There’s no doubt that, in many people’s eyes, Hamnet will be one of the films of the year. It is swept along on a wave of adoring reviews. It’s sure to land on dozens of “best of 2025” lists. It will also appear on thousands of Oscar ballots. None of this is all that surprising.
The film is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s poetic novel, which is one of the most acclaimed bestsellers of the 21st Century. The director and co-writer, Chloé Zhao, is another key figure behind the camera. She made the Oscar-winning Nomadland. O’Farrell herself is the other co-writer. In front of the camera, the film boasts two of Ireland’s most magnetic young actors, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. And there is another creative genius involved: William Shakespeare. The novel and the film share a conceit. The tragic death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, the titular Hamnet, inspired the writing of the greatest play in the English language, Hamlet. In Elizabethan England, an opening caption informs us, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable.
But does Hamnet live up to the promise of its stellar personnel? That is the question. Many viewers have already fallen under its spell. However, Zhao and O’Farrell have removed important elements. They stripped away the time-travelling structure, hypnotic prose rhythms, internal monologues, and tiny, tangible details. What’s left is no more profound or authentic than any other costume drama set in ye olde days.
It’s clear from the opening scenes that Hamnet isn’t going to be a subtle film
Its early scenes aren’t a million miles away from Shakespeare in Love (1998). Buckley plays a farmer’s daughter named Anne Hathaway. Her family addresses her as Agnes. Mescal is a glovemaker’s son and a jobbing Latin tutor named Will. Agnes is rumoured to be the daughter of a forest witch. She doesn’t try to dispel that rumour. She spends half of her time out in the woods with a pet hawk. Agnes picks herbs and fungi for her poultices and potions. To emphasise her unity with nature, we’re shown a now-familiar shot. The camera points up at the sky through a frame of rustling treetops. Will, meanwhile, is in his attic. He scribbles away at a first draft of Romeo and Juliet. It’s clear from the opening scenes that Hamnet isn’t going to be a subtle film.
Buckley gives a very Buckley-ish performance. Like so many of her characters, Agnes is a fierce, earthy rebel who is more honest than anyone else around her. Naturally, the nervous Will is soon smitten, and stammers, “I wish to be hand-fasted to you.” It’s a warm and sweet romance, but not especially believable. The newlywed Shakespeares live an idyllic, picture-postcard life with their daughter Susanna and their adorable twins, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes). (One of the film’s conceits is that the twins are uncannily similar, so it’s a shame that the actors look nothing like each other.) Stratford-upon-Avon is weirdly short of other houses and other people. And the contrived conversations are peppered with quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, and explanations of situations which everyone in the scene would already know. Will’s bullying father tells him that he’s useless on two separate occasions (and on the second one, Will grabs him around the chin and slams him against a wall, much like Mescal’s character in Normal People did to his girlfriend’s brother, only louder).
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