HAMNET, TRAIN DREAMS, and the Tragedy of Netflix
a stunning moment in Chloe Zhao's Hamnet *I don't spoil either film here besides the loose concept that sad things happen in both movies.* Tragedy in a film is something easily approached, but delicately, if not even precariously, executed. Tightrope walking upon the razor thin margin of error for a film to effectively employ a tragic turn of plot all too easily slides into melodrama at best and outright exploitation at worst. Some films and stories have handily approached this by leaning into the knee jerk reactions of its potential, like Titanic for example, a film which takes tragedy as the very focal point of its exploration. Others, like adaptations of Shakespeare, though he very well might have invented the western world's approach to dramatic tragedy, center the film around inherent flaws within its characters and thereby mine tragedy via humanistic study. One of the most difficult tricks to pull is to maintain both the weight of tragedy and a nuanced and grounded co...