Congrats to Jessie Buckley on her triumph at the 98th Academy Awards. The Hamnet (2025) star is the first Irish-born woman to win in the Best Actress category and only the third Irish-born performer to receive an Oscar for acting. She follows Best Actor Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer (2024) and Best Supporting Actress Brenda Fricker for My Left Foot (1989).
Director Chloé Zhao worked with author Maggie O’Farrell to bring her novel Hamnet (2020) to the big screen. Within the historical drama, the Women’s Prize for Fiction recipient claims a personal loss inspired William Shakespeare to pen the most performed tragedy in the English language. The problem with this premise is the Bard’s Hamlet (1599) is likely taken from Thomas Kyd’s Ur-Hamlet (1589) which is based on an ancient Scandinavian legend.
Nevertheless, Zhao’s film adaptation begins when an 18-year-old Will (Paul Mescal) falls for Anne Hathaway. Not to be confused with the actress of The Idea of You (2024), this Anne goes by Agnes (Jessie Buckley) because the names—like Hamnet and Hamlet—were interchangeable back in the days of yore.
Agnes is a 26-year-old herbalist and intuitive witchy chick who can sense Will’s deepness. It’s a beneficial gift since he comes off as a bit of a sad-sack (seriously, how is this guy going to play perky Paul McCartney?). Agnes and Will’s mutual otherness draws them together and, six months after they wed, she gives birth to their first child. A few years later, they have twins: beautiful boy Hamnet and weak daughter Judith—giving Jessie Buckley an opportunity to scream and sob.
Once the infants grow into happy and healthy tweens, the period piece enters Spielbergian territory. As the film’s producer, Steven Spielberg offers invaluable tips on how to get natural performances from kids. He also helps Zhao elevate her Nomadland (2020) grit to a grander scale. Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Hamnet presents a domestic world filled with curated clutter and cottagecore crafting. Unfortunately, no matter how authentic the lived-in sets and dirty fingernails appear, there’s an artifice in the air.
To paraphrase Shakespeare’s most quotable play, “Something is rotten in Stratford-upon-Avon.” Well, not rotten; more like too aesthetically pleasing. Clearly, there’s a lot of talent attached to this movie. Ironically, the more competent the cast and crew, the more engineered 16th-century England seems as Łukasz Żal’s carefully-composed shots capture overly-precious children frolicking in a golden-hour glow.
While at home, Will is seen as a dutiful dad. While in London, an unseen Will churns out hit plays. During this time, Shakespeare staged The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Oddly, none of these marital-themed comedies are referenced in the film.
Maybe Will is working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he learns his 11-year-old Judith (Olivia Lynes) has contracted the plague. By the time he returns to see her, she’s cured but her sacrificial twin Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) has died—giving Jessie Buckley an opportunity to scream and sob. Distraught by the loss and Will’s decision to leave again, Agnes is left alone with her sorrow—and a table full of hardboiled eggs.
In a tidy twist, Will then contemplates drowning himself in the Thames. Why? The most obvious answer is because this gives Mescal a chance to recite Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” lines. But instead of going through with a contrived suicide, Will puts quill to parchment and creates his masterpiece Hamlet.
Making literary lemonade out of life’s lemons is a cornerstone in biopics and melodramas about writers. It’s such a trope, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) parodies the act as Dewey (John C. Reilly) stops mid-argument with his wife (Kristen Wiig) to jot down her insults. When she says, ”Don’t you dare write a song right now, don’t you write a song!,” he admits he’s doing just that, naming it “Don’t You Write a Song!”
At least, there’s a direct link between Cox’s quarrel and his song title. Other than casting Jupe’s actual brother Noah to portray the titular character in Hamlet, there’s little to connect the stageplay—about a son grieving the death of his father—to Hamnet‘s screenplay about a father grieving the death of his son. In all actuality, it’s more likely Shakespeare channeled his and his wife’s sorrow into King John. Written near the time of Hamnet’s passing, it features a hauntingly accurate portrayal of parental loss: “Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me.”
Had King John been the Globe’s production Agnes attends at the tearjerker’s climax, she wouldn’t have been so confused (or as loud, talking through the play). Viewers would experience an earned gut-punch. As it is, Zhao forces feelings by cutting to little deceased Hamnet crossing over to the other side.
If that’s not calculating enough, she cues Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” (2004). What? Was Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” (2023) not available? Needless to say, Richter’s orchestral piece is shorthand for “cry now” as it’s been previously used to that effect in The Last of Us (2023), The Handmaid’s Tale (2021), Arrival (2016), Shutter Island (2010), and Stranger than Fiction (2006). Supposedly, adding this specific selection was Buckley’s suggestion. Why an actress is giving direction is concerning, if not self-serving. Perhaps it enhances her performance, but at what cost?
In the end, Hamnet‘s fine acting and beautifully shot images are as clear as its manipulative machinations. It would hardly be a surprise if Zhao ended it with Hamnet whispering, “I’ll be right here.”