Interview: Cinematographer Łukasz Żal on Creating Death’s Point of View and the Magical Realism of ‘Hamnet’
When I learned that Łukasz Żal was the cinematographer for Chloé Zhao’s latest film, Hamnet, I was immediately intrigued. Known for his striking black-and-white photography in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida and Cold War, and for his chilling depiction of Nazi life in Jonathan Glazer’s masterpiece The Zone of Interest, Żal felt like an exciting, out-of-the-box choice for this project. The beauty of Hamnet’s source material, Maggie O’Farrell’s emotionally rich novel, lies in how internal the language feels and how it immerses the reader in the hearts and minds of its characters while maintaining a distinct third-person point of view. It would be a tremendous challenge to conjure up that feeling in a cinematic format.
After watching Hamnet at The Telluride Film Festival, I was immediately struck by Żal’s work and approach to this material. For a film filled with so many heavy, emotional moments, his artistic choices are completely unexpected. Yet it is in these decisions that Hamnet succeeds not only in accessing the novel’s emotions but also in creating a vivid reimagining of how some of history’s most notable figures loved and grieved. Instead of mirroring what audiences might expect from family dramas or stories of grief (extensive close-ups), Żal frames the family with an observational quality, just as history would have, his work often evoking 16th- and 17th-century British still life paintings and portraiture. On the surface, that style feels akin to Żal’s early documentary work, but on a deeper level, it sets that historical stage for Zhao and her actors to bring the world to life, while also connecting to the novel’s magical realism. Our characters and the people within those paintings had rich, emotionally turbulent lives outside of the frame, and Żal and Zhao understand that.
In speaking with Żal about his work on Hamnet, I was thrilled to learn more about his connection to the novel and how he visualized bringing specific scenes to life. We also spoke at length about how he envisioned the differences between Will and Agnes and a few of the moments in the film that have lingered in my mind for months.
Sophia Ciminello: Hi Łukasz. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. I just saw Hamnet again and have so much I want to dig into with you.
Łukasz Żal: Oh, it’s a pleasure.
SC: When did you and Chloe first meet, and how did you end up getting involved in the project?
ŁŻ: I was first called by my agent and told that Chloe would love to meet me, and I thought, Oh, it’s going to be a general meeting. I was flying for a holiday with my son, and I made a stopover in London, so we had a meeting. And then in this meeting, she just told me about the book, Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet.” She just basically told me about the story and what is important to her, and what she would love to do. And then she just asked me if I would love to make this film. Then we had a conversation about life, death, nature, masculinity, femininity, how we meet each other, and, you know, how different we are. Then she told me the story, which is in the book. And then, yeah, basically, you know, for me it was, “to be or not to be.” (Laughs).
SC: (Laughs) To be or not to be…it keeps coming back.
ŁŻ: Yeah, and then I bought the book on the way to the airport, and I started to read it on the plane. I couldn’t stop reading. I was just reading the whole trip to Fuerteventura, to the Canary Islands. Then, when I landed, I realized I had finished the book in just one breath. I didn’t have any doubts, you know? I think those things are so close to me and what the film is about. It’s a meditation about life, and it’s about love and death and grief, universal things about human beings. I just wanted to do that.
SC: The book really does have that effect of hooking you with its imagery and the play with the language. When you were reading it, did you start to visualize specific scenes or images and think about how you’d like to bring them into the film? Did that happen for you as early as the reading process?
ŁŻ: Oh, yes, yes. And I even still remember the scene when Hamnet is running in the house, and he’s looking for Judith and finding out she’s sick and that something is wrong with her. In the book, it’s a bit different because it’s very long. You know, just the description of how he is just running in the house and passing different rooms and going upstairs. It’s a bit longer. So, I really remember when I was reading this, that I was thinking about how I would really shoot this and how I would like to show this. Because the thing was that in the book, there is a narrator, really an all-knowing narrator. We are changing point of view, but it’s often this narrator looking through somebody’s eyes and looking for somebody’s emotion. And I remember when I was reading the book, I was really thinking, “How am I able to do that?” How do you do that, where you can really feel like you are there and that you can really be with this person? But you’re also looking at this person through somebody’s perspective who knows how this person feels, but also knows much more than this person, like an all-knowing narrator. So, that was kind of a task for me.
And, of course, when I read, I try to imagine those scenes. Especially because you are reading emotions. Somebody is noticing something like, you know, Agnes at a certain point, she can smell Will. It’s like something is rotting or sour. And then she sees that he’s a bit tired, he doesn’t look good, he’s a bit depressed. And you know, how are you able to really photograph somebody’s depression? How do you photograph somebody’s really bad feeling, where you know they’re looking at another person and really see that something is wrong with that person? Whenever I read books, but really with this one that I knew we were going to shoot, I imagine and really see images. And with this one especially, I was trying to see images, because, you know, the book was full of descriptions of emotions. And of course, there are actors, but when I read the book, I really just thought about what I could do and what I could transfer with my cinematography. The actors will do their job, but I just really consider myself as somebody who really has to transfer this through the camera.
SC: And this movie is so unique in that transfer of emotion, too, so how do you begin to translate that through the camera?
ŁŻ: Yeah, I think about what I can do with a frame, with a movement, with a light, and lens choice. How can I use all of those things and all of those ways of imagining to transfer how a character really feels? It’s not only about registering something, but always trying to capture something. Chloe was always saying that. And I think that was the most important thing, to really capture this presence, to capture the truth that something is happening. There are emotions coming from Jessie and Paul, and, you know, all of the actors, but then there was the way to do that. It was the time of day we chose, if there was wind, light, or movement. I try to imagine what I can. And I have to tell you that a big part of the film is different from what I imagined the first time, which is great, because that’s the process.
SC: One of the big differences from the book is how much Will is incorporated. What stood out to me right away was how you contrasted Will and Agnes with color, right?
ŁŻ: Yeah, exactly.
SC: We see her curled up in a fetal position at the base of that tree, and the frame is filled with red and green. And then when we see Will in the classroom, it’s very stark and bright with the natural light coming in. He’s always in blues or grays. Did you use different lenses with the two of them?
ŁŻ: Yeah, you’re right. With Will, we were always using longer lenses, because he was always put in a structure. We thought about the kind of divisions or the place where he’s teaching, or the house of his parents. You can feel that he’s stuck in his head and his thoughts. There is so much happening in his head. We were always trying to put him into frames that are a bit suffocating. The light is coming in from the outside. You can see that there is a world outside, and there are little windows where there’s not much light coming through. And then he’s a bit close with his traumas, his thoughts, his limitations, all of his fears.
And yeah, Agnes is in the forest. She’s in nature, which is very chaotic and very unlimited. You know, not unlimited, but…
SC: Yeah, you feel that it’s infinite.
ŁŻ: (Laughs) Yes, infinite, that’s the word. It’s so we can feel that she is in a place that is a part of a bigger whole. There’s always breath, there’s always more space, movement. He’s thinking, and she’s more present. That was really important to distinguish and to create those colors for her. Everything is more rich where she is because she’s more free. I mean, of course, she’s not a free spirit because she’s also carrying her own backpack of experience, which isn’t easy, but with where she is and how she feels, she’s more free. She’s in a place where there are structures, but everything in the forest is a bit of a living organism. There are veins and all of those cables of tree branches. Because of this, we changed the format of the film. At the beginning, we thought about 4:3. I love that format, and we thought it would be great for this film, but at a certain point, we decided it wouldn’t work so well for her and the forest. I decided that we needed to feel more space. So the lenses had to be wider. We can be far away and be wide. He is always going to be stuck in this box, you know, the box of his head. Even his room where he’s living in London, it’s like a little box. It’s completely different than where she feels at home in the forest. The forest is her home.
SC: Her connection to nature is one of my favorite things about the film, and the sound design is a big part of that too. I know you and Johnnie Burn worked together previously on The Zone of Interest. Did you find any similarities between how you worked on that film and Hamnet? They’re obviously very different, but they have a few similar touches.
ŁŻ: Oh yeah, yeah. I think a similar thing is how we built everything. I remember when I understood just before shooting that the sound design would be so crucial to really let you know that we are really finding those fragments of reality. And then we will just build this world from a mosaic of different images. But then, having his sound design, you can really imagine what is beyond the frame. All of this space, which is just beyond the frame is so important. It’ll be as important as the space that is in the frame. And that’s a very similar approach that we used on this and The Zone of Interest. The sound design can be different, or it can add something that will complete what is already in the frame. And I think how Johnnie does his sound design is amazing because really, you don’t have to show everything. And I think I love that you can really allow the viewer to imagine what is there while just showing a little piece of reality. You can speak to the bigger whole. He creates a space that’s much bigger than the frame we have.
SC: One of the moments that made me think of your work on that film, too, is in the scene when death comes for Judith and Hamnet, and we see Hamnet make eye contact with the camera. How did you conceive of that shot where your camera is death personified?
ŁŻ: Yeah, it’s just like we were talking about at the beginning. It was so important that this book was told through a narrator who is an all-knowing narrator, but I think this could also be considered as death. We had a few different cameras on set. We created a decalogue with our cameras, and one of them was like a character. We wanted a camera that was basically a point-of-view character, who is influenced by the emotions of our characters. Some images were just tableaux, but that was also how we were building this world; we were showing and creating. But also, one camera was a CCTV camera, and it was our death point-of-view camera.
SC: Oh, wow.
LZ: It was so important that it was a bit like a rhythm in this film. Death is watching us, and you know that life is happening, you know, we love each other, we argue, we fight, we have problems, we are struggling, but then we are jumping out, and something is looking at us from a distance. The aim for that was to really show that nothing is given. Nothing is given forever, and death is watching us all the time. When death is going to choose us, that can happen at every moment. We were building this throughout the entire film. And then that was the moment when Hamnet looked at the camera and, you can read this as, he looked at death. That was the moment that death had chosen him, but death had also found him a bit earlier. There is a moment when the camera is drifting, and then it just stops. Sometimes we had the camera moving slowly and it was like a ghost. The camera is drifting, drifting, drifting, making its own decisions and then stopping somewhere. That was exactly the moment when it stopped and chose Hamnet.
SC: That gives it a kind of folk horror quality that I love.
ŁŻ: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SC: But then, when Hamnet has died, we have so many sad, beautiful shots of him where he’s separated by a veil. How did you create that?
ŁŻ: Oh yes, that’s the canvas that’s the backdrop at The Globe Theater. It was a painted canvas with the trees. And you know, when we looked at this from behind, it gave us this, I don’t know, dreamy, afterlife feeling of looking through something. We were just shooting. It’s interesting how this happened because our still photographer, Agata Grzybowska, just took this picture. I looked at it and said, “Wow, that’s amazing.” We were so prepared with the way we were shooting, but some new ideas were just coming through the process. You’re on set and you have your crew, your actors, and then beautiful things happen just when you’re not expecting them. That was the beauty of shooting this film. We had time where we could allow ourselves a bit of improvising. It was a very important role that we were going to create and build this world, and then move in a bit of a documentary manner within that prepared world. And that was a very good example of, you know, being there and thinking of how we were going to shoot him. And then I saw Agata’s picture and I thought, wow, that’s amazing. Let’s do that. It’s a big group effort. We were like a village, a team. The cinematography is not only me. It’s also my camera operator and my team and together, we’re creating these things often.
SC: I also have to ask you about the moment when we see the final, unknowing goodbye between Will and Hamnet. You show how that structure forms this corner and they’re on opposite sides. We can see them, but they can’t see each other. How did you create that?
ŁŻ: Yeah, exactly. We also had that camera up high in the corner. We didn’t expect that we would be using as many high angles at the beginning. But at a certain point, we decided, “Wow, that’s amazing. That works.” So, we decided to use that as one of our ways of storytelling. I think that was in the script and was Chloe’s idea from the beginning, where they were doing that walk away from each other. And then we decided that, you know, we can really see this from the CCTV camera, so we wanted to use that.
SC: And just to wrap up, you and Chloé do such a fantastic job of showing us just how powerful it must have been for people in the 16th century to witness live theatre. Is there anything you’ve seen recently, a film, a play, any work of art, that has knocked you out in a similar way?
ŁŻ: That’s great. I think lately, you know, I just finished a film, so I’m just now starting to fill up. I’m going to have a few months consuming the art now that I’m not working. But I was just watching a few films lately, and what I really loved was One Battle After Another.
SC: It’s wonderful.
ŁŻ: Yeah, I really enjoyed it and I think it’s really deep. It’s so funny. On many levels, that’s great cinema. I also thought Sirāt was really interesting. That was really good. I still need to see Bugonia. I also liked Train Dreams. But now I think I’m also going to play my Criterion Channel and go back a bit into the past, because that has really inspired me. But, yeah, One Battle After Another is a really great film.
SC: Thank you so much, Łukasz. Congratulations again, and best of luck this season with this beautiful movie.
ŁŻ: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
Hamnet is currently in U.S. theaters from Focus Features and will be in the UK and Europe via Universal Pictures in January.
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