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Chloé Zhao’s award-winning film Hamnet opens with a view from above, gazing down on two towering trees whose girth and mossy roots announce their antiquity. The camera slowly descends like a falling leaf into the realm of “earthly things” (As You Like It, 5.4.113). It is a lurch of perspective. Unlike these majestic trees, whose lives span centuries and whose height denotes an other-worldly status, we humans are bound by our relatively brief lives. Positioned alongside these