‘Hamnet’ Review: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal Will Break Your Heart in Chloé Zhao’s Timeless Tale of Profound Loss and Boundless Love [A] Telluride
“All that lives must die,/Passing through nature to eternity.”
-Hamlet Act One, Scene 2
Early in Chloé Zhao’s staggering Shakespearean fairytale, Hamnet, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) asks Will (Paul Mescal) to tell her a story; specifically, one that will move her. He lands on the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where, after a viper bites Eurydice, Orpheus is consumed by grief and ventures to the underworld to collect her. He then plays a heartbreaking song on his lyre to Hades, who is so moved by the music that he tells Orpheus that he can take her with him. The catch? She must follow him, and he cannot look back. In adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s masterful work of historical fiction, Zhao weaves the themes of this Greek tragedy (among other works of classical fiction and poetry) into a profound, timeless tale of grief and boundless love. While Zhao begins the film with a note on the historical significance and the interchangeable nature of the names “Hamnet” and “Hamlet,” she quickly proves that this story is of far greater significance than Shakespeare’s oft-perceived personal connection between the death of his son and one of his most studied plays. Hamnet is as sensitive as a whisper and as confident as a soliloquy, breathing new life into Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece.
When Zhao first introduces Agnes, she’s peacefully curled up in the fetal position at the base of a tree. She’s a woman of the woods, her long dark hair plaited down the back of her heart-colored dress as she waits for her hawk to swoop down to her. Composer Max Richter and sound designer Johnnie Burn (The Zone of Interest) create a rich soundscape for Agnes, where the whistle of the trees and the buzz of the insects around her illustrate her inseparable, mystical bond with the natural world. Rumors swirl around the Hewlands that Agnes is the daughter of a forest witch and, thus, a woman to stay away from. That proves quite tricky for Will, though, who is immediately captivated by her strangeness and beauty. While Agnes spends her time among the trees, Will is inside the walls of a classroom tutoring his Latin pupils, working to pay off his cruel father’s many debts. He spots her outside his window one day and immediately decides to court her. Despite being a language teacher and a burgeoning poet, Will is clumsy and a bit flustered around Agnes, struggling to find the words to speak to her. They find their own ways to communicate, though, and they quickly fall in love. Much to the chagrin of their families, Agnes soon becomes pregnant, and her brother, Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), finds a way to broker a marriage deal. “Why marry a pasty-faced scholar?” Bartholomew inquires, while Agnes can simply smile; she loves him, and that is that.
O’Farrell joins Zhao as a co-writer on the script, and together, they depict the early days of Agnes and Will’s relationship in a way that is sensual and sweet, illustrating each character’s unique qualities and inherent independence. And while O’Farrell’s novel primarily focuses on the life of Agnes and her interior journey, the film provides far more depth and balance to both characters, creating a detailed foundation that will be tested through the wounds of time. The novel’s specificity is what makes it so special, as O’Farrell actively challenges the shortsightedness of Shakespearean scholars, even going so far as to recognize that this woman was likely to have been called “Agnes,” not Anne Hathaway, based on historical records. Rest assured, that level of attention and care is still present in the creation of Agnes in the film, but by elevating and reshaping Will’s role alongside her, the novel’s themes flex and expand to provide a new take on a story that already felt radical. O’Farrell also makes the bold choice in the book not to mention Shakespeare by name, and with Zhao, the duo follows a similar approach with a bit of a twist. In Hamnet, Zhao and O’Farrell don’t call him by name immediately, but instead deliberately incorporate the Bard’s language into the everyday life of the family. As he falls in love with Agnes, he taps The Balcony Scene from “Romeo and Juliet” out on his chest, finding the iambic pentameter against his heart. When he’s away in London later in the film, his daughter Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) reads a letter with his beautiful twelfth sonnet. In a lesser director’s hands, these references could feel like easter eggs for eagle-eyed viewers, but Zhao ties them into Will’s existence in a thoughtful way that challenges centuries of scholarship. How can a writer’s work not slip into their daily home life? How can their words not be inspired by life’s most glorious and challenging moments? For Zhao and O’Farrell, the art and the artist are inherently linked.
Agnes is a bit of an artist herself, too, with dirt and grime collecting underneath her fingernails as she gathers herbs for her ointments and tinctures. Her artistry isn’t just in mixing and creating medicines, but in her ability to perceive and visualize the future. For her, this means clutching the space between her husband’s thumb and index finger and seeing a world of tunnels, caves, and undiscovered countries. It’s also in visualizing her own future where she sees two of her children standing at her deathbed. As Agnes, Jessie Buckley is absolutely transcendent and entirely at home in Zhao’s naturalistic, lush creation. Some of her most breathtaking work comes in the film’s most heart-wrenching moments, including the birth of her twins, Hamnet and Judith. Unlike Susanna’s comfortable birth in nature, Agnes’ mother-in-law, Mary (a tremendous Emily Watson), forces her to give birth to the twins within the walls of the house. It’s here that Buckley first conjures up a feral, raw force within her character, not just in the delivery of her babies, but in her initial realization that Judith might not be alive. “I will make sure nothing takes you away,” Agnes assures her newborn as she begins to breathe, Buckley beautifully capturing the depth of a mother’s love and that enduring wish to keep her children safe.
Eventually, Judith (Olivia Lynes) grows stronger, and she and her brother, Hamnet (a terrific Jacobi Jupe, younger brother of Noah), reintroduce themselves by switching places to play a trick on their father. It’s a classic Shakespearean trope (“Twelfth Night” comes to mind), but here it’s a playful detail of daily family life and a shattering piece of foreshadowing. In expanding the novel’s scope, Zhao and O’Farrell develop the family’s home life, particularly the relationship between Hamnet and his father. Their father-son dynamic is full of playfulness and encouragement, a stark contrast from what Will experienced with his harsh and violent father. Agnes’ painful childhood also influences her relationship with her children as she tries to instill in them the same sense of spirit and wonder that her late mother did for her and Bartholomew. In one of the film’s most visually captivating scenes, the family gathers to bury Agnes’ hawk. She doesn’t shy away from teaching her children about death; instead, she invites them to whistle a call into their hands, releasing it into the sky. It’s the most stunning depiction of peace in death and a connection to the afterlife since Killers of the Flower Moon, and one that Zhao develops later in the film’s darkest moments. Much like The Rider and Nomadland, Zhao proves she’s virtually peerless in accessing the all-encompassing beauty of the natural world and connecting her characters to it. With Hamnet, she elevates that further, demonstrating that the centuries-old tales and words of Shakespeare were derived from the primal pain and beauty of the world around him. It’s Zhao’s most expansive film yet.
Alongside production designer Fiona Crombie (The Favourite), Zhao and Żal capture the family’s home in an observational quality (not unlike The Zone of Interest), as if something has been watching them and waiting for the time to strike. When the Black Death eventually comes for the Shakespeare home, Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal (Cold War, The Zone of Interest) create some of the film’s most heartbreaking images. Zhao and O’Farrell also expand this section from the novel, allowing even more space and time for death to sink its teeth into the family’s world. It’s here, too, that Buckley’s performance lingers, as she emits a sound and a pain so guttural that it could only come from a mother losing her child. Even with her intuition, death found a way to trick her, too. Much like Orpheus, Agnes’ grief becomes all-consuming, especially when Will returns to discover that Hamnet is no longer there. What can he do to bring him back, to conjure him up again?
With heartbreaking turns in Normal People, Aftersun, and All of Us Strangers, it’s no surprise to say that Mescal delivers a devastating performance. However, with its striking nuance and emotional maturity, his work in Hamnet feels like a culmination of what he has been building and creating all along. From his boyish clumsiness around Agnes in the early days of their relationship to the struggle he experiences in crafting his plays and poems, he creates an inner world for his character that only deepens throughout the film. When he’s away in London, grieving the death of his son and struggling to perfect “Hamlet,” he delivers one of Shakespeare’s most iconic passages from the play as he stands alone, broken on the banks of the Thames. In Mescal’s interpretation, he not only wonders how he can continue “to be” without his son, but also what this passage means for Hamnet now that he is gone, his spirit in a place where he cannot venture. Countless actors have delivered these lines, but Mescal’s performance (and Zhao’s direction of this striking scene) will make viewers consider these words in a brand new way. Mescal captures Shakespeare like we’ve never seen him before.
When Hamnet is a little boy, he asks Agnes what she sees in his future. Naturally, she doesn’t see his death approaching; instead, she envisions him growing old and strong, working alongside his father in the theater. After the death of their son, Agnes is left in Stratford to care for Susanna and Judith, while her husband is away in London at the theatre. The chasm between them has grown in their shared grief, but, just like in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Will finds a way to channel his grief and to create something so beautiful that Agnes would have to follow him out of the void to discover that same light. For all of its sadness and devastation, Hamnet does not end as tragically as a Greek myth or as painfully as a Shakespearean tragedy. Instead, Zhao creates a soaring finale with the kind of catharsis that can only be felt by experiencing a great work of art. Zhao and O’Farrell posit that, for Shakespeare, creating “Hamlet” was a profoundly personal experience, giving his son the chance to live eternally. With Hamnet, Zhao reinforces that, and in the film’s transcendent conclusion, as we witness that audience in Shakespeare’s Globe, the veil between this life and the next feels remarkably thin.
Grade: A
This review is from the 2025 Telluride Film Festival where Hamnet had its world premiere. Focus Features will release the film in select theaters on November 27 and wide on December 12.
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