The movie that left Jeremy Allen White an emotional wreck: “One of the saddest films”
Anyone who has seen The Bear knows that Jeremy Allen White is capable of going to incredibly dark, emotional places that are rarely seen on television, especially for a show that is classified in the ‘Best Comedy’ categories at award shows, and it may all be part of a great performance, but he also had a powerful experience in real life when he was promoting his latest film.
One of the joys of the film festival season is the ability for actors and creators to share in each other’s work, as it provides an opportunity to preview many of the year’s biggest releases, so while White may have showed up to the Telluride Film Festival to promote his performance in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, he also got a chance to check out one of the year’s top contenders for’ Best Picture’.
Telluride is an expensive film festival that is often only available to select critics and pundits who have the privilege of being sponsored to attend, but it’s also an unmissable opportunity to get a preview of which titles will end up contending for awards at the end of the year.
This year’s festival included many highly anticipated titles from notable directors, including Richard Linklater with Blue Moon, Yorgos Lanthimos with Bugonia, Noah Baumbach with Jay Kelly, Kelly Reichardt with The Mastermind, and Joaquim Trier with Sentimental Value, among others and it is in this starry list that Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, certainly benefiting from the buzz, ensured that White would be in the midst of a highly competitive ‘Best Actor’ race.
However, the breakout of the festival was the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Nomadland, Chole Zhao’s Hamnet, an adaptation of the acclaimed novel of the same name, which takes from the life of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, who are portrayed in the film by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, respectively, as they go through a major tragedy that tests the limits of their relationship.
It was after the tragic death of their youngest son, Hamnet, played by Jacobi Jupe, that the couple encountered the most challenging chapter of separation in their marriage, and this period of coping later served as inspiration for Shakespeare when writing Hamlet, which is largely considered to be one of his greatest tragic masterpieces.
Any film that deals with the death of a child is going to inherently have a strong emotional effect, but the delicate way that Zhao shows the tragedy left many audiences gasping and in tears, among whom was, as he said to BuzzFeed, that Hamnet was “one of the saddest films” that he’d ever seen.
Considering that the actor is himself a father, it’s easy to imagine why it would have had such a profound impact on him, and although the rules of award season may mean that Springsteen and Hamnet are locked in competition with one another, the two films are more similar than they may seem, as they both examine the ways in which artists channel personal feelings of anguish when conceiving their greatest work.
The former shows how Springsteen, during a period of severe mental health difficulties, was inspired by his own childhood to make the most singular album of his career, and watching both back-to-back would be a devastating, but ultimately rewarding experience.
