Last Friday, I went to the Angelika Film Center in New York City to see Hamnet, a 2025 historical drama directed by Chloé Zhao, co-written by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell, based on O'Farrell's 2020 novel of the same name. The film is a historical fiction look at the death of the son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway (sometimes known as Agnes), Hamnet, who died at age 11 from pestilence. The film focuses on the burgeoning romance between Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William (Paul Mescal) in Stratford, England in the late 1500s. Agnes' reputation precedes her, as many people gossip that she is the daughter of a forest witch, because her mother taught her how to use herbs for medicinal purposes and to connect with nature and the earth. Agnes spends her free time alone in the lush green forest, and taking care of her hawk, and bristles under her stepmother, who her father married after her mother died young, presumably from childbirth. Agnes lives with her father, stepmother, and her supportive stepbrother. Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), who often stands up for her against his mother.
William and Agnes fall in love and get pregnant, and both families oppose them marrying, because of Agnes' witch reputation and because William's family see William as a useless dreamer who teaches Latin to Agnes' younger brothers instead of following in the family trade of being a glovemaker. Nevertheless, with the support of Bartholomew to advocate on their behalf, William and Agnes are married, and Agnes gives birth alone by a giant tree in the forest, screaming in agony yet connected with nature during her act of childbirth. She has a daughter who she names Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach).
William is feeling stagnated by his attempts to be a writer but being pressured into working a labor job by his father John (David Wilmot), being abused and ridiculed. Agnes makes the sacrificial decision to have William move to London to work in the theater community where he belongs, despite that she knows it will put distance between them and their marriage, especially as she is pregnant again. When the labor begins, William's mother Mary (Emily Watson) prevents her from going to the forest alone to give birth, forcing her to give birth at home, screaming in agony as she has not one, but two children, naming them Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes).
The marriage between Agnes and William becomes more strained, especially with his absences for work in London and leaving Agnes on her own to raise their three children. And when the pestilence virus spreads and first infects Judith, Agnes fights hard to save her, as she had been stillborn at first but miraculously came back to life, and Agnes uses her herbal concoctions to prevent her from passing away, only for Hamnet to become sick after her and die a painful death.
Jessie Buckley is incredible in this film. She possesses this earthly, primal spirit as Agnes, when she is hollering and letting out these guttural moans, whether she is giving birth or grieving the loss of her son. She is captivating to watch, and truly amazing in this film.
The majority of the film belongs to Buckley, but Mescal shines in the finale, when the premiere of Hamlet performs and Agnes is realizing that the play is named after her son (a prologue states that Hamlet and Hamnet in Renaissance England were the same name), and as the play goes on, and William, playing the spirit of Hamlet's father, is able to express the grief and pain of losing his real son, as well as saying the goodbye that he wasn't around to say to Hamnet when he died, and it's a stunning performance by Mescal in that sequence.
Jacobi Jupe, as Hamnet, is outstanding in this film. He had the hard choice of playing a character who dies young as a child and inspires one of the most famous plays of all time, while still having to play him as an innocent child. His scenes where he is in between worlds of life and the afterlife are heartbreaking, and he deserves accolades for his performance. Fittingly, his older brother Noah Jupe plays Hamlet in the play within the film.
The film stays focused in stationery spots with the work of cinematographer Łukasz Ża, who worked on Cold War (2018), The Zone of Interest (2023), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), which featured Buckley as the female lead alongside Jesse Plemons. In Hamnet, there are scenes where Buckley and Mescal are in the foreground at his desk centered in a triangular shot, with her bed in the background, and a fire offscreen warming them, as he is frustrated with his writing and his outbursts wake baby Susanna. I really liked how focused the camera and blocking was in that shot, and holding on two talented actors carrying the scene.
The film was edited by the great Affonso Gonçalves, whose past work includes Paterson (2016), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Carol (2015), Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), and Winter's Bone (2010).
I read the novel two years ago, and the film stayed very accurate to the novel, which helped a lot with O'Farrell adapting her own story to the screen. I had remembered how the novel had more about Agnes' home life with her stepmother and her complicated relationship with her, which felt shortened in the film to get past it, but it wasn't a detriment to the story. And the Hamlet finale follows the exact finale from the novel, and felt more powerful onscreen, making me feel devastated inside.
I really adored this film, and thought that Jessie Buckley was fantastic, and that it was a great adaptation of a wonderful novel.
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