All Agnes Wants is the Green of a Forest: The Dialectics of Interconnectedness and Grief in Hamnet

Treating novel and film as thesis and antithesis, this chapter draws out ideas about breath in the novel and explores their transfer to the screen. It therefore seeks evidence of synthesis in how Zhao elicits meaning from camera movement and editing, choral music and breathing sounds, and a juxtaposition of close-ups with deep-focus wide and long shots that both simulates and stimulates breathing. Consequently, this analysis reinforces the theme of interconnectedness by consideration of the adaptation process as an exchange of energy between the novel and the film, by tracking descriptions of breathing in the novel and following this by analysing corresponding scenes in the film. Finally, this chapter explores how the link between ancient Daoist traditions of meditation and universal experiences of grief provides evidence of Zhao as an atemporal, transnational, peripatetic filmmaker.