The two stars are knockouts in Chloé Zhao’s poignant adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel with a stirring tearjerker ending
By Richard Lawson
Maggie O’Farrell’s lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare’s family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O’Farrell’s so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloé Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.
Zhao is a good fit for the material. She, too, is a close observer of nature and of the many aching, yearning people passing through it. But she has previously not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this. The humbler dimensions of her films The Rider and Nomadland are missed here; Hamnet too often gives off the effortful hum of prestige awards-bait.
But Zhao’s hallmark compassion and curiosity remain, qualities necessary to Hamnet, which could easily tilt into the realm of manipulative tearjerkers. Hamnet was, records tell us, Shakespeare’s son, who died at a young age and is thought to have inspired, at the very least, the title of Hamlet, the story of a young prince who meets a tragic end. What O’Farrell and now Zhao imagine is that the writing of Hamlet was an exercise in grieving, a way for Shakespeare to honor his son and bid him adieu.
It’s a persuasive idea, even if it takes some literary contortions to really buy into it. While Zhao sometimes strains to sell the notion – a scene in which a weeping Shakespeare stands on the banks of the Thames and speaks a snippet of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy is perhaps a bit over-egged – she has mostly convinced us by the end. Or, at least, Hamnet has justified the bold speculation, using a leapt-to conclusion to illuminate a fundamental aspect of living. Ultimately, what does it really matter if it actually happened this way?
Hamnet invents many other facets of Shakespeare’s history. It dreams up the courtship of young William (Paul Mescal), then a Latin tutor, and slightly older Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), an oddball loner about whom the villagers whisper in fearful tones. William is drawn to exactly that strangeness, the individuality that will come to inform so much of the family’s domestic routine. Zhao spends a fair amount of time on these early days, maybe too much. Some of it could be better spent on the years in which Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) occupied the house alongside his twin, Judith (Olivia Lynes), and their older sister, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). One longs to truly know Hamnet before he is so wrenchingly lost to the world, to feel the agony of his absence that much more acutely.
Just two days after the deadly ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, several videos, shot from different perspectives have been released to the public, including video taken by the shooter, which many on the political right claim supports the argument that the ICE agent was defending himself when he shot and killed Good in her car. Jen Psaki synchronizes several videos for a closer analysis of what the shooter’s video actually shows, and what the videos tell us about what Good was doing when she was killed.
This morning, a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Minneapolis leaders, Good was a legal observer: a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action.
Three videos taken at the scene show a maroon SUV perpendicular on a snowy street. A silver SUV driving up the street stops. Two officers wearing badges that say “police” and body armor get out of the vehicle and walk toward the maroon car.
One of them says, “Get out of the f*cking car,” and the other reaches through the open driver’s side window while trying to open the door. The driver backs up the vehicle, and straightens the wheel as if making a three-point turn. Then she starts slowly to accelerate along the street.
A third officer who has been standing on the side of the road pulls out a gun as the car is turning away. He shoots three times. The maroon car does not hit anyone as it rolls up the street, hitting another vehicle and then a utility pole. The shooter walks briskly away, apparently uninjured.
Seen in slow motion, a video shows the wheels of the maroon vehicle were fully turned away from the shooting officer, who made no effort to jump away, clearly suggesting he did not feel as if he were in danger. His first shot went through the windshield; the next two went through the driver’s side window as the car moved past him. An onlooker shouted “What the f*ck?!”
Video taken by another eyewitness shows ICE agents refusing to allow a self-identified physician to tend to the victim and telling him to back up. Although there is no one tending the clearly visible woman in the car, an agent says: “We have medics on scene. We have our own medics.” When another bystander screams: “Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY?!” an agent tells her, “Relax.” “How can I relax?” she shouts. “You just killed my f*cking neighbor.”
Yesterday the Trump administration deployed federal agents and officers to Minneapolis for what they called the largest federal immigration operation ever carried out, eventually planning to deploy 2,000 agents. The administration has been attacking Minnesota’s Somali community, and Homeland Security Kristi Noem was present at an ICE arrest yesterday, telling a man in handcuffs, who Homeland Security later said was from Ecuador, “You will be held accountable for your crimes.”
Rebecca Santana and Michael Balsamo of the Associated Press reported that Minnesota governor Tim Walz called the deployment “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota.” “You’re seeing that we have a ridiculous surge of apparently 2,000 people not coordinating with us, that are for a show of cameras,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insists that its actions are protecting American citizens from “the worst of the worst” criminal immigrants, so the shooting of a young white woman, the mother of a young child, and how that would look, made it appear eager to smear Good.
It immediately put out a statement that looked much like what it said after officers shot 30-year-old Chicago teaching assistant Marimar Martinez in October when it claimed she had “ambushed” agents, ramming their vehicle before an agent shot her five times. Footage showed that, in fact, the agents had rammed her car, and after the shooting one had sent a text message bragging: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” The Department of Justice dropped the charges it had filed against her, asking a judge to “dismiss the indictment and exonerate” Martinez and her passenger.
Today, DHS posted on social media that “ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement who are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”
Trump jumped in with his own fact-free post lying that the shooter had been run over: “I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot at her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe that he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
That both DHS and Trump posted false accounts of the shooting even as there are four videos circulating that reveal those accounts to be lies shows they no longer are making any attempt to justify their actions. Instead, they are demanding Americans abandon reality in favor of whatever the administration says. If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think. Accepting that lie is a loyalty test.
But it is not working.
First of all, Sarah Jeong of The Verge noted that the reason there are so many videos is because “people cared enough to show up where ICE was and record them. It wasn’t just one or two legal observers, and when Good was shot, they didn’t abandon her.”
Second, elected Democrats are pushing back. “I’ve seen the video,” Governor Walz wrote. “Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.” To reporters, he said: “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV and today that recklessness cost someone their life. I’ve reached out to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and I’m waiting to hear back.”
He told Minnesotans that, like them, he was angry, but “they want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot. If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully as you always do. We can’t give them what they want…. To Americans, I ask you this. Please stand with Minneapolis.”
Walz prepared to call out the Minnesota National Guard if necessary, demonstrating that there would be no need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in troops. He reminded Minnesotans that the Minnesota National Guard does not wear masks and that it is theirs, not Trump’s.
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey told reporters that the DHS statement was “bullsh*t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” “To the family, I’m so deeply sorry,” Frey said. “There’s nothing that I can say right now that’s going to make you or your relatives, friends of the victim feel any better.” To ICE and other federal agents deployed in Minnesota, he added: “Get the f*ck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart…and now somebody is dead.”
But something else was also going on today. At the same time the administration was pouring gasoline on the domestic fire ICE had sparked and the international fire it had set with its attacks on Venezuela and threats against Greenland, it was quietly making a number of major financial moves.
The smallest of those moves was that today Trump asked Fulton County, Georgia, for a $6.2 million payout in attorneys’ fees and costs after the criminal charges against him in Georgia were dismissed. Trump had been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by pressuring Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger to “find” 11,780 votes to give him a victory in the state of Georgia. In November 2025 a new special prosecutor dropped the charges, citing the difficulty of prosecuting a case against a sitting president. Trump boasted on social media of his victory over an “illegal, unconstitutional, and unAmerican hoax,” and continued to push the lie that Democrats stole the election.
Vicky Ge Huang of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial today applied for a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department. A banking license would integrate the Trump family’s cryptocurrency more fully into mainstream finance.
If the Treasury Department issues the license—a potential outcome that critics say reveals a major conflict of interest for the president—the president and chair of the new company would be Zach Witkoff, whose father is the son of Trump’s envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff, who the Wall Street Journal recently reported had been handpicked for his role by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The younger Witkoff started World Liberty Financial in 2024 with Trump’s sons Don Jr., Eric, and Barron.
Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins and Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that “[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly ‘off-shore’ accounts.”
Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
And then, this afternoon, Trump’s social media account first threatened the defense contractor Raytheon, saying that “[e]ither Raytheon steps up, and starts investing in more upfront Investment like Plants and Equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with Department of War.”
Then, the same account posted: “After long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives, I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars. This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe. If it weren’t for the tremendous numbers being produced by Tariffs from other Countries, many of which, in the past, have ‘ripped off’ the United States at levels never seen before, I would stay at the $1 Trillion Dollar number but, because of Tariffs, and the tremendous income they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past (especially just one year ago during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, the Worst President in the History of our Country!), we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number while, at the same time, producing an unparalleled Military Force, and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”
Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles wrote: “Trump has gone completely mad.”
Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
