“Hamnet” opens on Agnes (a primally explosive Jessie Buckley) waking at the foot of a massive tree in the depths of an old-growth forest. She (as was her mother before her) is treated as a Woods Witch, a blend of mysterious naturopath and rugged outdoorswoman, more comfortable as a quiet falconer than engaging in society. She meets William Shakespeare (a quietly devastating Paul Mescal), a below average Latin tutor, and they immediately, wildly, fall in love.
Agnes has visions of the future. One of which is that, by the time she is on her deathbed, she has two children. After giving birth to Susanna and then, years later, the twins Hamnet and Judith, she knows that having three children means tragedy will befall her family. What could have played as an overwrought historical drama focused on Agnes and William Shakespeare and their shared grief is instead a magically realist tone poem bolstered by two towering performances by Buckley and Mescal, served by tender and ethereal filmmaking by Chloé Zhao.
As someone who has read nearly every word penned by Shakespeare while still knowing next to nothing about the man, I found “Hamnet” to be a fascinating peek at the spirit of this legendary figure. While Agnes and her unrelenting bravery and bottomless wells of empathy are the soul of the film, Mescal’s Shakespeare is the quiet heart, beating only for his art and family. Even though Mescal imbues the Bard with a lived-in immediacy, he’s still somewhat a mystery existing on the fringes of his family’s life: off in London building a career as a celebrated playwright while his family lives free, running across the fields and forests of the countryside.
I haven’t read the novel “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao), but now I can’t wait to check it out. I would love to luxuriate in this world longer and explore in more depth the nuances of these characters that I’m sure only abstractly resemble their real-life counterparts. While on the surface, “Hamnet” is ostensibly a look at what motivated Will Shakespeare to write “Hamlet,” it works best as an examination of grief and how two very different people approach healing. I’m curious whether the book leans into the emotional or historical aspects more.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
– Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar“
It’s not really a spoiler to say that Hamnet dies of the plague, which absolutely shatters Agnes and pushes her into an almost feral mania, while it causes Shakespeare to retreat into his writing, penning “Hamlet” as a form of therapy. “Hamlet” as a play doesn’t initially seem like it would have any real relation to the sweet young boy (played by the preternaturally gifted Jacobi Jupe) who tragically dies before experiencing much of the life ahead of him. O’Farrell makes the connections beautifully with her script, but Zhao does something much more elemental by crafting a tone and mood that feels equal parts emotionally honest and magically surrealist. “Hamnet” as a film has no truck in literalism; instead would rather craft a sense of supernatural mysticism born from the ancient forests of the United Kingdom.
I wasn’t as emotionally shattered as I expected to be, but that might say more about me being dead inside than it does about the film not being resonant as a dramatic and heartbreaking work. What elevates “Hamnet” into something truly remarkable isn’t the script as much as it is the elegiac filmmaking from Zhao and the monumental performances of Mescal and Buckley. Their chemistry is animalistic and deliciously sexy, while their shared suffering never becomes histrionic like it easily could have been. Mescal has been a movie star for a minute, but Buckley has mostly been a brilliant character actor. Now she’s a full-blown force of nature. “Hamnet” will be the first of many Oscar nominations for her.
Regardless of your feelings for the work of Shakespeare or Elizabethan drama in particular, “Hamnet” almost defies categorization as a cinematic work. Equal parts powerfully dramatic and mercurially mystical, Zhao proves once again why she is an artist in rarified air as she crafts a film of such hypnotic force as to feel not just like an instant classic, but as a work that could be as timelessly eternal as Shakespeare’s best. Just don’t go into it expecting a biopic of Will Shakespeare. Instead, this is about the brilliant and enigmatic Agnes Shakespeare and her almost as interesting husband, Will.
“Hamnet”
Dir. Chloé Zhao
Grade: A
Now Playing at Regal Old Mill
This article appears in the Source December 18, 2025.
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