Hamnet

In 2020, Chloé Zhao joined the ranks of the few women to have ever won the Best Director Academy Award for her film Nomadland. This was closely followed by the underperforming The Eternals, what is widely considered the beginning of the end for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a fate the studio is desperately trying to avoid. While The Eternals is a competently made film, it doesn’t showcase Zhao much at all and is largely not her fault that it failed to ignite any excitement in the property. Hamnet is a return to the director’s chair for her for the first time since then and what a return that is.

Hamnet is a retelling of the inspiration for Hamlet, the play by William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). It covers the years of Shakespeare’s life from the time that he meets his wife, Anne Hathaway—known as Agnes in the film—(Jessie Buckley), to the release of his play Hamlet, examining his life with her, his children, and the tragedy that inspired him to write his famous tragedy. It is based on the 2020 novel of the same name written by Maggie O’Farrell and adapted by the author along with Zhao. 

This is, of course, a fictional account of the historical events. We know that Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway and had a son named Hamnet that died. The rest of the story, as told in this film, is largely a product of the author’s imagination. And what a vivid imagination it is. This is an imaginative retelling of the events that led up to the first showing of Hamlet on a stage in London. It is also poignant and beautiful, capturing the heartaches of being a parent and seeing one’s child grow deathly ill. 

It also paints an emotional examination into the relationships between Shakespeare and his wife, including what it was like having him travel so far away from his family for long periods of time while he wrote and directed his plays. In many ways, this film is a lot like another film up for Best Picture this year: Train Dreams. The key difference between these two is that Shakespeare doesn’t lose his wife, at least not in the same way as Robert does in that other film.

He loses her in another way, though, which can be equally as heartbreaking. Chloé Zhao makes sure that we get plenty of time watching this couple grow together, including seeing how each of the parents interacts with their children, especially Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and his twin sister Judith (Olivia Lynes). They have an older sister too, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), but little is done with her character in the context of the film; the focus is primarily on the twins. Judith was born stillborn, ready to be declared dead by her grandmother and their servant. But Agnes doesn’t give up on the little child and, like a miracle, she does starts to breathe after being held by her mother. 

This is not the only miracle we see in the picture, either. There is another, far more fantastical, one later on that cannot be so easily dismissed as Judith’s birth. When the twins are 11, Judith contracts the bubonic plague and falls gravely ill. Despite all her efforts, Agnes cannot seem to help her daughter get well and falls asleep at her daughter’s bedside, exhausted. Hamnet comes down to his sister’s side and climbs into bed beside her, awakening her. He comforts her and says he will lie between her and the angel of death so that he will be taken instead of her by mistake. The next morning, Judith is better and Hamnet, himself, is now near death. The young boy dies soon afterwards, before Shakespeare, who has gotten word of Judith’s dire condition, can arrive. When he does arrive, he sees his daughter and, relieved that she is alive, cries out in happiness and pulls her into his embrace, not aware as of yet that mere feet away is the body of his deceased son. 

Their grieving drives a wedge between the once happily married couple. She blames him for not being there when she needed him even though it was her idea to send him off to London to be a stage writer. He was unhappy staying in the countryside, doomed to a life of manual labor, and she couldn’t take the family to London because of a health condition her eldest daughter had. The solution was to send him to London, and he would come home as often as he could. She had his family to help her, though they were often at odds with her more unique views on nature, including her desire to birth her children in the forest. Susanna was born that way, but when the twins were coming, his mother prohibited it, forcing Agnes to give birth in the house.

A lot has already been said everywhere about Jessie Buckley. Quite simply, she is a revelation in this picture. It’s easy to look at the early scenes and dismiss what she is doing as nothing special. But then when we get to the point where Judith falls ill, we see the true level of talent on display, and we can see why Jessie was chosen for this role. It is truly impressive the depth of raw emotion she is able to reach as she first grows desperate to save her daughter, then has to shift gears when the illness passes from one twin to the other. There is genuine panic in this performance, followed by primal screams of agony when Hamnet has died. She is good in the earlier scenes, but she soars later on.

But there is even more to this performance than this one scene. Later, when we get to the finale, we see the whole array of her conflicting and confused emotions as she is watching her husband’s attempt to come to terms with the death of their son through his art. At first, she is unsure of what it is she is seeing—confused and angry—but then she starts to understand and to see in Hamlet the boy that she lost. Her final moment sees her reaching out to the actor, dressed up like an older version of her son. She reaches out onto the stage as though to comfort the dying character and those around her in the audience, also moved by the performance, join in on the gesture. She envisions Hamnet on the stage, a dream that he had in life, and sees him moving from sadness to a smile as he disappears into the theater. The last thing we see is Agnes laughing and smiling, something she hasn’t done since he died. All the while, her husband watches her from the wings.

Grief is such a tricky subject to get right in cinema. It can come across as artificial or generic or just plain overacted. So when we see it attacked from multiple angles and delving into the true complications of such a harsh and raw emotion, it is truly moving. As this film progressed into the final act and we get to see not only how Shakespeare was dealing with his loss but how it had affected his marriage, there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience and more than a few sniffles as people were overwhelmed with emotion. This is perhaps one of the best examples of a film wrenching from its audience an emotional response. It’s not superficial in any way and it reminds us that we all grieve in different ways and sometimes it takes a grand gesture to help someone else fully appreciate the depths of our own sorrow. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicholas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, and Sam Mendes

Best Director: Chloé Zhao

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell

Best Casting: Nina Gold

Best Costume Design: Malgosia Turzanska

Best Production Design: Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton

Best Original Score: Max Richter

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Release Date: November 26, 2025

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn

Directed by: Chloé Zhao