Hamnet

The 2025 semi-biographical period drama, Hamnet, has all the components to be a slow, dull and audience-diverting feature which solely appeals to critics and Academy voters, yet things didn’t turn out like that. While clearly loved by critics, having the backing of Hollywood legends like Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, and being led by former Best Director Oscar-winner, Chloé Zhao, it felt like it was written in the pages for Hamnet to earn many accolades, with it receiving a total of eight nominations at the year’s Oscars (including Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, and Picture), but its reasonably solid audience scores and general acceptance among all viewers is a nice feather in its cap that proves it’s more than just high-class pandering.

While tutoring in order to work off his family’s debt, William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mascal) finds himself growing attracted to Agnes Hathaway (played by Jessie Buckley) after watching her practicing falconry in the surrounding woods. Although their parents disapprove of their engagement, the two get married and start a family, bearing three children, two of which are twins named Judith and Hamnet (played by Olivia Lynes and Jacobi Jupe) and Agnes is extra cautious of Judith given her druid heritage and abilities foretold she would only bear two children on her deathbed. While the children grow up happy and healthy while Shakespeare travels to London to work in theatre, the bubonic plague hit their home when Judith is stricken with the illness, yet unexpectedly, Hamnet is the one to sporadically die. Stricken with unimaginable grief, Agnes emotionally shuts herself off from her husband (who she has grown to resent for not being around when their son died), but upon learning that his latest play has clear allusion to his recently deceased son, the flood of emotions is finally laid out for the whole audience to see.

Distributed by Focus Features and Universal, Hamnet is extremely heartbreaking and runs with this downer attitude by adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 historical fiction novel with an appropriate level of authenticity and harsh reality, yet dabbles with enough fantastical atmosphere, dreamy imagery and aesthetic, and truly remarkable leading performances to combine into a very well-organized final product.

The original book of Hamnet which offered a heavily dramatized account on a particularly bleak period of William Shakespeare’s life, the choice to focus on the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, came from O’Farrell who was saddened to see how the boy was largely ignored within most historical accounts and biographies surrounding the playwright, and decided to immortalize him through a very fictionalized take on the events. Despite being one of the most well-known playwrights of all time, Shakespeare’s private life doesn’t have a lot of concert information surrounding it, which has allowed for a lot of speculation surrounding his relationship with his children and wife, Agnes Hathaway. This ambiguity limits the kind of cinematic biographies Hollywood can create, but it can allow for more speculative pictures that aren’t trying to painstakingly map out facts and events and rather invent what they can alongside what they actually know. The story of Hamnet contains a lot of semi-fantastical aspects and a neatly rounded story structure that feels too poetic to be entirely believable, but this blend of invention and raw realism makes it a very natural fit with director, Chloé Zhao, who showcased through her past work on critically acclaimed movies like Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, and Nomadland, an infinity for very naturalists stories that dabble in cinematic ingredients that can elevate the experience.

Hamnet has been very nicely adapted to the screen, with the script written by Zhao and O’Farrell having the same kind of low-key, in-the-moment feeling but with a succinct and very emotional atmosphere and mood that is pushed forward through the ambient production design, costume design and music, incredible performances who feel so natural and raw, and very tight and spiritual direction which feels so meticulously planned and executed that it seemingly captures everything it hoped to achieve when bringing this book to the big screen. It’s not a movie or story that has a lot of depth to its characters or even narrative, largely sidestepping the specific thought-process someone experience such unimaginable grief would be feeling and focuses rather on feeling the grief rather than experiencing it. This could feel strange and this isn’t a movie that’ll hit everybody the same way, but the grief is pungent throughout this feature, the trudge towards the inevitable is so nicely handled that it still hits despite the outcome being literally preordained, and the ending is such a perfect encapsulation of this film’s themes, personality and heart that it’s the pinnacle of an already very strong picture.

William Shakespeare is still considered to this day to be one of the greatest writers of the human race, and while his work has latest the test of time through multiple adaptation and readaptations which have granted them second life in a way not a lot of classic literature can say they’ve achieved, but his very illusive personal life makes him an enigma that’s not easy to properly work out. You can tell this by his fairly expected portrayal in this movie as a repressed creative who shows his passion and emotions through his work which can result in some distance in his home life, but while none of the roles on paper are necessarily deep from a writing or even emotional standpoint, the feelings they express are palpable thanks to the astonishingly strong performances on display in this film. Paul Mescal has continually showcased his abilities very naturally through his past work, and while not an actor who has a very strong persona or even much flexibility in terms of his parts, he brings a very vulnerable charm to this monolithic creative and clearly shows his theatrical background through how easily he performs these monologues. Emily Watson brings a sturdy commanding presence to her role as William’s mother, Joe Alwyn doesn’t have much of a role as Agnes’ brother but does well with what he has, Noah Jupe does a nice job acting out Hamlet during the final sections of the story, and Jacobi Jupe is very strong as the titular Hamnet, having to say pretty adult things and deal with some pretty harrowing situations and manages them very nicely.

While the whole ensemble is pretty strong despite most of the roles not being necessarily very deep, Jessie Buckley is by far and away the best part of this movie and does a fantastic job portraying a woman who doesn’t have a lot of history surrounding her but will now be vividly remembered just for how well she portrays her. For such a spunky and radiant personality, she captures the repressed contentment of a woman from that specific Tudor period very naturally but still manages to stand out through her specifically coloured attired and herbalist presentation and verbiage. Her pain is so raw and feels uncomfortably genuine, it’s no surprise she’s the runaway star of this movie and is getting the most attention.

16^th century England has been cinematically portrayed several times in the past, and it’s not hard to see why given the memorable iconography, architecture and costuming feels prime to bring liveliness and flavour to an otherwise barren-looking time period, and Hamnet presents these components in a believable way, but adds a cinematic flourish to liven things up even more. The production design by Fiona Crombie (who has worked on many movie set within or around this time period) and the costume design by Malgosia Turzanska) is detailed and decorated with enough clutter and muted colors to feel of the period, but the movie really comes to life whenever it takes place in the forest, as the lush greenery, open fields and incredibly earthy tones of color and ambient sounds add an almost otherworldly presence to the picture that adds to the slightly fanaticism. The cinematography by Łukasz Żal is expertly handled, and with Zhao helping to edit the film alongside Affonso Gonçalves, it means every angle, cut, and pan has meaning behind it and is executed in an incredibly seamless fashion.

The intimate, slightly shaky close-ups mixed with the wonderfully still shots that’ll occasionally feature a slow pan, forces you into the moment and makes you fully experience every sequence for how truly saddening and excruciating they can be. The sombre mood is further elevated by the musical score, with composer, Max Ritchie, providing a piece that has an elegant softness to it you’d imagine would pair well with a story about Shakespeare and the time period he lived in, but also has a evokes a sense of longing and tragedy that also perfectly matches the subject material and really knows how to pull at the heartstrings when needed (although a sudden silence can also be just as haunting).

Watching a film about the death of a kid is never an easy sell, and Hamnet is definitely much slower, atmosphere-focused, and straightforward than his literary and theatrical successor, but most will probably be able to understand why the film is presented as such and hopefully be able to take something meaningful out of it (and thereby fulfilling O’Farrell’s original intent). Hamnet isn’t a film -you leave feeling good or like you’ve experienced something life-changing, but it is capable of striking a cord with you if you’re willing to become engrossed by the ambient musical, striking visuals, impeccable direction by Chloé Zhao who’s on her way to becoming an extremely credible filmmaker, and emotionally powerful performances (especially from Jessie Buckley). May not strike as hard a cord as Hamlet, but a hypothetical that’s deserving of being what inspired him.