Written by: Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe
Rating: [4/5]
Art has this way to provide the person experiencing it with whatever they need. It’s one of its great beauties where two individuals can take something in and come away with not only different experiences, but also understandings of what it signifies to them. Hamnet demonstrates in truly heartbreaking fashion this distinct power in the way it helps cope with loss and love, in ways that demand your tears and rightfully earns them.
Applying his trade as a tutor, William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) meets the wild and enigmatic Agnes (Jessie Buckley), who loves to practice witchcraft and generally has a reputation of being wild. As they strike up a relationship and build a family, they encounter issues as Agnes must try to maintain the household amidst tragedy while William continues to travel as he puts together his plays.
Possessing very little to no knowledge of William Shakespeare’s personal life, my experience watching Hamnet oscillated between trying to distinguish if this film sought to display the true beginnings of the famous playwright or if this serves as a complete fictionalization. I now know the work this film adapts, a fictional recounting, but ultimately this notion does not necessarily matter given this film’s intended goal. In fact, the way this film seeks to not draw attention to William Shakespeare for the majority of the film and focus on Agnes’s story with her battle with grief delivers something much more emotionally impactful. She, without question, leads this story and it allows Jessie Buckley to give a sensational performance.
Ever since my first exposure to her in Wild Rose released in 2019, Jessie Buckley has demonstrated her incredible acting talent. Every performance bringing something different and further demonstrating that when called upon, she can deliver something that impacts audiences. As Agnes, Buckley gives this guttural and physically demanding performance where she experiences the highest highs of life but also the deepest lows with tragedies no parent should ever encounter. Agnes’s journey brings forth a character completely different from anyone else in the narrative in how she sees the world, allowing Buckley to accentuate these differences but also display this raw and unencumbered humanity. A world-class performance and one she has been building towards for years now.
While Buckley receives the true meat of the character work in this film, several actors also shine bright in their moments. Paul Mescal, fresh off his foray in major blockbusters with Gladiator II, returns to the smaller scale and gives such a wonderful performance as the famous playwright. A role not so outwardly demanding as Agnes, but one built through an interiority of harnessing the pain of their circumstance, and his character ultimately needs to utilize art to process this. The biggest surprise, by far, was the incredible work of the Jupe brothers, Jacobi and Noah in their respective roles. Jacobi plays the most precious small child this film centers around, and more than holds his own when acting opposite Mescal and Buckley. Noah, on the other hand, portrays one of the actors in Shakespeare’s play and completely devastates. He ultimately shepherds the best scene of this film and in his little time in this film, does some incredible work.
Through all of the pain and anguish, the shining moment of this film lies in the final 15 minutes. A moment where everything convalesces into an emotional climax where the art on display serves its purpose to both heal but also communicate in a way simple words cannot. Recalling this final scene gives me goosebumps just thinking back on it, especially when listening to the cheat code of a song utilized to score it in Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight.” A song that ultimately heightens any emotional scene on its own, but in combination with what we see transpire on screen dares its audience not to cry at the sadness and beauty on display. It certainly got me, and the many sniffles I heard around me in the theater agreed with that very sentiment. Yes, Chloé Zhao knows what she’s doing here and while detractors of this film may call it manipulative, I say manipulate away if this is the beautiful manner in which it gets presented.
Much like Mescal, Chloé Zhao returns to a smaller scale of filmmaking after her venture into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reminds us of her fantastic abilities as a director. In all of her films, she demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture humans at their most authentic. With Hamnet she works through the artifice of a mostly fictionalized story and all-actor ensemble but still grounds these characters in a way that displays the beauty of what sits at the core of this story. Her operating in this realm demonstrates her very best and I look forward for her to continue to grace us with her ability to capture the beauty not just on the inside but also the exterior world with her collaboration with cinematographer, Łukasz Żal.
As a narrative, Hamnet sits in this place between fact and fiction. Whether the events that transpired in this film carry much of any truth in William and Agnes Shakespeare’s lives does not entirely matter. Whether the death of Hamnet inspired the story of “Hamlet,” again, remains immaterial. What truly matters is Zhao’s utilization of something we know very well and telling a deeply human story about loss and art in a way that proved emotionally resonant. A beautiful work of art with a final scene that remains ingrained in my head.
Films with Josh 
