Chloé Zhao & Affonso Gonçalves On Editing The Play To “Weave Towards A Catharsis” For The Ending Of ‘Hamnet’

As the co-editors of Hamnet, Affonso Gonçalves and director Chloé Zhao say they found the ending of the film to be the most difficult to put together. Not necessarily just because they wanted an emotionally powerful ending, but also because Zhao decided to film much more of Hamlet than is shown on screen.

“The play was the hardest one to cut,” says Gonçalves.

“It’s about 35 to 40 minutes long in the first version and we shot Ophelia scenes… and all the scenes are full length, because you respect Shakespeare’s play,” says Zhao. “You let the whole thing play out, and then we had to really butcher Hamlet to try to cut it down.”

After filming so much of the actual play, the editing process of choosing what scenes were essential for the film was a difficult task. “It’s sort of a house of cards, because you take one thing out and all of a sudden the stuff around doesn’t work,” says Gonçalves. “We’d cut it out, and then we’d put a little bit back in and then we’d cut it out… so it was a dance of us putting stuff back, taking it out, till we found the right balance.”

The pair kept working on the play sequence until the last minute of post-production, wanting to make sure that every background layer flowed together. Zhao has previously said that rhythm is very important for her in the editing process, and that she was thrilled to find Gonçalves who could match her rhythm, so piecing together the play was a fun challenge.

“Until the last week of the mix, we were still cutting,” says Zhao. “We only built the first floor of the audience, and in the back is all visual effects, so we were waiting for the visual effects to see which angle to use. You have a lot of different layers going on – you have dialogue happening in the audience, you have Will behind the screen, you have Hamlet playing… so there’s like three things going on and you want them to all start to weave towards a catharsis.”