Hamnet Review - Love, Loss, and the Ghost of “Hamlet”
Just as Prince Hamlet was haunted by the spirit of his father, some stories haunt us long after they’re over. Hamnet, directed by Chloe Zhao and based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is one such story: a film not only about grief, but about how grief becomes art and thus how memory becomes something eternal. In that sense, it is a kind of metatextual elegy – a meditation on loss and on how the deepest human pain can transform into timeless works of beauty. Much like Hamlet itself, Hamnet explores what remains after innocence dies, and what kind of poetry can spring from mourning.
A “Hamlet” That Was – And Never Was
The film begins in the fertile green of the English countryside, before moving slowly toward a tragedy so old it almost feels mythic. At its heart are Paul Mescal as Will (Shakespeare) and Jessie Buckley as Agnes – their marriage sweet, tender, and grounded in a kind of feral earthiness. The family they create is built on roots in the soil and devotion between sweat-stained hands.
Then the unspeakable happens and their idyllic family life is shattered. From that fracture emerges the film’s core argument: perhaps the greatest art – or at least the most enduring – is born not in triumph, but in grief.
This premise is framed as an echo, perhaps a prophecy, of Hamlet. The film doesn’t shy away from the comparison, but it also doesn’t lean on it as a gimmick. Instead, it proposes that Hamlet may not just have been a story Shakespeare told – it was something he felt after loss, a mourning that turned into words. In Hamnet, we see the furnace from which those words might have emerged: heartbreak, longing, and the naked ache of what’s gone.
Emotion as Landscape
Zhao’s filmmaking in Hamnet is nothing short of lyrical. From the first frame, the world is alive: the wind whips through trees, the air smells of damp earth, the house creaks with memory. Cinematographer Lukasz Zal (of The Zone of Interest fame) frames Agnes often beneath ancient trees, under boughs that seem to cradle her sorrow – or perhaps to suffocate it. The forest, in this film, is not just setting. It is character. The way the light filters through leaves, the shiver of music under grief, the hush of mourning – all of it communicates pain better than a hundred tear-stained speeches ever could. It’s a film that demands that you feel it, not just watch it.
And in this landscape of grief, Buckley and Mescal anchor the audience. Buckley’s Agnes, in particular, is elemental: maternal, wild, and grounded – a woman whose grief is not delicate but primal. Her wails pierce the screen. Her grief becomes immediate and unignorable. Mescal’s Will is more reserved, more haunted – as though every line he writes, every play he contemplates, is carved from sorrow.
Together, they embody the idea that art is not a luxury – it is survival. That pain can be a forge, and from its embers something timeless can emerge.
Hamnet is not flawless. The film wants to offer an origin story for Hamlet, a convincing portrait of grief, and a sweeping family drama – all within 126 minutes. The result can feel, at times, overburdened. Certain melodramatic turns – especially in the depiction of grief – teeter dangerously close to emotional exploitation. The same rawness that gives the film its power can, in lesser moments, feel manipulative rather than mournful.
But here’s where Hamnet earns its place next to Hamlet: In the play-within-the-film – the staging of the tragedy that may have risen from Will’s pain – Zhao gives us a sequence that stands as one of the year’s most haunting cinematic moments. It’s not just a performance. It’s a reckoning.
Conclusion
Hamnet is one of the most emotionally charged films of the year. It is a demonstration of how cinema can channel emotion – not sensationalize it, but shape it, refine it, and let it breathe through frames, silence, light, and sound. Its performances are fierce, its visuals lush, and its heart unflinching.
In the end, Hamnet is not just a film about grief. It is a film about love. About memory. About the ghosts we carry – and the art we create so they don’t vanish completely.