Hamnet reimagines Shakespeare’s life as a moving meditation on grief and the birth of a legend
Chloe Zhao’s film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet arrives after the novel’s radiant reception, premiering at the Telluride Film Festival before a wider release later this year. The movie centers on the dual reverberations of loss and artistic creation, reframing Hamlet not only as a revenge play but as a vessel for a father’s sorrow and a mother’s resilience. With Jennifer Buckley’s Agnes and Paul Mescal’s William Shakespeare anchored by a luminous performance, Hamnet is a haunting, emotionally expansive experience.
The story tracks a family in which grief threads through every ordinary moment and every extraordinary impulse. Agnes—knotty, earthy, and deeply perceptive—embodies a wild intelligence connected to the forest, herbs, and an almost prophetic sense of what the children will become. Will Shakespeare, a gentle, bloodless-feeling tutor-turned-worried husband, discovers in his private torment a language that can reconfigure the world. Their romance unfolds with tenderness and a touch of magical realism, set against a landscape that feels both intimate and mythic.
One of Zhao’s most compelling choices is to center the film on the process by which a child’s death becomes the seed of a Shakespearean masterpiece. Hamnet imagines that the plague claimed the boy, even as the parents seek to save him, and transposes the family’s private ritual of mourning into a public act of art. The film’s central revelation is not merely that Hamlet is inspired by life, but that the act of mourning itself can reforge a work of art. In Zhao’s telling, the line between life and stage is porous: a makeshift forest becomes a theater, and the stage doors open into the deepest questions about memory, guilt, and the act of remembering.
Max Richter’s score pours melancholy through every scene, driving a kinetic sense of movement and urgency rather than quiet reflection. Mescal delivers perhaps the most startling proof of his range yet: his Will is at once reticent and consuming, capable of a piercing sorrow that erupts into a feral intensity when he envisions Hamlet’s future. His performance of the famous soliloquies—both as Will and as the onstage Hamlet—creates a dialogue between the actor’s craft and the character’s fragility, suggesting that Shakespeare’s most famous words are continually being remade by those who grieve.
Buckley’s Agnes anchors the film with a force that feels both earthy and luminous. Her portrayal suggests a woman who can conjure a world of practical remedies and secret possibilities, a woman who understands that life’s pain can be transmuted into art. The children—Judith and Hamnet—appear in scenes that ground the larger themes in the textures of family life, play, and the ritual of growth. The film doesn’t linger in the mechanics of plot; instead, it moves with a breathless energy that honors the emotion at its core.
In the final act, Hamnet culminates with a staged Hamlet that refracts the couple’s private losses through the public life of the theatre. Agnes’s perspective reframes the play’s sorrow as a shared act of faith in memory and in art’s power to heal, even while it cannot undo the past. The Orpheus and Eurydice motif—told by Will early on as a parable of resurrection—threads through the narrative as a reminder that to see and be seen remains a dangerous, exhilarating gift. The result is a film that offers a fresh lens on a familiar legend, inviting viewers to consider how a life remembered can become a work that remembers us back.
A pivotal achievement of Hamnet is its insistence that Shakespeare’s greatest work grew out of the most intimate, painful moments of his life. The film doesn’t just celebrate Hamlet as a text; it treats the play as a living conversation about grief, memory, and the act of mourning itself. Zhao’s direction, paired with a standout ensemble and a score that heightens emotion without overdoing it, makes Hamnet feel both intimate and monumental.
What to watch for:
– The way the film uses nature and the forest as a connective thread to the characters’ inner lives.
– The balance between historical suggestion and magical realism that gives the story its mythic texture.
– Mescal’s nuanced portrayal of Will, especially in scenes where personal pain gives rise to Shakespearean intensity.
– The final staging of Hamlet as a lens for Agnes’s experience and as a meditation on what art can carry across generations.
Summary: Hamnet is a daring, emotionally immersive reimagining of Shakespeare’s life through the lens of loss and the birth of a great play. Zhao’s film finds beauty in grief, turning the creation of Hamlet into a testament to memory, love, and the enduring human need to tell stories that outlive us.
Extra notes:
– The collaboration with the source novel’s author on the screenplay helps preserve the core themes while allowing Zhao to emphasize the artistic act at the film’s center.
– The film’s linear structure sharpens the emotional impact, offering a more direct pathway into character and motive than the book’s non-linear cadence.
– A hopeful thread runs through the tragedy: art as a lifeline that can connect generations and help the living endure.