Film Review: Hamnet

Hamnet
Director: Chloé Zhao
Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions, Amblin Entertainment, Book of Shadows
In Theaters: 12.05.2025

To grieve, or not to grieve? That is the question.

Two households — nay, two hearts — alike in dignity,
In fair England where we lay our scene,
From ancient sorrow break new tears,
Where twin-born children, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare,
In mirth and mischief bound,
Shall show how fragile shines the light of youth.
Hear now, kind audience, Chloé Zhao’s sweet lament,
Whose lens, like Phoebus’ golden scrutiny,
Doth pierce the mortal veil to bare the soul beneath.
Attend this tale of Hamnet, for in its tender woe
Resides the quiet thunder of our common grief.

In fair Stratford-upon-Avon’s green, 1596,
A tender house lies ‘twixt love’s warmth and fate’s cold hand.
Young Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe, Peter Pan & Wendy) — gentle son of Will (Paul Mescal, Gladiator II) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley, Women Talking) — doth prosper briefly,
But pestilence and sorrow steal him from his mother’s arms.
Grief’s inky cloak descends upon the hearth and heart,
And Will, stricken, seeks refuge in his quill and parchment.
From mourning’s ashes springs a mighty ghost of art —
A play is born of pain, whose name echoes their lost child.

O what a moving picture hath Zhao conjur’d —
A tapestry of love, of loss, of hearts undone —
Fashion’d with such grace that even stone might weep.
Hamnet unfolds as a gentle, aching vision:
Twin-born Judith, twice brush’d by Death’s cold fingers,
Lingers wavering on the threshold,
Whilst Hamnet — her shadow, keeper, mirror —
Doth fret with love beyond his tender years.
He watches her with a guardian’s devotion,
Their bond a luminous thread that binds the film.
And yet, in fate’s most cruel unravelling,
’Tis he, the steadfast brother,
Who at last doth shuffle off this mortal coil.
Then all the world tilts into sorrow’s shade.

What then becomes of Agnes and Will,
Whose hearts are riven by this grievous blow?
O Agnes! — and here let heaven pause —
For Buckley doth portray thee
With brilliance that might shame the dawning sun.
Her sorrow is no feigned lament;
’Tis tempest, truth, and trembling grace.
Within her eyes lie widowed fields
Where morning’s dew clings like unshed tears.
She moves as one whom grief has hollow’d,
Yet still she bears the wild, enchanted spirit
That marks her as a woman woven deep
Into nature’s mystic loom.
Buckley — O divine enchantress! —
Crafts a portrait of maternal love so fierce,
So raw, so luminously wrought,
That the Muses themselves would lower their gaze
In reverent awe.

And Mescal’s Will —
A figure wrought of yearning and quiet torment.
His youth, scar’d by his pernicious father’s heavy hand,
Hath left him ever trembling ’neath the weight of duty.
What refuge finds he in London’s bustling realm?
Only the hollow solace of words,
For no quill, however deft,
Can mend the wound of a lost child,
Nor bridge the gulf that grief hath carved
Between himself and fair Agnes.
Their marriage, once a union of wonder,
Now strains like timbers in a storm,
Each seeking harbor, yet drifting apart.

Yet speak we again of young Jupe’s Hamnet,
Sweet cherub of all too fleeting days.
His time on screen is all too brief,
Yet he lingers like a haunting melody.
In every glance toward Judith shines
The purest mirror of devotion.
He is sunbeam and shadow both,
The very fulcrum upon which
The film’s aching heart doth turn.

Thus hath Zhao stitch’d a profound treatise
On mourning’s many shapes:
How it fractures, reshapes, and —
By some quiet alchemy —
May yet forge new bonds from broken ones.
Hamnet stands as a marvel of emotion,
A hymn to grief sung softly into the marrow,
A tale that, though steep’d in loss,
Leaves the soul strangely whole.
Go, gentle friends —
Bear witness to this sorrowed beauty,
For in beholding their grief,
We find communion with our own. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more (traditional) film reviews from Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Zootopia 2
Film Review: Eternity