Hamnet
Director: Chloé Zhao
Writer: Chloé Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell
Based on: O’Farrell’s novel
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lynes, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, David Wilmot, Noah Jupe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach
Seen on: 24.1.2026

Content Note: child death

Plot:
Agnes (Jessie Buckley) has a reputation as a wild woman, possibly a witch, definitely a healer. Will (Paul Mescal) is immediately intrigued by her. They pursue their relationship despite their families’ concerns, and when Agnes becomes pregnant, they use it to force everybody’s hands to get married. More children follow, but Will turns his eye towards London and the world of theater there. When the plague strikes, the Shakespeare family doesn’t stay unaffected, though, despite Agnes’ healing abilities.

Hamnet is a beautiful film with great performances. It does have a couple of lengths, I thought, and I can’t take the story seriously from a historical/literary perspective, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t get caught up in it emotionally.

I loved that with Hamnet, we got a story about William Shakespeare that isn’t all that much about him. This is much more about Agnes. When it does touch on Will, it is on a much more personal level than the mythology that has developed around him as a playwright. This perspective shift seems somewhat overdue, and I definitely appreciate it.

That being said, we know little about the Shakespeare family, making it a good playground for fantasies, and for me, this particular fantasy – that William wrote the play Hamlet to express his grief for his son – doesn’t work for me at all. The movie managed to cherrypick moments and lines in a way that it still works on an emotional level, catharsis-wise, but it doesn’t really make sense when you think of the play as a whole or the fact that William is seen to portray the ghost. Also, the great moment where everybody in the audience reaches for Hamlet on stage (Noah Jupe, Hamnet actor Jacobi Jupe’s brother in a stroke of casting genius) overdid things for me. (On a similar note of fantasy: we get a birth scene without a drop blood which is absolutely weird.)

But watching Agnes, wonderfully portrayed by Buckley, stand her ground and make her way through the world, that worked very well for me. There were so many nice touches in her characterization and in her relationships – from the way she comes to an agreement with Will’s mother (Emily Watson) to the way she clearly understands Will and makes her decisions with seeing eyes – it was just great to get to know her. And cinematographer Lukasz Zal captures it all very aesthetically.

Zhao brings out the best in her actors, so even the scenes we know are coming – like Hamnet’s death – hit hard emotionally, especially when you’re a parent. There were moments where the film dragged a little, but they always got the emotional momentum back in the end, making the film definitely worth seeing.

Summarizing: beautiful.