December 6, 2025 · Watch the official trailer
Cinema that forces an audience to feel deeply and richly can be a powerful catharsis or completely backfire, depending on how successful the filmmaker can make one live in the emotional world they create.
Chloé Zhao, known for her Oscar-winning “Nomadland” and widely panned Marvel film “Eternals,” has the pedigree to do the former and the track record to do the latter, which makes her latest drama all the more intriguing.
An adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel of the same name, Zhao enters new territory with “Hamnet,” a quietly ethereal, raw drama about family and the overwhelming power of both love and loss. While not overtly addressing him by name, the film follows a young William Shakespeare as he falls for a strangely independent woman named Agnes, and the love and family they develop set the stage for some of the playwright’s most powerful works.
Walking into a cinema for a film about the Bard, viewers don’t expect to be captivated by a performance that has almost nothing to do with Shakespeare himself. Jessie Buckley takes the role of Anne Hathaway – Shakespeare’s wife and mother to his three children – to astonishing heights with a turn that is naturally radiant when it needs to be, joyful and prescient when it wants to be, and wonderfully tragic at all the right moments.
There is so much vibrancy and emotion piercing through Buckley’s eyes and trembling off her quivering lips that it envelops an entire world of romance and tragedy, far greater than what could’ve appeared on the stage, on the written page, and absolutely everything more than what could have been in Zhao’s vision for “Hamnet” as a film.
The ability Buckley has to emote the joys and horrors of Agnes’s life with overwhelming respect and compassion yet never being too much is magnetic and at times overwhelms and captures the entire world of “Hamnet,” to the detriment of the other performers on screen. What Buckley is able to pull off here is a towering achievement for a performer that cements her as one of the generation’s best.
Paul Mescal bounds in and out of the world of “Hamnet” with both an exuberant passion for life and art yet a blind unawareness of the consequences of his actions. It’s a frustrating yet rich portrait of a man seemingly at odds with himself, burdened with a glorious purpose he doesn’t really know how to harness and can’t explain, isolating him from those he cares for.
At times, the dynamic chemistry between Buckley and Mescal is exuberant and intense, with Zhao allowing her camera frame to linger on the subtle flirtations that lead to William and Agnes’s coupling. Yet both do an exceptional job as the distance grows – the physical and emotional distance grows – between the couple and slowly peels back the layers of both characters, highlighting how the presence of each in the other’s lives has truly changed them for the better.⸻
Powerful and emotional, audiences will leave rejuvenated and yet emotionally overwhelmed and drained if they are able to fully buy into the cinema on display here. “Hamnet” takes its power not from bold, brash strokes of auteurist vision, but in the quiet majesty of nature, fueled by raw emotions.
“Hamnet” is far and away Zhao’s best film – even despite winning a Best Picture award for “Nomadland.” The razor-thin balance of tone is masterful, and there is a clear inspiration both in staged adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and in the broad visual palette of a distinctly Terrence Malick-like aesthetic that helps cement Zhao’s vision for her artistry.
Very much a piece in production design, there is a dramatically vibrant, postmodern visual tapestry created by Zhao and her team that gives a wholly lived-in yet otherworldly aesthetic to “Hamnet” that leaps off the big screen.
What makes “Hamnet” exceptional is the precise attention to detail in every frame—from the rich, lived-in sets and production design to the evocative, Terrence Malick–inspired cinematography that frames the melancholic world of the film. Audiences are able to absorb an ethereal natural color palette reflective of Agnes’s upbringing, one that establishes an emotional mood from the outset.
The costuming is understated yet refined, grounding each character in a world that feels both authentic and delicately shaped by their inner lives. And Zhao’s camera, which rarely moves, allows viewers to linger in the highs and lows of Agnes and Will’s lives together and apart, letting the emotional contours of their relationship unfold with quiet, resonant clarity.
“Hamnet” is expected to be a major player come awards season, and a virtual lock for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and several technical categories. With Zhao and Mescal as strong contenders for Best Directing and Best Supporting Actor nominations, respectively.
Given the wide array of international films expected to also be in contention, and the strength of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” “Hamnet” may not win as many awards as it is nominated for, although it is unlikely that another actress will rise to the same level of frontrunner status that Buckley has established here.
Beautifully bittersweet and exceptionally well acted, “Hamnet” is without question one of the year’s best films, regardless of genre, and something wholly deserving of the widespread critical acclaim it has received.
Cinephiles interested in seeing a celebrated auteur delve into deeper, richer emotional territory should race to theaters to witness this exceptional piece of artwork come to life. Zhao captures the tender, painful space between love and loss with such quiet honesty that “Hamnet” lingers long after it ends, a beautifully resonant reminder of why her work continues to matter.
Leave a Reply