I have always found films about grief a little difficult to watch because it is painful watching people lose someone they love while having to figure out how to continue living as if the world hasn’t just changed forever. Hamnet is one of those films that doesn’t simply tell you that grief hurts. It sits you down inside it and makes you watch what it does to a family. I honestly didn’t even expect a film about Shakespeare’s family to affect me the way this one.
Synopsis
Set in 16th-century England, Hamnet imagines the early relationship between Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) and William “Will” Shakespeare (Paul Mescal).
Agnes is portrayed as an unconventional, intuitive young woman with an almost mystical connection to nature. When she meets Will, who is working as a Latin tutor before eventually leaving Stratford for London, the two form a deep connection that develops into marriage and a family of their own.
They have three children: Susanna, followed by twins Hamnet and Judith.
For a while, their life is filled with the ordinary chaos of raising children, maintaining a household and trying to make a marriage work while Will’s ambitions increasingly pull him away from home.
Then tragedy enters the family.
During an outbreak of plague, Judith becomes ill. Hamnet, taking his father’s instructions of being brave, he swaps places with Judith and asks death to take him instead. So tragically, it does and he dies at just eleven years old. The loss tears through the family, particularly Agnes, whose relationship with her husband becomes strained under the weight of their shared but very differently expressed grief.
The film then takes its most fascinating creative leap as it imagines that Will eventually channels this devastating loss into the creation of Hamlet.
Review and Rating
At the beginning of this film, I was expecting Shakespeare to be the centre of everything but he isn’t or at least, he shouldn’t be. Agnes is and she completely owns this film. There is something so raw about the way she portrays her character. Agnes isn’t presented as some perfect historical wife who exists merely to support the great man who will eventually become Shakespeare.
She is strange, passionate, is fiercely connected to the world around her and she has a life of her own. That was probably one of my favourite things about the film. She isn’t simply “Shakespeare’s wife.” She is Agnes and when Hamnet dies, I felt the full weight of that distinction. This isn’t “Shakespeare lost his son.” This is a mother losing her child.
To be frank, Jessie Buckley was exceptional. I genuinely don’t know how she managed some of those scenes. Her grief isn’t pretty nor is it the kind of cinematic crying where one perfectly placed tear slides down the cheek while the camera lovingly captures it. Hers is ugly, physical and is almost frightening.
There are moments where Agnes looks like someone whose body is still waiting for her child to come running back through the door even though her mind knows he isn’t coming. That kind of grief is difficult to watch because it feels too intimate.
Paul Mescal on the other hand, takes a quieter approach to the character of Will. Initially, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that because we’re talking about William Shakespeare here. The name alone comes with an enormous amount of weight but the film intentionally strips away the legend.
We don’t really get “Shakespeare the genius.” We get a young man who loves Agnes, loves his children, has ambitions and struggles with the responsibilities of being a husband and father and when tragedy happens, we see another side of him.
His grief is quieter than Agnes’ but no less painful. The two of them don’t grieve in the same way, and that difference becomes a source of distance between them. Sometimes two people can experience exactly the same tragedy and still feel completely alone in it.
The Most Painful Part Wasn’t Even the Death. I know that sounds strange because obviously Hamnet’s death is devastating but what hurt me more was watching what happened after as death doesn’t end the story for the people left behind. They still have to wake up the next morning, eat, they have another child to care for and of course still have responsibilities. They’re even expected to continue existing in a world that suddenly feels completely wrong.
That is what this film understands beautifully. Grief isn’t one moment. It is everything that comes after that moment.
And Then There Is Judith, the twin sister. I appreciated the way the film doesn’t completely forget that Hamnet wasn’t the only child.
Their twins’ bond adds another layer to the story because their connection is portrayed as unusually intimate. When Hamnet dies, Judith is affected too, and the family’s fear isn’t simply about losing one child. There is also the terrifying possibility of losing both and that made the illness feel even more frightening.
Now let’s talk about the film’s biggest idea: Can Art Come From Pain?
This is actually where the film becomes more than a historical family drama and asks whether something beautiful can emerge from something devastating.
If Shakespeare did write Hamlet partly as a response to losing his son, again, something the film imagines rather than proves, then art becomes a way of carrying grief somewhere else. Not curing it, or erasing it. Just giving it somewhere to exist. Trust that I found that idea incredibly moving because sometimes you cannot explain what you’re feeling to another person. Words fail and the only thing you can do is create something that contains the feeling for you.
I’m not going to give away the full experience of the final sequence because I think it deserves to be watched rather than explained but that final movement, when Agnes encounters the play, is where everything suddenly comes together.
The film has spent so much time showing us her life, her love, her children and her loss, then suddenly we see how all of that has been transformed into theatre. That was when I understood what the film had been building towards.
It wasn’t simply asking if Shakespeare wrote Hamlet because his son died but asks what happens when private grief becomes something other people can recognize as their own? That is where the film really got me.
The Visuals Were Beautiful. Chloé Zhao’s direction is very much in conversation with nature. The forests, fields, changing weather and rural landscapes aren’t just pretty backgrounds. They make the film feel almost dreamlike at times. There is something earthy about the whole production.
Was the movie too slow? I’m going to be honest. Yes. There were moments where I felt the film was taking its sweet time getting somewhere.
The early portion spends a considerable amount of time establishing Agnes and Will’s relationship and their domestic life, and if you’re expecting a fast-moving historical drama, you may struggle with the pace. But I eventually understood why as the film needs us to know what this family looked like before Hamnet died. If we don’t experience their happiness, their ordinary moments, their children and their little routines, then the loss doesn’t have the same weight.
So while I occasionally wanted the film to move faster, I think the slowness ultimately serves the story.
Finally, Hamnet is a beautiful, painful and deeply intimate film. It takes a tiny piece of Shakespearean history, a son named Hamnet who died young, and builds an entire emotional world around it.
Is everything historically accurate? I don’t know.
Rating: 8.5/10.
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