in words. So if one, like me, ever finds themself at a loss for words, or perhaps not feeling brave enough to say the words they’d like to, maybe their best bet is to seek out (or create) a movie or some other piece of art that captures what they feel, and then share it with someone they hope will understand.
