Hamnet (2025)

Chole Zhao returns to the Oscar mix with an adaption of Maggie O'Farrell's novel aboiut the romance between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Anne (Agnes in the novel and film) Hathaway (Played by Jesse Buckley) and what happens when their son Hamnet dies.

Raw, and at times feral, the film feels like we are there in the moment, watching the lives of two people deeply in love. We can see the passion and emotion between Will and Agnes arcing across the screen. There are times you can sense the electricity you get when you touch the person you love most in the world traveling between them. The emotion is so pronounced in the early part of the film that in the final third of the film you are destroyed just by a look.

The film is essentially told in three parts. The first part is the romance of Will and Agnes. The second is their life together and the third is the death of Hamnet and their dealing with grief. The first part is a great romance, the second is good domestic drama, and the third is just on another plane of existence. All of the Oscar talk and discussion of greatness comes from that final part of the film.

And now a slight digression. I saw this film on Thanksgiving morning at 9am at a screening in Brooklyn with my friend Hubert Virgilla. I had not been offered an press screenings so I decided to go with him to see the film. I needed to go because I knew it was going to be in the mix for voting for NYFCO. I am mentioning that because when the film was done and Hubert asked me what I thought I said my feelings were all over the place, in part because of all the praise, but also because I had to figure out where to put it in the NYFCO voting. I went  home had Thanksgiving dinner, watched some football and more films and found I was still haunted by HAMNET.

That the film works is due two two things, the first is the three part construction. We need the romance and the domestic drama for the final third to work. We need to feel the love of Will and Agnes to be rocked by the grief they feel. The other reason it works is are the actors  Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal. They show us what they feel with every word and gesture. By the end every emotion is in their eyes, expressed with a look and no words.

I would argue that with the minor exception of the performce of the actor playing Hamlet at the Globe, the final third of HAMNET is nigh perfect emotionally. Everyone undertsands that we are riding the emotion of the moment and they lean into it, with the result that I, and many people I know, were sobbing in that last section.  It's not about what physically happens, it's about the emotional journey that the characters take, particularly the broken Agnes and Will who discover that they are both in the same place, side by sides, just as they had always been from the moment they met, just hidden by the blackness of their grief. It is glorious. 

This will wreck you in the best possible way.

I need to mention that the use of Shakespeare's plays in the film shows how a great performance of the work makes us understand why the plays have survived. Mescal's delivery of a section of "to be or not to be" is the greatest one that I have ever run across in any form. Its out of context, yet perfectly in context delivery says so much about why the work matters. His brow beating the actors over the nunnery speech reveals what is needed to make the words work, you need to feel the lines not just say the lines. Lastly the context of his performance of the father brings so many levels to the role and the play that I think it may reshape how people see the play as a whole.

While I still don't know how I entirely feel about the film, as I said above the need to consider the film as something other than itself has clouded some of my feelings, I do think that it is a staggering achievement. See it.