This historical film dramatises the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, and explores the impact on both of them, of the death of their beloved son, Hamnet.
HAMNET Starring: Jesse Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn. Directed by Chloe Zhao. Check the Classification. (Estimated M). 126 min.
Review by Peter W Sheehan, Jesuit Media Australia
This British film is directed by Chloe Zhao from a 2020 novel of the same name, written by Maggie O’Farrell about Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, who were greatly affected by the tragic death of their 11-year old son HAMNET, whose name titles the movie. The film tells a powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s masterly play, “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”. In the film, Paul Mescal plays William Shakespeare, and Jessie Buckley plays Agnes. The film was shot largely in the UK, in Wales and in London.
The performances of both Mescal and Buckley are exceptional. Jessie Buckley plays a free-spirited daughter of a courageous, determined woman, and Mescal is a young Bard-to-be who works as a Latin teacher to pay off his father’s debts. Buckley captures both the exhilaration of motherhood and the tragedy of losing her child, and the film as a whole is emotionally intensive. It won the Audience Award at the London Film Festival in 2025, and resulted in multiple International Awards for Buckley’s performance. Buckley anchors Agnes by playing her character as someone, who effortlessly moves backwards and forwards from love to grief and felt loss.
Agnes had a fierce spirit, and Shakespeare was entranced by her. Paul Mescal brilliantly plays Shakespeare and his love for Agnes is suffused with grief for the child he and Agnes lost. The performances of both Shakespeare and his wife are emotionally raw – sexually committed to each other before they married, the film ends by showing Agnes watching a theatre performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in London after the death of her child, which also starred her husband, who wrote it. Direction of the film is about the experience of having a child, and the experience of losing a child. Chloe Zhao’s direction is strikingly naturalistic; she composes scenes to show death crushing down upon Agnes and Shakespeare, and the film concludes with extraordinary scenes that illustrate not only the compelling love that Shakespeare and Agnes had for each other, but also the magic of Shakespeare’s own words that he wrote in his much-loved play.
This is an emotionally gripping movie that progresses to a very powerful conclusion. It fictionalises Shakespeare’s marriage, the death of Hamnet, and the creation of Shakespeare’s play, “Hamlet”, in ingenious ways. The result is profoundly moving cinema.
Reviewed by Peter W Sheehan, an Associate of Jesuit Media