The importance of grief in film

We will never be able to outrun grief; it will find us at every corner of life. But there is comfort in knowing that the one lost was loved, that you had the ability to love because you feel this grief so deeply. This justification of grief in the media is so important to the human psyche. 

The art of cinema is important in providing moments that we can lose ourselves to our emotions. There are pieces of art that we can immerse ourselves in and allow emotions to take over, feeling every ounce of grief that our daily lives just do not allow. This is how we begin to heal, by letting ourselves feel every emotion and understanding it. Film is such an important way of trying to visualise such feelings that are incapable of being able to be fully described. They are ways of healing and growing parts of ourselves that we are unable to fully touch.

Reading and consuming literature is vital to human development and emotional growth, but the power of consuming media visually is equally as important. Films are not a substitute for books but are a method of allowing audiences to connect on a deeper level because you are confronted by the human qualities of the actors. This is why the portrayal of grief in film is so incredibly important, because without it, there would be no cathartic release like it. 

In Ancient Greece when audiences sat down in the amphitheatre and mourned alongside the characters on the stage; in Elizabethan England when audiences cried out for the tragic hero; in modern day where audiences are still finding connections to the characters on screen. It is this humanity that we ingest as we consume the artwork of film. 

After a recent trip to see the Golden Globe winning film, Hamnet, based on the book by Maggie O’Farrell, the relevance of portraying grief in film was again brought to my attention. After I left the cinema, surrounded by crying members of the public, I remembered my own grief and how the film had a way of touching the parts of the soul that I had barely begun to acknowledge. This is mirrored on social media, with many people on TikTok providing videos of their own tears after the film, sharing the ways it touched them as well. Humanity has been using entertainment as methods of catharsis since the Ancient Greeks and beyond; cinema is no different and Hamnet acts as the perfect way of allowing audiences to reach into parts of themselves and process all the emotions that come with being human. 

Chloé Zhao directed a vivid, engaging masterpiece that uses natural imagery to ground these feelings in the incessant understanding that to have these emotions is natural and human. The cyclical feeling that comes with the natural world is built upon to create the understanding that life on Earth is cyclical, we return to where we came from, the earth itself. This is further indicated by the birth scene in the woods and Agnes’ desire to give birth to the twins in the woods. There is a profound understanding here that human life is forged in the nature around us.

Modern adaptations of texts not written in this century are so incredibly important now that generations are beginning to lose the ability to willfully engage with such texts. Hamnet is such an adaptation, looking at potential inspiration for Hamlet and engaging with it in such a powerful way that brings grief to the forefront of our minds. Hamlet was allegedly created by Shakespeare out of grief for his son, Hamnet, who died at just eleven years old. It could have been created in order to immortalise his son in the memory of others even if they did not know it. By transforming the story and backstory, O’Farrell and Zhao both further immortalise Shakespeare’s son, allowing a whole new generation to remember not just Hamnet but the power of grief in creating art.

Such adaptations are also vital in allowing the modern audiences to engage themselves with the source material. I left the cinema with the deep-rooted need to reread Hamlet and fall in love with it over again. I like to hope that many people previously unfamiliar with the original text felt a strong urge to go and pick up Shakespeare, or find a recorded performance online, and get lost in the world that Shakespeare creates. 

Hamnet is such an important film in it's portrayal of grief because it gathers the raw emotion that comes with losing a child, a sibling, someone you care about, and examines it in such a heartbreaking way. It tells you that you are not alone in this grief, and as everyone reaches towards Hamlet at the end of the film, it shows unity amongst humanity even in the face of death. Zhao just does a wonderful job at showing the power of grief and how it is simply just “love persevering”. Throughout history, then, this portrayal of grief in the storytelling humanity has consumed is vital in reflecting our own emotions and our own pain. It is a way of legitimising our feelings and providing a therapeutic expertise in which we are able to let our guard down and feel everything.