Movie Review - Hamnet

Director: Chloé Zhao
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 125 minutes
Year: 2025
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe
 
Description: In late 16^th-century England, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), a healer sensitive to the world around her, builds a home with William (Paul Mescal), a local tudor and aspiring playwright. As their lives fracture, they are tested by distance, silence, and grief.
 
Review: The film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel “Hamnet” by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao is a rare example of an adaptation that not only understands the soul of the source material but also amplifies it. It is a visually stunning and emotionally devastating portrait of grief, love, and the transcendent power of art.

Although Paul Mescal portrays a fragile yet powerful William Shakespeare (never named until the very end), this is unmistakably Jessie Buckley’s film. As Agnes, she is the emotional anchor; a woman with a powerful connection to nature. Zhao wisely chooses not to show the rise of the famous playwright in London, but to focus on the raw reality of family life in Stratford. The chemistry between Buckley and Mescal is palpable and makes the impending tragedy all the more painful.

The cinematography by Łukasz Żal is nothing short of sublime. He captures the English countryside in 1596 with a sensory richness that immediately transport the viewer into the mud and sunlight of the Elizabethan era. The scenes in which the plague slowly creeps into the household are portrayed with a suffocating tension. Max Richters’s music enhances the melancholic atmosphere.

The absolute highlight is the finale, in which the film shows an indescribably personal loss – the death of eleven-year-old Hamnet – is transformed into the universal masterpiece Hamlet. Zhao succeeds in giving familiar monologues from the play a new, deeply moving meaning that will bring even the most stoic viewers to tears.

“Hamnet” is a tearjerker of the highest order, but its more than that. It’s a story of loss and the aftermath of this, how people grief differently. The narrative structure of the middle section is somewhat uneven, but the emotional impact of the final scene more than makes up for it. I have only just read the book (which I gave a 5-star rating) and it always makes me happy to see a director succeeding into translating it to film. Beautiful film and a well-deserved Academy Award for Jessie Buckley.

Rating: 4,5/ 5