Hamnet – Film Review

In Hamnet, Chloé Zhao returns to the intimate, quietly spiritual storytelling that first defined her career, but this time she sets her gaze on one of literature’s most mythic figures: William Shakespeare. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed 2020 novel and co-written by O’Farrell herself, Zhao’s film is not a biopic in the traditional sense. Rather, it’s a lyrical, deeply felt portrait of marriage, mourning, and the invisible currents of love and pain that shape artistic genius. With mesmerizing performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, Hamnet emerges as a visually rapturous and emotionally grounded work—an elegy that moves like a whispered confession across centuries.

The film begins not in the bustling theatres of London, but in the pastoral stillness of Stratford-upon-Avon. Zhao’s camera glides through fields, cottages, and candlelit rooms with the grace of memory itself, finding beauty in the mundane—flour-dusted hands, the scraping of quills, the hum of domestic life. It’s here that we meet Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), a healer and herbalist whose quiet intensity immediately sets her apart from her peers. Paul Mescal’s William is introduced as a restless tutor, ambitious yet uncertain, already dreaming of words that might outlast him.

Zhao and O’Farrell structure Hamnet less as a linear narrative than as a collection of moments—fragments of a shared life assembled into something resembling memory. The early scenes between Agnes and William pulse with sensual energy; their romance unfolds through small gestures and stolen glances rather than overt declarations. Buckley and Mescal, both gifted with the ability to convey oceans through silence, make this relationship feel lived-in and tactile. When they marry and start a family, Zhao captures the rhythms of early domesticity with the same awe she once reserved for the vast plains of the American West in Nomadland.

Zhao stages the film’s central tragedy with devastating restraint. There are no melodramatic breakdowns, no soaring strings—only stillness, the sound of wind through a half-open window, and the unbearable quiet of a mother’s grief. Buckley’s performance in these sequences is astonishing. She channels Agnes’s anguish into a raw, elemental force; her every breath and movement feels charged with loss.

Mescal, by contrast, retreats inward. His William becomes increasingly absent, first emotionally and then physically, as he throws himself into his work in London. The rift between husband and wife becomes a chasm, filled with unspoken blame and guilt. Zhao’s use of light during these scenes—sunlight fractured by dust, moonlight spilling across an empty bed—transforms grief into a visual language. The cinematography by Łukasz Żal lends each frame the feeling of a faded painting, something both real and ghostly.

What elevates Hamnet beyond its historical setting is its universality. The film is not about Shakespeare’s greatness but about how great art often emerges from devastating personal loss. Zhao resists romanticizing this idea; she shows how creation can be both redemptive and cruel, a means of escape that leaves others behind. When William finally channels his grief into the writing of Hamlet, the moment arrives not with triumph but with melancholy recognition. The act of naming—of turning “Hamnet” into “Hamlet”—becomes both a memorial and a betrayal.

Zhao has always been a filmmaker drawn to the spiritual dimensions of ordinary life, and Hamnet continues that fascination. Agnes’s connection to nature and the unseen world gives the film an almost mystical undercurrent. Zhao visualizes Agnes’s healing rituals with an ethereal tenderness, blurring the line between superstition and spiritual truth. Buckley imbues Agnes with a grounded mysticism—she is neither saint nor sorceress but a woman deeply attuned to the cycles of life and death.

This tension between the earthly and the divine also defines Zhao’s direction. She juxtaposes tactile realism—the texture of linen, the dirt under fingernails—with moments of transcendence, such as Agnes sensing her son’s spirit in the trees or William staring at a candle flame as if seeking meaning beyond it. The effect recalls Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, yet Zhao’s touch is gentler, her philosophy more humanist.

Emily Watson brings quiet dignity to the role of Mary Shakespeare, William’s mother, whose sternness hides her own unspoken grief, while Joe Alwyn offers subtle warmth as Agnes’s brother Bartholomew. Their supporting performances flesh out a world where love is expressed through work, silence, and duty. David Wilmot’s John Shakespeare, meanwhile, stands as a haunting symbol of the patriarchy William must navigate—a man whose failures echo through his son’s art.

While Hamnet bears Zhao’s unmistakable signature—the natural light, the immersive realism, the emotional patience—it also marks a significant evolution in her filmmaking. This is her most structured and literary work, a film that balances her documentarian instincts with the demands of period drama. She uses dialogue sparingly, letting images and gestures carry the narrative weight. Every frame feels hand-crafted, suffused with empathy and quiet observation.

Where Zhao’s The Rider and Nomadland explored modern nomads seeking meaning in wide-open landscapes, Hamnet confines its characters to the intimacy of home. Yet the themes remain the same: how people endure grief, how they find belonging in impermanence, how they make art from what’s been taken from them. The contrast between William’s London stage and Agnes’s rural solitude serves as the film’s emotional axis—public creation versus private mourning, permanence versus transience.

Zhao’s editing, done in collaboration with Affonso Gonçalves, gives the film a rhythmic, almost meditative flow. Time shifts like memory; one moment we’re in the lush days of courtship, the next in the quiet aftermath of loss. This elliptical structure might challenge viewers expecting conventional storytelling, but for those willing to surrender to its rhythm, the payoff is profound.

Jessie Buckley delivers one of her finest performances to date. She captures Agnes’s complexity—her spiritual intuition, her maternal ferocity, her deep capacity for forgiveness—with remarkable subtlety. It’s a role that demands both emotional transparency and restraint, and Buckley finds the balance effortlessly. Mescal, meanwhile, brings depth to Shakespeare that defies cliché. His portrayal avoids reverence; he’s neither saint nor genius but a flawed, deeply human man haunted by his own limitations.

Together, Buckley and Mescal create a portrait of love that feels both timeless and painfully real. Their chemistry is tender yet volatile, their shared silences more revealing than any soliloquy. By the time the film reaches its quietly devastating conclusion, their connection feels less like history and more like something eternal—two souls bound by loss and legacy.

Hamnet is not a grand historical epic but a whispered meditation on the spaces between people, on how memory and imagination can bridge—or fail to bridge—those distances. Zhao transforms what could have been a simple story of tragedy into something transcendent: a study of how love lingers even after words fail. The film’s final moments, in which Agnes attends a performance of Hamlet and finally understands the shape of her husband’s grief, are among the most quietly shattering of Zhao’s career.

If Hamnet occasionally drifts into languor or overindulgence—particularly in its middle act—it does so in service of its mood, not at the expense of it. Zhao’s patience rewards viewers with a cumulative emotional power that lingers long after the credits roll.

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is a luminous, deeply compassionate exploration of love, art, and mourning. It reimagines Shakespeare not as the center of his story, but as one half of a partnership forever altered by loss. Through stunning performances, painterly visuals, and an exquisite script, Zhao crafts a film that feels both ancient and modern, rooted in history yet speaking to something eternal in the human spirit.

Hamnet is a haunting and poetic film—an elegy not only for a lost child but for the fragile, enduring act of creation itself.