Chloé Zhao’s deeply felt, yet restrained new film, Hamnet, is the kind of cinematic experience that sneaks up on you. You know the kind: it’s subtle at first, then keeps pecking and poking at you like an unshakable memory that leaves you teary-eyed in the grocery store.
Working from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 award-winning novel (with O’Farrell co-adapting the screenplay), Zhao’s film is part elegy, part love story, and entirely her own brand of magic. And with a cast this good, featuring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, and Emily Watson, it’s almost unfair to all other films that have taken on the same subject matter.
Hamnet tells the powerful, aching story of the love, loss, and hidden emotional currents that helped inspire Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Set in late-16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon, the film follows Agnes (Buckley), a falconer and healer with a foot in the mystical realm; her husband William (Mescal), a man on the cusp of literary immortality; and Mary (Watson), his quietly formidable mother.
When illness strikes their young son Hamnet (an opening title card points out that there is no acknowledged difference between the names Hamlet and Hamnet), the family is torn open, revealing the fragile threads that bind the family together. It’s a story of heartbreak, resilience, and the beauty found in the wreckage of grief. But more importantly, it’s the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s highly influential tragedy, Hamlet.
Zhao brings to Hamnet what she brought to Nomadland: her signature ability to make landscapes feel like emotional extensions of her characters. Her mise-en-scène, brought to life by Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal is stunning — earthy, windswept, and textured, as if the surrounding air carries centuries of untold stories. This is a film where dimly candlelit kitchens hum with life, orchards feel haunted by love, and every wide shot could double as a painting your aunt would buy at any art fair but insist is “actually quite valuable.”
Jessie Buckley, unsurprisingly, delivers the kind of performance that makes other actors question their career choices. As Agnes, she is fierce, sublime, and enigmatic, while remaining grounded. She brings the power of motherly love that moves beneath the surface; never showy, but always true. She doesn’t just rise to the top; she practically levitates. If awards bodies have any integrity left, her name will be atop every list come award season’s end.
Though very little is actually known about Shakespeare’s life, Paul Mescal, plays a young William with a lived-in charisma that sidesteps the Bard’s usual stiff-collared admiration. By the way, what are those pleated-collar thingies called? His William is both tender and imperfect. Someone who writes not because he’s gifted but because it is who he is.
Emily Watson, as Mary, guides the film’s emotional narrative with a performance so quietly commanding you may not realize how good she is until the credits roll and you’re still thinking about her in the grocery store.
Not completely perfect with a lengthy runtime and a few sloggy threads, what makes Hamnet so darn affecting is its emotional precision. Zhao and O’Farrell depict the tragedy of loss, the beauty in love, and the heartbreak of death with a clarity and compassion we’ve all experienced. The film feels deeply human, but also, slightly enchanted—like the ethereal world Agnes inhabits. Fortunately, it never sinks into the kitchy historical melodrama that torpedoed Shakespeare in Love (yes, we said it), and it is far superior to 2018’s All is True, a slogfest that history should politely pretend didn’t happen.
Instead, Hamnet is rich, piercing, and unexpectedly modern. It’s a story about what we make of love after it shatters, and how grief can transform into art; sometimes world-changing art. Above all, it’s a reminder that behind every masterpiece is a human heart, beating or broken. And Zhao makes sure we feel every beat.
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 125 mins
Director: Chloe Zhao
Writer: Chloe Zhao; Maggie O'Farell
Cast: Jessie Buckley; Paul Mescal; Zac Wishart
Genre: Period Drama
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "To be, or not to be. that is the question."
Distributor: Focus Features
Official Site:
Release Date: December 5, 2025
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss.
