By George & Josh Bate
If we had to describe Hamnet in two words, it would be ‘emotional rollercoaster.’ Chloé Zhao’s new film flourishes with so much warmth at first, then tears your heart out and breaks it apart so painfully before somehow piecing it back together in a beautiful finale.
Based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet follows the relationship between Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) in 16th century England. What begins as a beautiful bond between two people deeply in love is put to the test when they endure an unimaginable loss that eventually inspires the creation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet.
Rarely does a film so resonantly span the entire spectrum of mood the way Hamnet does. Zhao’s follow-up to Marvel Studios’ Eternals sees the director return to her forte to tell a grounded, powerful drama, built from the ground up with strong character work. Exploring themes of love and loss with incredible emotional intelligence and authenticity, the film works equally well as a historical drama and contemporarily relevant drama with far-reaching applicability beyond the events it depicts.
For the bulk of its runtime, Hamnet operates as a touching love story between Buckley’s Agnes and Mescal’s William Shakespeare. The revered playwright has been depicted in a variety of films and shows but never with the humanity and personality that Mescal achieves here. To distance Shakespeare from his stardom and famous works, Zhao and co-screenwriter O’Farrell decide to not identify Mescal’s character as William Shakespeare until the film’s final act, a decision that brings arguably history’s greatest writer down to a human, relatable level. In keeping with this decision to ground the legendary playwright, Mescal brings remarkable warmth to his portrayal of William, both as a husband and eventually a father. Buckley does the same with her performance as Agnes, which collectively make Hamnet the rare historical drama that, while accurate to the time, feels like a contemporary tale.
Although Buckley receives top-billing, Hamnet’s true protagonist is neither Agnes nor William, but, rather, the relationship between the two. From the get-go, Agnes and William have a magnetic draw to one another that sees the two quickly fall in love. In hands less capable than Buckley and Mescal’s, the briskly formed romance could have felt forced, but the Irish actors sell a playful and passionate romance extraordinarily well.
Hamnet continues to blossom with warmth as Agnes and William have children together. Even though most viewers will know the morbid direction the story is heading in, Zhao’s film never feels overwhelmed with dread and lets the viewer enjoy the kindness and rapport of the Shakespeare family. As the film takes place across a number of years, there is some disjointedness created from various time jumps, with various important events, including Shakespeare’s rise to fame and fortune, occurring off-screen. Zhao offsets this issue somewhat by directing Hamnet like a fairy tale at times. Buckley’s Agnes is an almost ethereal figure and the narrative takes on a fantastical quality, even when its events stay firmly grounded.
The big turning point in Hamnet that changes the entire tone of the story occurs surprisingly late into the film’s 126 minute runtime. Zhao and O’Farrell opt to spend ample time with Agnes, William, and their family on the front end, a decision that makes the eventual death of one of their children all the more painful for the audience. Jacobi Jupe, who plays the titular character and only son of Agnes and William, produces one of the best performances from a child actor in years, making us truly care for the boy before his death shatters our hearts. Zhao helms the death of Hamnet beautifully, deftly leaning into more abstract imagery without ever losing sight of the real emotions at play.
In positioning the death of Hamnet so far into the runtime, Zhao leaves an unexpectedly small portion of its runtime to exploring the grief of Agnes and William. This is particularly true of William, who goes to London shortly after Hamnet’s death, leaving the audience with Agnes as she reckons with the loss of her son. Buckley takes her performance to another level here as she captures grief with such rawness and relatability. Her pain immediately becomes the viewer’s pain as, not only do we struggle to come to terms with the loss of such an innocent child, but we also witness a character we’ve come to care for struggle to come to terms with this loss.
The climax of Hamnet finds Zhao’s film at its weakest, unfortunately. Without exploring the grief William experiences on-screen, the film leaves William’s grief to manifest through a performance of his timeless masterpiece Hamlet at the Globe. This decision yields mixed results. While Noah Jupe plays Hamnet phenomenally, Zhao and O’Farrell rest too much of the effectiveness of their conclusion on the shoulders of Shakespeare’s play. Cuts to Agnes emotionally watching the play work do the strength of Buckley’s performance, but, otherwise, the final act fails to explain why and how Hamlet, a play with a completely different story than Shakespeare’s own, represents William’s bereavement.
Thankfully, in its last moments, Hamnet finds its footing again. In addition to touching performances from Noah Jupe and Jessie Buckley, the reintroduction of Jacobi Jupe’s Hamnet in a vision brings the film to a beautiful conclusion. Earlier, the film had left our hearts shattered in pieces, but, by the end, Zhao and her performers somehow find a way to make a story about the loss of a loved one feel heartwarming and even hopeful. It’s an ending that had us reflect on our own losses and even reconceptualize them in a more positive light, a remarkable testament to the emotionality of Hamnet’s ending.
VERDICT: 8/10
Chloé Zhao takes audiences on an emotional rollercoaster with Hamnet, a film that flourishes with warmth and then shatters your heart into millions of parts before somehow piecing it back together with a beautiful conclusion. Despite being a historical drama, Zhao’s film works just as well as a contemporary drama through its grounded characterizations of Agnes and William Shakespeare that will prove relatable to many. Amidst several somewhat disjointed time jumps, extraordinary performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal take on newfound dimensions and complexities when the death of the titular character occurs, a decision that drastically changes the film’s tone. Although Buckley excels with a raw portrayal of grief, the film relies too heavily on Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece Hamlet to explore Williams bereavement and poorly explains the connection between Hamlet’s narrative and the actual loss of Hamnet. Thankfully, the film finds its footing at the last juncture by ending on a remarkably and surprisingly heartwarming and even hopeful note that made us reflect on our own losses and reconceptualize them in a positive light. Best movie of all time? Definitely not. Best movie of the year? Probably not. One of the best movies of the year? Well, in the words of Shakespeare, aye, mayhaps.