On Hamnet, Creation, and Humanity

Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao, 2025.

Last weekend, I went to watch Chloé Zhao’s new film, Hamnet. What touched me most was the relationship between writers—or perhaps more broadly, creators, artists, filmmakers—and the work they produce.

When I think about Shakespeare, I often find myself dehumanizing him. I think of him as this glamorous, monumental name—someone who produced plays that, hundreds of years later, people still praise, still feel moved by, still feel touched by. And I forget that he was, first of all, a man. He had a life. He, too, experienced love, loss, grief.

I know the film is an adaptation of historical fiction, but it kept making me think about how we, as artists, create. When we paint, when writers write, we inevitably enter the characters and the subject matters we choose to depict. Whether through lines or mark-making, color, composition—one way or another, we put ourselves into the work we produce.

It also made me step back and look at Chloé Zhao herself. I loved something she mentioned in a recent interview: “If a building doesn’t let you in, you go out and build your own.”

I think, as artists and as writers, this is deeply true. And it connects to something else the film made me think about: not being afraid to take on subject matter we are not familiar with. It reminds me of how Ang Lee, and Chloé Zhao as well, took on deeply rooted English-language literature and cultural histories, despite coming from Chinese-speaking cultures themselves, and did so beautifully.

It makes me believe that we shouldn’t be afraid of unfamiliar territory. Because at the core, the humanity we are trying to reach is universal.