Review

While many of William Shakespeare's plays have been preserved for posterity, not much is known about the man beyond a handful of biographical scraps. That vacuum has long invited authors and screenwriters to fill in the blanks. The most famous example remains 1998's Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, in which Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman conjured a romantic affair. In her 2020 novel, Maggie O'Farrell - credited here with a co-screenwriting credit - took the existing fragments of Shakespeare's life and built a broader, more somber narrative around them. Hamnet imagines how the death of Shakespeare's 11-year-old son may have shaped his future work, most notably Hamlet.

Although a generally well-made and affecting piece of period drama, Hamnet suffers from an uneven first half and a handful of magic-realism-tinged moments and dream sequences that don't really work as intended. While the metaphor of a dying figure seeming lost in an empty space might work on the written page, it's not nearly as successful in the more tangible medium of a motion picture. The film's final half hour, however, packs a punch, featuring lengthy passages from the play (including an excellent performance by Noah Jupe as Hamlet) and a tremendous, largely non-verbal turn by Jessie Buckley. This will almost certainly earn Buckley a deserved Oscar nomination, and it's here that director Chloé Zhao's skills are most forcefully in evidence.

The film opens around 1582 with an 18-year-old William (Paul Mescal) meeting the 26-year-old Agnes Hathaway (Buckley). Their attraction is immediate and they embark upon an illicit relationship that results in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. They are married in 1582 and their first child, Susanna, is born the following year. Twins, son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and daughter Judith, follow in 1585 with their arrivals being depicted in a fraught childbirth scene. (Incidentally, as we are told in the opening caption, the names "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" can be used interchangeably.) From there, the film glides through the next decade in a series of vignettes showing Shakespeare's rising fame while Agnes manages the household. When Hamnet dies at age 11 - likely from plague, as historians suggest - the family's internal landscape shifts, and the seeds of Hamlet begin to take root.

For much of its early running time, Hamnet resembles a traditional period-piece biopic, steadily sketching relationships and atmosphere. Because the film leans toward Agnes' viewpoint, her character feels richer and more grounded than Will's. Her grief is immediate and wrenching; his remains at a distance, even in the painful scene where he can no longer avoid it. The movie has its share of tear-jerking moments, but this one stands out.

The final quarter unfolds at the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's company performs Hamlet (circa 1600). These scenes - meticulously staged and engrossing - are among the film's finest. They offer a rare cinematic attempt to reconstruct how the play might have appeared to an Elizabethan audience. Zhao's decision to cast Noah Jupe, older brother of Jacobi Jupe, as Hamlet underlines the connection between the fictional prince and the lost child. The extended sequences, which continually return to Agnes watching from the pit among the groundlings, form the film's emotional crescendo and release.

Shakespeare scholars will likely find details to quibble over, but strict historical accuracy was never the film's mission. Instead, Hamnet plays like a 1990s-style arthouse drama - one made for viewers with a general knowledge of Shakespeare rather than academic expertise. The excerpts from Hamlet are smartly chosen for thematic resonance, though they don't stand in for a full staging. Anyone unfamiliar with the play may find the final act enigmatic, which raises the intriguing question of how a newcomer might interpret these scenes.

Hamnet ultimately feels like the sort of mid-budget literary drama that used to be commonplace from the late 1980s through the early 2000s but has since become rare. It proves a better fit for Zhao than the blockbuster ambitions of Eternals: the intimate scale and emotional concentration suit her strengths. And although the early going stutters in places, the film gathers itself with conviction, building to an ending that rewards the patient viewer.

© 2025 James Berardinelli

Synopsis

From Academy Award® winning writer/director Chloé Zhao, HAMNET tells the powerful love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Playing At

• Belcourt Theatre
  2102 Belcourt Avenue, Nashville, TN
• Regal Hollywood - Nashville
  719 Thompson Lane, Nashville, TN
• Regal Opry Mills
  570 Opry Mills Drive, Nashville, TN