Congrats to Jessie Buckley on her triumph at the 98th Academy Awards. The Hamnet (2025) star is the first Irish-born woman to win in the Best Actress category and only the third Irish-born performer to receive an Oscar for acting. She follows Best Actor Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer (2024) and Best Supporting Actress Brenda Fricker for My Left Foot (1989).
Hamnet received a total of eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Author Maggie O’Farrell worked with Best Director nominee Chloé Zhao to bring her novel Hamnet (2020) to the big screen. Within the historical drama, the Women’s Prize for Fiction recipient claims a personal loss inspired William Shakespeare to pen the most performed tragedy in the English language.
The problem with this premise is the Bard’s Hamlet (1599) is likely taken from Thomas Kyd’s Ur-Hamlet (1589) which is based on an ancient Scandinavian legend. Nevertheless, Zhao’s film begins when an 18-year-old Will (Paul Mescal) falls for Anne Hathaway. Not to be confused with the actress of The Idea of You (2024), this Anne goes by Agnes (Buckley) because the names—like Hamnet and Hamlet—were interchangeable in the Elizabethan era.
Agnes is a 26-year-old herbalist and intuitive witchy chick who can sense Will’s deepness. It’s a beneficial gift since he’s a bit of a sad-sack (seriously, how is this guy going to play perky Paul McCartney?). Agnes and Will’s mutual otherness draws them together and, six months after they wed, she gives birth to their first daughter. A few years later, they have twins: beautiful boy Hamnet and weak girl Judith.
Once the infants grow into happy and healthy tweens, the period piece enters Spielbergian territory. As the film’s producer, Steven Spielberg offers invaluable tips on how to get natural performances from kids. He also helps Zhao elevate her Nomadland (2020) grit to a grander scale. Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Hamnet presents a domestic world filled with curated clutter. Unfortunately, no matter how authentic the lived-in sets and dirty fingernails appear, there’s an artifice in the air.
To paraphrase Shakespeare’s most quotable play, “Something is rotten in Stratford-upon-Avon.” Well, not rotten; more like cottagecore. Obviously, there’s a lot of talent attached to this movie. Ironically, the more competent the cast and crew, the more engineered 16th-century England seems as Łukasz Żal’s carefully-composed shots capture precious children frolicking in a golden-hour glow.
While at home, Will is seen as a dutiful dad. While in London, an unseen Will churns out hit plays. During this time, Shakespeare staged The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Oddly, none of these rom-coms are referenced in Zhao’s tearjerker.
Perhaps Will is working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he learns 11-year-old Judith (Olivia Lynes) is suffering from the plague. By the time he returns to see her, she’s cured but sacrificial Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) has died in her place. Devastated by the loss and Will’s decision to head back to London, Agnes is left alone with sorrow and hardboiled eggs.
In a clichéd turn, Will contemplates drowning himself in the Thames. This transparent device gives Mescal a chance to recite Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy. But instead of going through with a contrived suicide, Will puts quill to parchment and creates his masterpiece Hamlet.
Making literary lemonade out of life’s lemons is a cornerstone in biopics about writers. It’s such a trope, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) parodies the act as Dewey (John C. Reilly) stops mid-argument with his wife (Kristen Wiig) to jot down her insults. When she says, ”Don’t you dare write a song right now, don’t you write a song!,” he admits he’s doing just that, naming it “Don’t You Write a Song!”
At least, there’s a direct link between Cox’s quarrel and his song title. Other than casting Jupe’s actual brother Noah to portray the titular character in Hamlet, there’s little to connect the stageplay—about a son grieving the death of his father—to Hamnet‘s screenplay about a father grieving the death of his son. Most likely Shakespeare channeled his despair into King John. Written near the time of Hamnet’s passing, the lesser-known play features a hauntingly accurate portrayal of parental loss: “Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me.”
Had King John been the Globe production Agnes attends during the film’s climax, she wouldn’t have been so confused (or as loud, talking through the show). More importantly, viewers would experience a true reckoning. As it is, Zhao forces feelings by cuing Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” (2004). Maybe Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” (2023) wasn’t available.
Needless to say, Richter’s orchestral piece is shorthand for “choke up now” as it’s been previously used to similar effect in The Last of Us (2023), The Handmaid’s Tale (2021), Arrival (2016), Shutter Island (2010), and Stranger than Fiction (2006). Supposedly, adding this specific selection to the scene was Buckley’s suggestion. Why an actress is giving direction is concerning, if not self-serving.
Yes, Hamnet is brilliantly acted and expertly crafted, but its emotional gears grind as loudly as the score. When Zhao cuts to Hamnet’s ghost crossing over, the only thing missing is a glowing fingertip and him vowing, “I’ll be right here.”