Ian McKellen, who has spent his career interpreting Shakespearean protagonists from Richard III to King Lear, voiced his disappointment with the current Oscar frontrunner based on the famous playwright’s life.
“I don’t quite get it,” McKellan, 86, said of awards-favorite Hamnet in a recent interview.
When asked his opinion of the acclaimed reimagining of William Shakespeare’s life, McKellan was less than impressed.
“I’m not very interested in trying to work out where Shakespeare’s imagination came from, but it certainly didn’t just come from family life,” the Shakespearean actor said.
The Chloé Zhao-directed film tells the story of how William Shakespeare wrote perhaps his most famous play, Hamlet, while grieving the death of his son, Hamnet.
The playwright is played by Paul Mescal, and his wife, Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway, is portrayed by Best Actress Oscar frontrunner Jessie Buckley.
“As Hamnet races towards the finishing line as far as Oscars are concerned, it’s likely to repeat the success of Shakespeare in Love, which had odd views as to how plays get put on. But then Shakespeare’s perhaps the most famous person who ever lived, so of course there is some interest in what he looked like, what his relationship with his family was," McKellan continued.
The 1998 comedy Shakespeare in Love swept the awards show, earning seven statues. The Joseph Fiennes and Gwenyth Paltrow-led romance controversially took home the show’s biggest prize, Best Picture, over Saving Private Ryan, which was directed by Hamnet producer Steven Spielberg.
McKellen also balked at the film’s rendition of Shakespeare’s wife. Despite her award-winning performance—which already won her the Golden Globe—McKellen thought her plot was “improbable” at best.
“And we can’t know, but the idea Anne Hathaway has never seen a play before? It’s improbable, considering what her husband did for a living. And she doesn’t seem to know what a play is! I think there are a few doubts of probability,” McKellen concluded.
The actor’s words are not to be taken lightly. Across his decades-long film and theater career, McKellan has reprised roles in Shakespeare-written plays dozens of times. The Oscar nominee even performed a one-man compilation of Shakespeare’s greatest monologues at the playwright’s home theater, the Globe Theater, called Acting Shakespeare.
The Daily Beast’s film critic, Nick Schager, also disapproved of the Shakespearean film. In his review, Schager wrote that the film’s connect-the-dots alignments between Shakespeare’s plays and life “aren’t illuminating, not only because it stands to reason that the writer took from his life, but because, like this entire affair, they’re made-up.”
McKellan and the Hamnet team will have to wait a few more weeks to see how the film fares at this year’s Oscars. The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Buckley for Best Actress.
The Academy Awards will air on March 15. They are hosted for a second consecutive time by comedian Conan O’Brien.
